This is interesting, particularly in the context of the recent flurry of studies of Virago Press, Lucy Delap, Feminist Business Praxis and Spare Rib Magazine, in what I see is a themed journal issue on feminist publishing, which appears to be Open Access, right-on, sisters! and also to included work on some of the UK feminist publishers that weren' ( Read more... )

Review of book on abortion in early modern Italy: When Abortion Was a Necessary Sin: The history of abortion in Catholic Italy as described by Christopoulos was largely familiar from what I already knew about Protestant England, Germany, and the United States. These western contexts, which share a larger history of medical practice and Christian ( Read more... )

Will the 'culture warriors' start woezering about the National Trust (you know, that evil 'woke' institution the National Trust) doing this? Bat on a non-slip roof: National Trust adapts manor for nocturnal residents: Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk gives tiles a special coating to stop bats slipping off as part of £6m roofing project: The trust on ( Read more... )

UK libraries and museums unite to save ‘astonishing’ lost library from private buyers - wouldn't it be nice, though, if the people who can afford to buy up this sort of thing would do so to give them to publicly available collections?
And, talking of fun things found in public collections, this is an amazing Twitter thread about an astonishing find ( Read more... )

'Why are there no women great artists?' - okay, we know, do we not, my dearios, that there are great women artists? - but there might be more. One of the reasons why there are not as many as there might be could be that they felt they had Other Priorities (not necessarily Being A Muse). I was already apprised of the not necessarily softer side of ( Read more... )

This is really one for the annals of ill-advised presents from husbands to wives - had she ever, ever declared, 'Darling! the deepest desire of my heart is a prehistoric henge'? The Man Who Bought Stonehenge For His Wife: It was then gifted to the public because she didn’t like it. She had even asked him to buy the set of dining chairs that was in ( Read more... )

This was last week's, but I spent so much time mulling over the questions that I've only just got round to essaying answers.
1) What is the oldest thing you own?
Can I count the piece of amber in a pendant with fossil water in it? If not (and I honestly haven't gone checking my bookshelves for ancient editions of things), probably a carved wooden ( Read more... )

If I could ban any phrase, it would be that overused, viscerally irritating, and far-from-innocent term, the Guilty Pleasure. No one should feel guilty about what they eat, or the pleasure they get from eating; the only thing to feel guilty about (and even then I don’t recommend it) is the failure to be grateful for that pleasure.
Go, Nigella: 'it ( Read more... )

Six Ground-Breaking Women Archaeologists (who dug on English Heritage sites, or sites now in the care of English Heritage).
Lesbians and the law: the Wolfenden Report and same-sex desire between women - we look forward to Derry's book on lesbians and the law in England and Wales (with hopes that Palgrave Macmillan will have another prices-slashed ( Read more... )

(Wednesday has once again been deferred.)
Today to the annual symposium of A Learned Body with which I am associated on New Light on Ancient Britons, deploying a variety of disciplinary/interdisciplinary approaches including DNA analysis.
But in the very first paper there was a thing about which I was going Wow! Amazing! That is So Cool! ( Read more... )