Professor Emerita, University of Reading; Director: https://xitter.cf/t.co/vw0kVSQMPT; Shakespeare, drama, manuscripts expert.🇺🇸 Rep: @doujohyou @pew_literary

London, England
Joined May 2010
A young 18th-century student practiced penmanship by copying out names in an indenture (now @UkNatArchives) on the verso. The student eventually wrote, “Blockhead” a few times and finally wrote, “I am a Blockhead” in a neat, calligraphic hand!
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Poet Dylan Thomas was born #onthisday in 1914. Famous for his poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Thomas’ memorial lies in Poets’ Corner between the memorials to Lord Byron and George Eliot. The inscription includes a quote from his poem Fern Hill: ‘Time held me green and dying, Though I sang in my chains like the sea.’
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Frida Kahlo ( left) age 17, wearing a suit in a family portrait, 1924 #WomensArt
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Frida Kahlo in a dress in a photographic portrait, 1941 #WomensArt (image N. Muray)
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Christopher Robin and Pooh and Piglet picked themselves up first, and then they picked Tigger up, and underneath everybody else was Eeyore. “Oh, Eeyore!” cried Christopher Robin. “Are you hurt?” And he felt him anxiously, dusted him and helped him to stand up again. ~A.A.Milne
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MAGAZINE MONDAY | Technology lets us hear Amelia Earhart’s voice on a tiny recording, played for the first time. Read about it in the current issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. ⬇️ lcm.loc.gov/issue/september-…
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Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the original “Star Trek” series and seven “Star Trek” feature films, has died at 90. variety.com/2026/film/news/w…
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Sunrise at Stonehenge today (26th October) was at 6.45am, sunset is at 4.52pm 🌧 – at Compton Chamberlayne, England
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A misty start this morning at Avebury Stone Circle, Wiltshire, England, UK. 📸 Graham Summers
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This copy of Magna Carta in the Abbey's Library collection was made in 1300 and is one of just six known to have survived from this date. The charter was sealed by King John in 1215 and established the universal right to justice and a fair trial. #ManuscriptMonday
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Poet Geoffrey Chaucer died #onthisday in 1400. For almost 80 years, Chaucer, 'the father of English poetry', was commemorated with a stained-glass window in the Abbey. It illustrated scenes from The Canterbury Tales and was installed in 1868 above his tomb in Poets’ Corner. The window was destroyed during the Blitz, and no fragments of the original glass survived. The Abbey’s collection does though hold a cartoon of one of the panels which gives a sense of how the window, designed by JG Waller, would have appeared: a procession of elegantly drawn scenes from the Tales, the medieval characters depicted with the detail and idealism characteristic of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Chaucer lived beside the Abbey for the final year of his life and was the first notable writer to be buried in what would come to be known as Poets’ Corner. The window was, for some decades, a further testament to his stature in the history of literature. Even though the window is no more, the undimmed popularity of his work speaks to the enduring attraction of pilgrimage.
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Happy St Crispin’s Day. “This day is called the feast of Crispian: He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian.” (#Shakespeare, Henry V)
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Today in 1415, an English army led by Henry V defeats a much larger French force near Calais at Azincourt (or Agincourt). A play by Shakespeare will later immortalize the battle: "Gentlemen in England shall think themselves accursed they were not here."
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An oldie but a goodie. In 1968 a bunch of entitled hippy bastards sent a letter detailing their specious demands to the Warden and Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford. This was their letter of reply, which speaks to how far the academy has since fallen.
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Lorna Sharkey, contemporary artist, known for her hand painted stained glass artworks #Womensart
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Brittany, France early 20thc, women making 'picot bigouden' a form of intricate and complex crochet linking to Irish crochet #WomensArt
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Pooh wandered into the Hundred Acre Wood, and was standing in front of what had once been Owl’s House. It didn’t look like a house now; it looked like a tree which had been blown down; and as soon as a house looks like that, it is time to find another one. ~A.A.Milne #StormBoelo
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'The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team begins his golden progress in the east' - Henry IV, Part I (III, 1) #ShakespeareSunday #Nighttime
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“I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night” - US poet Sylvia Plath Sleeping lace figure by Hungarian artist Agnes Herczeg #womensart
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The angel ceiling over the chancel of All Saints North Street, York. The ceiling with its carved angels dates to 1470 and was colourfully repainted in the 1970s
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