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Just a quick post to say that normal service will be resumed shortly – I’ve got lots of things on my list to write posts about, but I simply haven’t got the time at the moment to write them because I’m busy writing lectures and marking.  Normally I write a stack of posts and schedule…

I’m singing ballads at this event in Manchester. Rylands Blog The 31st October is a date which you might notice in the diary – perhaps an evening you mark with a ghoulish costume, or by taking the children trick or treating, or even staying in and watching a film that makes you want to hide…

Lately, I’ve been in the final stages of putting together the manuscript for the book.  As I came to the very end of the project, I spent a couple of days writing a few new bits for a reworked introduction.  I’d never been entirely comfortable with the fact that the first chapter was the introduction,…

Can vice-chancellors ever really know what it’s like for emerging researchers and precariat postdocs? I was reading two vice-chancellors discuss how to take pressure off young academics the other week and it made me increasingly ragey. Set-ups like this are doomed in many ways because you’re asking people with incredible privilege and a fair whack […]…

During the summer, we went to Rufford Old Hall‘s family fun day, where we had a go at archery and visited our friends at the North West Reptile Club (someday I hope to be able to take Dave along). To be honest, I wasn’t going to bother going round the house this time, as we…

This is the second of two short posts about my summer holiday in France, only this time it’s not really about anything historical.  I was just blown away by Le Grand Éléphant at Les Machines de l’Île in Nantes.  Unfortunately, we arrived too late in the day to have a look round the workshop, but…

Spotted this!  It’s exciting to see it on the web…

It’s always nice to get an email that shows that there are actually people out there who read my blog when they come across it, and yesterday afternoon I received a message from someone at Artsy,  who wondered if I could help them to promote their Edvard Munch pages.  Now I’ve said before that I…

This is the first of two posts about my summer holiday in the Loire Valley.  It’s a long time since I’ve been to France, so I wanted to see a bit of the countryside and the culture as well as the place where we stayed.  We had a couple of day trips to Nantes, which…