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At the very end of October, I was very excited to discover what I think is my first ever citation in someone else’s book.  My own book, Singing the News, didn’t come out in time to make the note, so the reference is to my PhD thesis, but I’m still feeling very proud of myself. …

During the summer, we spent a week on the Isle of Wight.  Our visit to Carisbrook Castle was livened up by the sound of music floating through the grounds.  It was provided by Blast from the Past, Chris Green and Sophie Matthews, who advertised one of their performances with a rather self-deprecating call of ‘Come…

During the summer, we went to the Isle of Wight on holiday.  This time, we visited Carisbrooke Castle, where Charles I was imprisoned after the Civil War.  It was, perhaps, the perfect time for me to visit, since I spent several days earlier in the summer running a summer school for Edge Hill University on…

By the time you read this, I’ll be part-way through teaching my very own course for the first time (Edge Hill summer school excepted).  It’s exciting, but also a bit nerve-wracking, especially since I didn’t have very long to pull it together. It’s an 8 week module on The Making of Modern Britain for an…

I have spent much of the summer wrestling with a conundrum, which I still haven’t solved.  As regular readers will know, I have been working on the Pilgrimage of Grace.  I submitted my article to a peer-reviewed journal and at the beginning of summer, I got word back that they had decided not to publish…

A couple of weeks ago I went down to London for a few days, killing several birds with one stone.  The main purpose of the visit was to go to a meeting of the Historical Association Branches and Members Committee, but I went down two days early so that I could get some work done…

I’m going to make a confession: I’m not particularly good at role play. I was never very good at taking part in them, and experience of trying to use them in the classroom has usually left me slightly disappointed. There have been two exceptions to this.  The mock trial of Charles I with the summer…

I’m writing this in late August, while Twitter is alive with posts on what people have accomplished, or not, over the summer, and the guilt they feel or don’t. It’s got me thinking. There were so many things I planned to do this summer: Rewrite and resubmit my Pilgrimage of Grace article. Write and submit…

This is the final post in a short series about my trip to the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference in Maynooth during July 2018. The final day of the conference dawned bright and clear (again!), so once I’d packed up and checked out of my accommodation, I headed over to the south campus for the…