Dr Francis Young @DrFrancisYoung Twitter profile

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Dr Francis Young

3 days

My chapter about mendicant friars in late medieval and early modern Lithuania is out today in 'Mendicants on the Margins', ed. by Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton and Anne-Julie Lafaye with @CorkUP

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Last Seen Profiles

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

Shoutout to those Westminster School lads of the 18th century who graffitied their names on St Edward's Chair, which we're only now able to see thanks to the quality of broadcast image! 😆

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

Harry has no respect for English royal tradition, a proper prince would have fomented a rebellion in Ireland by now and raised an army of gallowglass. Where’s the conspiring with the Burgundians? Where are the promises to magnates?

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

An online attitude that’s developed in the last 20 years and really bugs me is the idea that all historical information is available somewhere on the web. No, it’s not. There are historians working at the evidential coalface every day to make it available

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

@AlexInAir @militaryhistori Turns out the Bermuda Triangle can make planes disappear after all

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

14 days

Well, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a title of a journal article that goes this hard

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

25 days

Absolutely insane that Lord Lovat exercised his right as Chief of Clan Fraser to have a personal piper accompany him in the vanguard of the D-Day landings on Sword Beach (pipers were by then no longer allowed at the frontline in the British Army)

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

11 months

At a Cambridge pizzeria where the tables are meticulously constructed Swiss model railway scenes and it might be the best thing ever

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

Funniest tweet of the day, on multiple levels 😂

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

21 days

Does Henry IV's invasion of Lithuania mean nothing to you people

Epic Maps 🗺️

@Locati0ns

21 days

Every country the British has invaded / had military conflict with.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 month

I've just come across a suggestion that ghosts declined in the 20th century because improved detection techniques and scientific breakthroughs meant more murders were solved and perpetrators punished, reducing the need for the dead to return and seek justice

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

Lithuania is now trolling the UK.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

11 months

It doesn’t get any better than this. So what is it that lies beyond this door…? A clue: it’s the last of its kind in all England.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 months

I’m sorry but it’s absurd to blame William the Conqueror for the housing crisis. The blame lies squarely with Boudicca, whose burning of Roman cities caused London to emerge as the capital - skewing Britain ever after to a unipolar metropolis and causing unrealistic house prices

The Telegraph

@Telegraph

2 months

🔵 How William the Conqueror’s land grab stoked Britain’s housing crisis Roots of the country’s problem lie in the Norman king’s system of lease and ownership

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

10 months

I’m always intrigued by those independent US-style diners on UK roads that used to be Little Chefs but somehow battled on like post-Roman British warlord potentates after the collapse of the Little Chef empire

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

I wish Western Europeans would come to understand the extent to which early modern East Central Europe was a cultural CENTRE, not a backwater of reluctant, late-adopters of the Renaissance. Generations of Russocentric conditioning has people thinking of this region as peripheral

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

4 months

It’s typical of the unspoken duties constantly being loaded on the clergy that this advert says nothing about the expectation to solve crimes

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

4 months

BREAKING: Galleries are refusing to display this image of Henry VIII with Jane Seymour and Edward VI over fears it may have been manipulated

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

11 months

The existence of Doritos implies the existence of Ionitos and Corinthitos

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

@Hieraaetus Dionysius the Mionysius

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

@djbduncan Yes, in the c18th (the long reign of George III mainly, I think) it was pretty much abandoned in the Abbey and people graffitied it

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 years

I love the way Thomas Cromwell comes up on Google as if he's just been ousted in a Cabinet reshuffle

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 months

The Inspector Morse episode 'Twilight of the Gods' (1993) features the single most relatable character in all of British TV

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

On the theme of Atlantis and lost islands and continents, when was the island of Sodor lost to the sea, and did it suffer a Númenor-like fate owing to the hubris of the Fat Controller?

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

5 years

This morning we should all stand in awe of the medieval stonemasons who designed and built a cathedral that could withstand the most devastating of fires. What modern building could survive this? These people knew their stuff. Can we now stop using 'medieval' as a pejorative?

jordan pickett

@jordantpickett

5 years

Photos by Reuters’ Philippe Wojazer

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

Do you know where your nearest hillfort is? In case of civilisational and technological collapse, it's always good to know the best elevated ground that can be defended with a sharpened stick

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

4 years

Perhaps my favourite Latin term for witches is 'plussciae', literally 'women who know more'

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 years

One of the most remarkable stories in the history of European diplomacy is surely that of Vincas Balickas, a Lithuanian diplomat who arrived in London in 1938 - and ended up in post, without any chance of relief or retirement, for the next 53 years... 🇱🇹🇬🇧

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

8 months

2023 is the 500th anniversary of the earliest depiction of the State Opening of Parliament, in 1523

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

7 months

England’s last surviving built-over medieval bridge (or one side of it, anyway) - in Lincoln

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

26 days

Should you or should you not bring flowers?

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 months

‘Academics don’t want their work talked about.’

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 years

Translating Latin is one of the things I do for a living. A large part of the reason people think like this 👇 is that they believe (not really through any fault of their own) that Latin is all about the Romans. But I don't get asked to translate stuff written by Romans (thread)

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 months

Your periodic reminder that the Church of England came into existence at around 7am on 24 June 1559 send tweet

The Church of England

@churchofengland

2 months

The Church of England is the established Christian church in England. Our roots go back to the time of the Roman Empire, when the church came into existence in what was then the province of Britain. Find out more about our history at .

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

I don’t think Twitter will collapse so much as undergo a process of de-urbanisation and a replacement of elites by Germanic warrior-settlers

Eduardo García-Molina

@eduardo_garcmol

2 years

If Twitter does collapse, I’m blaming the Sea Peoples.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

Whitby problems.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

Delighted to announce that a team I’ve been part of has confirmed that Stonehenge was indeed briefly converted into a church in the mid-14th century, appearing in records of the Diocese of Salisbury as the Chapel of St Peter inter Lapides

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

I don’t think people understand the extent to which information on websites like Wikipedia is often catastrophically out of date because it’s from c19th or early c20th texts in the public domain

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

Gonna get myself a t-shirt printed up: THAT THING YOU THINK IS MEDIEVAL? IT'S EARLY MODERN

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

5 months

What we really need are universities that support scholars who never publish articles or monographs, but spend their whole lives editing and translating primary sources. The problem is not that we’ve become obsessed by publication, but that we don’t prioritise primary source work

Paul Schofield

@pschofie79

5 months

There should be room in academia for professors who don't publish, but who know things. Not dead wood, who stopped learning in 1995. I mean: leaves for the summer, reads all summer rather than write, smokes a pipe on the quad and will talk to you about stuff.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

5 months

I found them, the most middle class crisps

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

8 months

The Republic of San Marino (founded 1291) and Principality of Monaco (founded 1297) would like a word.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

"I'm not religious and never go to church. Why is the church in England declining???"

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

With the #Coronation of King Charles III now a month away, I'm starting a megathread of weird and wonderful historical Coronation facts which I'll be posting every day until the eve of Coronation Day #CoronationFacts 1/31

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

This, to me, is the great tension of being a historian: people in the past were simultaneously both just like us and quite unlike us. Both things are true at the same time.

Tom Holland

@holland_tom

1 year

‘People in the past were not just like us. To pretend so is an evasion and a betrayal, turning our back on them so as to be easy among familiar things.’ Mary Renault (who was a great historical novelist precisely because she understood this so viscerally)

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

4 months

Hans Holbein, in a statement released by his studio, said: "Like many professional painters, I do occasionally experiment with editing."

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

Although Vatican II is known for its consequences for the Latin language in liturgy, it's easy to forget that the Council itself was the last major event in the history of the Latin language

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

11 months

It’s this: England’s last surviving pre-Reformation saint’s shrine, with the saint’s relics undisturbed inside (pace Westminster Abbey). The shrine of St Wite at Whitchurch Canonicorum

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

4 years

One of England's most spectacular monasteries (entirely hidden from the public) is St Hugh's Charterhouse at Parkminster, Sussex. The perfect example of social distancing, the vast cloister links multiple little houses with their own gardens where the Carthusian monks live

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 years

Unbelievable. People will allow themselves to be borne away by the unseelie host before they'll go to therapy.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 years

Martin Henig just identified a statue of Alfred the Great as a re-used Roman statue of Minerva and I am LOSING MY MIND over how cool this is 😲😲😲

Alfred the Great's Southwark statue is partly Roman goddess

Conservation work reveals that below the waistline, Alfred was a Roman goddess.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 months

Just hit peak Republic of Letters by sending an email to a scholar in Latin because I'm not sure she speaks any English, but I know she will understand Latin 📨

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

5 years

The false belief that medieval peasants were somehow pagan, and that paganism survived in medieval Western Europe, is resilient in popular culture. What's sad is that searching for nonexistent paganism obscures what's really interesting - the weirdness of medieval Christianity

Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

5 years

@roberrttoa @rh0desy @HiddenYorkshire @MedievalG @GraffitiGinger @Emma_J_Wells As a rule of thumb, most imagery reported as pagan isn't. The myth of pagan imagery on medieval churches is a c19th creation

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

I went to an Arthurian Studies conference hoping for some interesting keynotes, but it was nothing but round table discussions

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

5 months

Chancel culture

John McCafferty

@jdmccafferty

5 months

James II gets cancelled, Chichester cathedral

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

16 days

People sometimes ask me why I so often write books no-one will want to read; the truth is I write books for the world that I wish existed, where people are interested in the things I wish they found interesting. Some day, maybe that world will exist: and my books will be there

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

4 months

Caught in the blast radius of a papal blessing

Edoardo Fanfani

@EdoardoFanfani

4 months

Accidental papal blessing on the way home from mass.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

I understand that not everyone wants to know how the sausage of history is made, but the average shopper should at least understand that sausages of different quality are available.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 months

Up close and personal with Roman Britain’s worst mosaic at @LeedsMuseums

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

But a lot of people seem to think that history is just information about the past, and that all information on a given topic that can be found online is of equal status and value, and it’s infuriating

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

8 months

Reading about how, before killing a bear, Sámi hunters used to ritually chant that it was really being killed by Englishmen in order to deflect blame for the animal's death

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

I keep hearing more and more British people talking about Thanksgiving, and even implying we might be celebrating it. What are we celebrating, Hengist and Horsa surviving their first winter on Selsey Bill? Give me strength.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

6 years

It's a strange fact about the medieval English colonisers of Ireland that some of them never actually spoke English; some families arrived speaking Norman French in the c12/13th and transitioned straight into Irish as the dominant vernacular by the 14th century

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

5 years

People in the UK should be aware that it remains illegal to use magic to harm or kill political leaders, since the Treason Act 1351 remains in force and there is ample (albeit archaic) case law to show it covers magic. The law of treason in the USA, however, does not cover magic

Paul Cowdell

@PaulCowdell

5 years

@DrFrancisYoung I just shared a list of the titles I read last year. A friend came back to say he'd been slightly disappointed when he realised 'Magic as a Political Crime' wasn't a 'how to' guide ...

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

I'd like to urge everyone to vote for Monika Liu, as I've been moved by her tribute to Henry V (the English king who first established diplomatic relations with Lithuania) in this year of the 600th anniversary of his death #Eurovision

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 years

Thoughts from post-Roman Britain

Miles King

@MilesKing10

3 years

what on earth - it's only 440 and its already getting dark.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

Just received a scam email telling me I have an unread fax. Looking forward to the next one telling me an unread telegram awaits me, or a foot messenger standeth without full ready for mine answer

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

9 months

@HiddenYorkshire By Grapthar’s Hammer ……… what a savings

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 years

Like most right-minded people, I'm kind of obsessed with the 1973 Reader's Digest Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain - the ultimate classic of slightly dodgy 70s folklore studies. It's one of those books that deserves an entire book about it

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 years

But then the seemingly impossible happened. Lithuania made its stand for freedom, and was recognised by the UK in August 1991. In October Lithuanian diplomats arrived at Gloucester Place and a relieved Balickas - by now aged 87 - handed over the keys. His long service was done

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

Radical new historiography of 1492 just dropped

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

7 months

As the Vigil of St Edmund’s Day begins, I am now a Canon of @stedscath !

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

5 months

People quite rightly getting excited about this, but early indications are that the owner of the Villa of the Papyri specialised intensely in Epicurean philosophy; the sort of guy who collects every album of one band and every cover of that band, but nothing else

Nat Friedman

@natfriedman

5 months

Ten months ago, we launched the Vesuvius Challenge to solve the ancient problem of the Herculaneum Papyri, a library of scrolls that were flash-fried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Today we are overjoyed to announce that our crazy project has succeeded. After 2000

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 months

An Irish thing for Irish people to do Irish things with

Amanda Chadburn

@AmandaChadburn

2 months

What a gorgeous thing this is - whatever its use!! The British Museum label says: “Irish Disc. An artefact of unknown function and iconography unique to Ireland”. (More in alt text) 300BC-AD100 📸 own. #archaeology #celticart

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

8 months

If human ritual and religion is (at a very conservative estimate) around 40,000 years old and we imagine it as a single day, then the earliest written record of human religion is from 8.40pm. The vast majority of human religion is simply lost to us.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

4 years

Without getting into the ins and outs of the ‘Is Christmas pagan?’ debate, it’s worth dealing with some faulty assumptions people often make about the ‘Christianisation’ of pre-Christian traditions (buckle up for the thread…)

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

The folk horror theme of this Coronation intensifies

The Times & The Sunday Times

News and opinion from The Times & The Sunday Times

www.thetimes.com

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

And so it begins.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 months

That’s right: the resolution of complex theological questions in quodlibetal disputations by doctors of divinity

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

10 months

Yesterday I finally had the opportunity to visit an iconic site that’s intrigued me ever since I first saw a photo as a child in one of those ‘Mysteries of the Unexplained’ books: Knowlton, the church within a henge. But it’s a deeply misunderstood site (🧵)

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

When I was 17 I came across documents in an archive showing the composer John Wilbye was married. Every printed source and reference work I could find said he died unmarried. That early experience of being able to alter the historical record by archival research was absolute dope

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 years

So here we are - after 40 years I've finally visited every medieval cathedral in England after seeing @RochesterCathed !

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

5 months

I had these as a child, and they form a key part of my superhero origin story (my naff superpower is to walk into any English church and tell you roughly how old everything is within about 5 minutes)

Helen Day

@LBFlyawayhome

5 months

Two lesser known books today, both illustrated by Ronald Lampitt (1972)

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

3 months

@themaxburns @DanKaszeta This confirms my suspicion that AI is fake and AI-generated content is really just being written/designed very fast by low-paid people

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

4 months

Look, I know lots of Government ministers went to Oxford but a white paper on whether Cambridge should exist seems a bit much

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, perhaps the most extraordinary of all English folk rituals, takes place today - Wake Monday

BBC Archive

@BBCArchive

5 years

#OnThisDay 1948: "Completely lost in the mists of antiquity, are the origin and meaning of this strange old English dance." Newsreel was in Abbots Bromley, to watch the mystifying horn dance.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 years

I have great respect for the straightforwardness of the Icelandic approach to ghosts. Elsewhere in Europe it's vaguely unsettling apparitions, but in Iceland a gang of reanimated corpses break into your house and beat you to death

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

4 years

Don't want to alarm anyone unduly but I've been selected as a candidate for holy orders

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

10 months

Does this imply there are some seagulls this pub *does* have control over?

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

A blessed Green Man Day to all my fellow Green Man-debunkers!

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

2 months

The days when broad Suffolk required subtitles. I have - just once or twice - heard Suffolk accents even thicker than these, which I couldn’t actually understand at all

Tony Dowson

@TonyDowson5

2 months

Two East Anglians discussing their traditional trade - with some very difficult to comprehend English:

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

Oh my, this is actually real; the official Coronation invitation features a Green Man 😮

The Royal Family

@RoyalFamily

1 year

Alongside the photograph, the invitation for the Coronation and the details of the eight Pages of Honour that will attend Their Majesties at Westminster Abbey have also been revealed: 🔗

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

This looks like the bells are processing in with them, advancing down the nave like giant bronze Daleks

Peter

@Oreilly1Peter

1 year

The restored bells of Notre Dame , what a joy to see .

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

Unless a body is found, I for one will assume that like Arthur and Owain Glyndŵr, Long Boi is merely sleeping and will return at Britain's hour of need

Brian Groom

@GroomB

1 year

Long Boi: missing University of York duck presumed dead.

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

7 months

People don’t understand the amount of preparation that goes into perfecting the ‘scruffy professor’ look; I’ve been wearing this tweed jacket in for 25 years to get it this good

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

1 year

Prince Harry's book has put ghostwriting in the spotlight, and I just want any wealthy celebrities out there to know that if you'd like your memoirs to sound like academic expository writing and have lots of footnotes and extensive critical apparatus then I am available

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

27 days

A new pet hate: anachronistic use of the modern Canadian flag in D-Day maps and graphics

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Dr Francis Young

@DrFrancisYoung

7 months

Off to a 70s party. Naturally, I’m going as a 70s folklorist who will tell you everything was the Witch Cult or a degenerated fertility rite, and is currently writing a book for Batsford about sacrificial megaliths