Meant to flag this up before for anyone who's interested: Chuck Upchurch, A Masterclass: Queer History: When did the popular ‘GAY’ LGBT+/Human Rights Campaign really start?
How about the ‘Gay’ Reform Movement of the 1830’s!?
Pioneering research by US Historian Charles Upchurch, whose specialist area is the first half of the 19th century, has ( Read more... )

Is there a lurking subtext here that they do not want the Cats Protection League to be associated with the concept of Crazy Cat Ladies, or perhaps, to be less gendered, Pathological Pet Hoarders?
Cat charity CEO quits over colleague keeping 18 cats in house: Charles Darley claims chair of trustees is not adhering to standards charity expects of ( Read more... )

This comes top because, wow, triumph of commonsense, how is it that this can be? National Trust report on slavery links did not break charity law, regulator says. The National Trust did not breach charity law by publishing a report that found itself at the centre of a “culture war” after it made links between its country house properties and the UK ( Read more... )

In the midst of everything, this is lovely: Turkey embarks on cultural mission to preserve its fairytales: Mammoth task to collate magical folklore of Anatolian plateau involves thousands of stories: '“In folk tales, the heroes are mostly outsiders who suffer the violence of powerful autocrats; for politicians, their defiant tone is dangerous.”'
** ( Read more... )

Should probably say that my part of London is pretty distant from Parson's Green.
***
Dept of Fortuity: when you see news of a book that you would be really interested in reading, at eye-watering academic press prices, even for the ebook: and in a day or so having a request from the very same press to referee a book proposal for them, in return for ( Read more... )

And I was already out of charity with charity shops after the preceding one I'd been in had completely run out of change and kept me hanging around while, I suspect, they nipped next door to see if anyone could change a tenner.
And then I went into another one and found two books I was prepared to take a punt on at that sort of price, and moseyed ( Read more... )

I was in one of the charity shops while doing my shopping, and waiting to pay for a copy of Helen Rappaport's book Beautiful For Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street - Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer, which has been on my 'vaguely interested' list for some while,
And in front of me at the till was a chap with a pair of boots, which seemed to ( Read more... )

I got you all some Good Gifts: hope you like them:
Puffin Aid
Goats for Peace
Ducks for women
Feed an abandoned cat or dog
Meadow of flowers
Winter warmth kit
Clear 10m of minefield
Save dolphins
A year's schooling
Malaria net
Warm clothes for an Afghan orphan
Support an Afghan girl
Medical sniffer rat
Nice new pyjamas and a teddy
2 pairs of socks
( Read more... )

Felling a bit blah at the moment, so have put myself into
( Read more... )

At home pottering and doing various life admin tasks.

Slept in. Mmmmm, sleeeeeep.

Chugged on my own doorstep by someone soliciting for Doubtless Worthy Charity that I do not appreciate being doorstepped by.

Not the expression they're looking for, I think: email in work inbox re current IT problem, saying that it is still not fixed but there is a ( Read more... )