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We’re over the hump. Week 6 was, in the words of our excellent part 2 administrator, the week that was trying to kill me. In an already crowded teaching timetable, I had an extra six hours of teaching. This was self-inflicted. Another way of looking at it is that I am a victim of my…

I’ve just found out what I’m teaching next year, and it’s quite a change from previous years. Of course, I’m going to be teaching my new Crisis and Continuity Course at Part II (second and third year), and I’m still teaching Hist401, the MA Core Course, to the students on campus. This means that my…

On Saturday 17 June 2023, I led a cast of students and professionals to put on the world premiere of John Balshaw’s Jigge in Brindle, where it was first written around 350 years ago. It was a fantastic experience for all concerned, and I’m pleased to say that the audience seemed to enjoy it as…

Long time readers of this blog will know that for a couple of years I was the administrator for the Social History Society. The role is run as a postdoctoral position out of the History Department at Lancaster University and helps to keep a newly-minted PhD in academia while they try to get an academic…

Back in June, we gave a live performance of John Balshaw’s Jigge at the Community Hall in Brindle where it was written in the seventeenth century. Having cast the performers, they were left to learn their parts for several weeks until we had two intensive days of rehearsal at the beginning of June – these…

There have been several things keeping me busy over the last few months. One of the biggest was the live performance of John Balshaw’s Jigge that we gave in Brindle on 17 June. It was a fabulous experience for all concerned. Last autumn I engaged a director I know who lives in the Isle of…

This year, the only new module I ran was my ‘dates’ module. At Lancaster, we are still running on terms, and the first years have a short course after Easter that is only three weeks long, centred around a significant date in history and intended to do some in depth source analysis. There are only…

The other evening I enjoyed a talk from Euan Rogers of The National Archives, who gave a talk at Lancaster for the Centre for War and Diplomacy on the history of treason over 700 years. He began by pointing out that treason reflects a real sense of betrayal, but also has a legal definition which…

On Tuesday, I went to a lecture held by Lancaster University’s Centre for War and Diplomacy on Theory and Practice in Military Medicine during the English Civil Wars: New Evidence from Civil War Petitions by Ismini Pells. This was obviously of interest given the period, but also because one of my students a couple of…

Back in February I was privileged to go to the University of California, Santa Barbara for the English Broadside Ballad Archive 25th Anniversary Conference, so here is my third post about my first ever trip to the States, of which I have some very fond memories! After a delicious lunch, with the best beef sandwich…