I recently met a well-known actor at a party, and we talked, as one often does with successful actors, about his work. Eventually he asked me what I did, so I told him. “Journalist, eh? I’ve always thought I’d be rather good at that,” he replied. And maybe he would be because, let’s be honest, the kind of journalism I do is not brain surgery. But ( Read more... )

Some things just keep on giving.

Who, in an interview which is supposed to be about the books on their bookshelves

- which, you know, one would take to be about the books one is reading/has read/intends some day to read -

starts showing off the multilingual translations of their own books?

Okay, I have a brag shelf - actually, I have two, one at ( Read more... )

And not getting my rant about that gosh-gee article about the C18th 'Sexual Revolution' in the Guardian today, because if I started, I might never stop.

Or I could just list 30 years of historians who have written about sexuality in the UK/Europe at that period; it is not exactly unexplored territory incognita.

But on the whole, I am classifying it ( Read more... )

Yes, it's the detailed deconstruction of the Freeman-Mead controversy, which I always feel Freeman basically cheated on in the first place by only starting it once Margaret Mead was safely dead. This book does nothing to change my feelings that Freeman's case was always a bit dodgy (different informants, different periods, different genders, and ( Read more... )

Is 'not examining your assumptions/preconceptions' something they get taught in journalism school?

'The problem was, in those days, there was no way to make a definitive diagnosis, and even if there were you couldn't do anything about it.' (Article talking about House/Holmes)

I.e., the period being the 1890s and the character in question actually ( Read more... )

Hey folks! It's Germaine's annual deviation into sense! She takes something like a dugong to thwap Stephen Bayley's loathsome production, an expensive coffee table book called Woman as Design:
Women are no likelier than any other animal to have been designed, but Bayley insists. "The female body is a masterpiece of design: an eternal natural ( Read more... )

In spite of the ongoing post-conference sleep deficit, managed two relatively productive days at work AND have almost completed 2 other things I was supposed to get done for an end-of-July deadline. One of which involves me faking close acquaintance with Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process.

Find that An Event in my future involves me being on ( Read more... )

Spotted in the wild today, Virago reissue of Stella Gibbons' delightful Nightingale Wood. Unlike Cold Comfort Farm, but charming nonetheless. (The intro by Sophie Dahl looked extremely slight, however.)

[T]his enchanting selection of writing from books by seven Victorian female horticulturists will both nourish your soul and tell you what to do ( Read more... )

I feel that only the Provincial Lady could have done justice to my encounter this evening.

I went to a seminar at the Ministry of Truth (I will pass over the various tribulations which led to me arriving 10 minutes late by which time the room was crowded to the doors and there were no chairs left), which was excellent, and I think I can say I took ( Read more... )

Thinking about anonymity, internet personas, social capital, different spaces etc (following furore on whether people who use pseudonyms online as opposed to real names or own initials are sneaky cowards).

I have an online presence (via listservs, website, etc) in what is essentially my historian/archivist capacity, with some divagation into the ( Read more... )