Category: Uncategorized
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Commuting
Over the last few months, I’ve been doing a lot of travelling around getting to work. I’m not fond of driving, it’s never been something I particularly enjoy, but living in the back of beyond means that there’s really little alternative. When I wrote Over the Next Hill, I thought I would be doing a…
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Teaching at Edge Hill
I’m pleased to say that since the beginning of the year, I’ve been covering the Dawn of Modernity course for the first year history students at Edge Hill University. It’s been great fun so far, and I must send a big thank you to Nicky Tsougarakis and all the staff at Edge for making everything…
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Teaching the Cold War
The last session of teaching before Christmas on the Liverpool Hope Twentieth Century Europe course at Holy Cross College in Bury was on the Cold War. It’s an interesting topic, and one of the primary sources set for the students to study is an extract from Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech, delivered on 5 March 1946…
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Juggling the workload and watching the strike
BBC News has just noticed that many people working in our universities are on precarious contracts at several universities, as well as doing other low paid work for which they are massively over-qualified. Hardly a shocker for anyone working in the sector, but it’s presumably come to light because of the UCU strike, which has…
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Recording ballads 3
I’ve spent a lot of time since the beginning of the year recording ballads for this website, to accompany my new book. This is the third in a short series of posts about what I’ve been up to. There are more than 30 musical examples in the book and my plan was to record all…
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Singing the News is Out!
A small parcel of books arrived on Thursday lunchtime! It’s quite exciting to see it in print, as it seems to have had the gestation time of an elephant (even though in fact it was relatively quick). Singing the News Flyer
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Recording ballads 2
I’ve spent a lot of time since the beginning of the year recording ballads for this website, to accompany my new book. This is the second of a short series of posts about what I’ve been up to. Moving the ballads from scores to sound recordings has been an enlightening experience. In some cases, there…
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Recording ballads 1
I’ve spent a lot of time since the beginning of the year recording ballads for this website to accompany my new book. This is first in a short series of posts about what I’ve been up to. First, I must thank Stephen Kelly for prompting me to begin this project. While I was working at…
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Books and ballads
Earlier this week, I had an email from the publisher of my book to say that it has gone to the printer. According to their website, it is due for publication on 22 February, so it’s not long now. It’s an exciting, if somewhat scary, prospect. I decided that it was about time I created…
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Copyediting and Proofreading
I spent a lot of my Christmas and new year checking the copy edit and page proofs of my forthcoming book Singing the News, and writing the index. It was a strange experience. My fiend rang one day while I was sitting at my desk staring at the page proofs, and asked if I were enjoying…
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