BREAKING: Johnson to bring back Old English letterforms for the Platinum Jubilee! The PM said:
Many of þese letters Ƿere lost after 1066 due to “Norman red tape”. Ƿe’re delighted to bring ðem bæck todæȝ. ᚦ ᚫ ᚾ ᚳ ᚴ.
#Historians
have long wondered why so many houses of the earlier twenty-first century have bricked-up windows. This was, of course, so no one could look in and see their
#meat
, thus avoiding the
#MeatTax
.
I'd also just like to add that my daughter's brilliant teacher, Mr H, apparently said that this is the rule for commas in SATs, 'but out of school you can do whatever you like' 😎
Train delayed indefinitely here at York, due to an earlier incident: "A cow striking a train on the line near Darlington". This wording seems spectacularly unfair on the cow.
Over Christmas, my parents gave me some bits and pieces in this old
#PastTimes
carrier bag: a now somewhat poignant and meta piece of crumpled plastic.
My beautiful boy is 5 today! Of course, we're still in
#lockdown
, and we've had to cancel what would have been his first proper birthday party. But if anyone would like to wish Thomas a
#HappyBirthday
, he would be so pleased.
#StarWars
gifs especially welcome :)
The genuine horror of a Londoner when I, a 14th-century migrant from the east Midlands, use 3rd person plural pronouns beginning with 'th' (their, them), reflecting Old Norse influence, eventually displacing the local London pronoun forms (hier, hem).
As this tweet is getting, er, more interest than I expected, I should clarify that by SATs I mean the tests which children in the UK take at the age of 11. (Not the U.S. SATs. They may have totally different comma ideology.)
Important breaking news this morning on
@BBCr4today
: the song of the
#Bagpuss
mice was consciously based on the
#medieval
English song 'Sumer is icumen in'. ('We will mend it...')
The excited and slightly disbelieving face of someone inside their very own
#beachhut
! Ten years on the Bournemouth residents' waiting list for a site, and totally worth it ❤️
#Heatwave
reflection... In both my past two jobs (elsewhere), my office was on the 'hot' side of the building; now my office is on the 'cool' side. This is basically the greatest achievement of my entire career.
My husband and I never baby talk to our kids. We use early medieval insular Latin and wide vocabulary including the hermeneutic style.
My daughter is 9 and can translate Aldhelm. My son isn't even 5 and provides discreet interlinear vernacular glosses.
My wife and I never baby talk to our kids. We use full sentences and a wide vocabulary including complex words.
My son is 3 and can carry a full conversation. Adults at family gatherings are shocked at his social aptitude. My daughter isn’t even 2 and she uses 4-syllable words.
Every single day during
#lockdown
, my parents posted a letter to each of my children. My Mum found old unused postcards, and my Dad chose
#stamps
from his
#collection
, with pictures which would interest them. We now have an amazing archive which we'll treasure forever ❤️❤️❤️
When I was 6, I missed half a term of school with
#WhoopingCough
. The prospect of
#selfisolating
brings a rush of memories: the quiet house, schoolwork sent home, walks across frosty fields in my stripy coat, when no one else was about. (Pictured with my sister, who also had WC)
This morning my little boy (5), still sleepy-eyed and loaf-warm from bed, came and found me to tell me that he was counting up to 1000 and was on 228. He's now up to 740. These are the important things, people. ❤️
Your regular reminder that enlarging and deepening our understanding of the past - from brilliant stories right through to the deeply uncomfortable or traumatic - is not cancelling history, but in fact *doing*
#history
.
Reading again the wonderful moment when
#Chaucer
's Wife of Bath wonders why elves & fairies have disappeared from England. Because of all the prayers & blessings cast about by holy men, she supposes. She imagines them accumulated in the air 'As thikke as motes in the sonne-beem'.
A real treat to see the newly-restored
#medieval
#Doom
painting in St Thomas's
#Salisbury
, at the weekend. Particular details I loved: the motley devil on the RH side, his clawed foot breaking the frame, & the lady on the left side checking her hair as she climbs out of her grave
Best ever phishing message. We get a lot of these, purportedly from university 'management' figures asking us to respond. Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, is the University of London Chancellor, here dropping me a quick email, as per.
I'm extremely proud, privileged and excited to be leading this new research centre
@IHR_History
. Please follow us as we start to share our plans and projects for the coming year!
Centre for the History of People Place & Community
I would like to to add my story, even if some may feel it’s oversharing. When I had my daughter, I was pretty vulnerable: she was premature, and I was alone (my husband worked away) through almost all my labour. A short thread.
#BirthTrauma
1/10
I remember the wonderful medievalist Helen Cooper once telling me that she'd been trying to find out when the last wild boar in England was killed. She unexpectedly spotted the information on a tray in a motorway service station cafeteria, but was unsure how to cite it...
@CathAMClarke
Fabulous! I now have much more historical knowledge of where I live & all from your photo of a tray! This is the very best side of Twitter.
I see my resignation letter is featured
@BBCNews
but I'm unhappy about the headline. To clarify: I fully support the urgent, important challenge of diversifying & 'decolonising' curricula and antiracist work in our unversities. Please read my letter 👇
@ThreatNotation
Is this actually a thing? My (elderly, strict, very accomplished) piano teacher spent exasperated hours trying to get me to do this. She claimed that you could hear a difference, but I was a total sceptic. Was she... pranking me?
@Anna_Mazz
The 19th-century replica of the Bayeux Tapestry, in
@readingmuseum
, has little pants embroidered in all the necessary locations, to preserve modesty...
My 7yo just found a bottle of Windsor & Newton ink in vermillion and was trying to write with it using a Playmobil medieval lance and has now spilled it all over his cream bedroom carpet how is your day going?
It's exactly one year to the day since my daughter went off-message on the Children's Activity Table at church, and produced this:
#Tolkien
#Sauron
#SundaySchool
Walking through the Haunted Basement in Senate House today and I instinctively held open the door for the person behind me but THERE WAS NO PERSON BEHIND ME
If you'd like to learn about the work of the
@ColonialCountr1
project and
@corinne_fowler
directly, without misrepresentation, you can watch this fascinating seminar from our
@CHPPC_IHR
series (
#free
#online
). Please take a look, and make up your own mind.
Trying to write about the Middle English poem
#Pearl
, and the opening stanzas are just destroying me. The way loss and grief can resonate across the centuries. My heart breaks for anyone who's ever mourned a child.
@lucyinglis
When I develop projects, I work hard to create RA posts which offer career development (including publication credits) & properly salaried work to early-career colleagues. Also: collaboration. Research isn't lone scholars in ivory towers - we work in teams in the Humanities, too
This was a bit of a niche joke, linked to the UK news (PM Rishi Sunak referred to a non-existent Meat Tax). It's now being read more widely & many comments / reposts taking it seriously. I don't wish to inadvertently spread Fake History! Thanks for sharing your jokes & knowledge.
#Historians
have long wondered why so many houses of the earlier twenty-first century have bricked-up windows. This was, of course, so no one could look in and see their
#meat
, thus avoiding the
#MeatTax
.
Delighted to share the news that I’ll be taking up the new Chair in the History of People, Place & Community
@ihr_history
@UoLondon
from Feb 2019. So excited to help shape our new research centre & join the brilliant team, including
@VCH_London
&
@CMH_London
The IHR is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Catherine Clarke to head our new research centre for the History of People, Place and Community. Read more about Catherine's appointment here:
@SASNews
@anooshka_rawden
Historians have also investigated the phenomenon of the vast underground basements created for many elite dwellings in this period. It's likely these spaces were required for the numerous bins - seven intially, increasing by another dozen each year - mandated for domestic refuse.
@QuintinLake
Gravy is the correct sauce when it's chips only; when fish is involved then this should be replaced with mushy peas. HOWEVER mushy peas should not really be classed as a sauce; they are clearly a vegetable side and thus one of your 5-a-day. Thank you.
Oh my goodness. I popped out this morning for some milk and spotted this tiny felted
#dragon
on a lady's craft stall - and bought it for my little boy. But now I'm not sure I can part with it... Should I keep it?
'Eye contact'?
'Smile'?
'Hands away from face'?
Are you kidding me? No wonder we're driving more and more neurodivergent children into breakdowns or school avoidance. Personally, as a grown woman, I'd feel crushed in an environment like this. I'm angry.
Also great to see that the site continues to develop. These posters were designed by our excellent librarian, Mr Harris, and are in every classroom - and now on the corridors to reinforce our message and ethos.
It was a dehumanising, dangerous birth experience and I'm reclaiming it by telling the story. I know I'm lucky to have been uninjured, healthy, with a healthy (in the end) baby. NHS staff are under huge pressure. My 2nd
#birth
, at another hospital, very positive. Thank you. 10/10
For
#Christmas
dinner today, our ages ranged from 3 to 90. And my stepmother-in-law, who sadly has advanced-stage dementia, sang along to all the carols in her lovely soprano voice, remembering all the words and the descants.
Fellow
#map
-lovers! Look at my £2 CHARITY SHOP FIND! It's only John Speed's Hampshire (with plan of Winchester) on a tray! And because it's the historic county, where I live just squeezes in at the west! I await your expressions of envy below.
Nine years ago, I had a busy day in work, went home - and had a baby that evening... Can't believe that very tiny, unexpectedly early arrival (held here by her Grandma) is 9 years old today!
I've spent this evening on my duties as an External Examiner for a UK university. My job (as for all external examiners) is to scrutinise processes & standards - including student anonymity, fairness, marking according to published criteria etc. Unsure how this 👇 could happen.
Kemi Badenoch says that young Conservatives are being marked down by their universities because of their politics.
No evidence whatsoever provided for this
My daughter wrote this note at school a few years ago and I've always loved it. In particular, "swim in deep water" has been an inspiration whenever I've taken on something challenging or outside my comfort zone. Today my new necklace arrived, in my daughter's handwriting ❤️
@Louiestowell
I'm also still waiting for the children's book / CBeebies series based on these buddies - a medieval hare and hound (stone corbel) from Kilpeck, Herefordshire.
In which I finally meet my (lovely) medievalist doppelganger, Catherine Clarke
@monasticshrop
- having been given each others' conference packs and come perilously close to sharing a room! 😂 Great to meet in real life.
#IMC2023
@IMC_Leeds
Nipped into a local charity shop today (on annual leave) and couldn't believe my luck. Someone had just given their collection of
#Bournemouth
guidebooks, dating back to 1890. What a treasure trove! Take a look at a few with me... 1/3
At Waterloo, and just had a shaming conversation with my bank (suspicious transaction / card blocked). "That's all sorted for you, Prof Clarke. So you can go ahead and buy the *checks screen, long pause* McDonald's and chocolate". 😳 (It's been a long day.)
Huge congratulations to the new Dr Whalley
@beth_whalley
on her superb thesis, Waterways & their Communities in Early
#Medieval
Culture & Contemporary Arts - passed with no corrections today! Pleasure to examine with
@ETreharne
Today is... just my wedding anniversary, as usual. A lot has changed in 11 years, but I'm very pleased I was prescient enough to include plenty of yellow and blue in my bouquet... 💛💙🇪🇺 🇪🇺
#VoteNo29March
Please allow me a little brag. Just got the peer reviews for my chapter 'Thinking with
#Mud
: Dirt, Imagination & Early
#Medieval
English Culture'. One typo to fix, &
#Reviewer2
calls it 'a compelling piece of writing developing a kind of cultural philosophy of mud'. Very happy!
This post 👆 was a bit of a niche joke, linked to a story in the UK news in the past few days (PM Rishi Sunak referred to a non-existent Meat Tax). I see it's now being read more widely and wanted to clarify. I don't wish to inadvertently spread Fake History. Thanks.
It should not be beyond the wit of competent teachers to render the Anglo-Saxons - immigrants who, living amid a post-imperial order, fashioned new cultural, political & religious identities for themselves - a topic of interest to BAME students
History professor, writer, seeks sponsorship from
#parmesan
cheese. Parmesan gets a mention in my forthcoming book for Penguin (product placement!); happy to work it into any articles / books from now on. DMs open.
St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold...
#Keats
#StAgnesEve
#StAgnes
20 January
The most staggering thing about post-Covid travel is that there's ABSOLUTELY NO ONE queuing for
#HarryPotter
photos on Platform 9 3/4. So I've taken this picture to send to my kids, and to remind me that I witnessed this wonder.
'Because Britain lies almost under the North Pole, it has short nights in summer, so that often at midnight it is hard for those watching to say whether it is evening twilight which still lingers, or whether morning dawn has come'.
#Bede
#SummerSolstice
#SummerSolstice2019
I'm pleased to say that my daughter got a high Distinction in her exam - so happy for her, as playing the
#cello
is her world. Thanks for the kind wishes.
What a beautiful morning for a
#COVID19
#vaccination
! And a lovely surprise - I'm 43 and thought I'd have to wait much longer. I'm so moved and proud: a huge
#ThankYou
to the brilliant healthcare staff and volunteers at Beaufort Road Surgery
#Southbourne
#Dorset
Aged 8, I was in terrible trouble when it came to light that I'd been running a lending
#library
using my childminder's books. Recalling them was no problem, as I had an efficient card system. But I had to forfeit all monies from fines & close down what had been a popular service