Julia Gasper

Now out in paperback. The Life and Novels of Isabella St John: The Regency Revisited. Only £32.99. Biography of this fascinating and underrated #womanwriter who was among other things, the first #JaneAusten critic. @Fem_Scribblers @Autrices_Invisi cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-…

@BenGrahamUK @JohnSensible So true.

HS2 will go down as one of Britain’s biggest modern day failures. Costs spiralled. Timelines collapsed. Scope cut back. And after all that, it won’t even deliver what was originally promised. This isn’t just mismanagement, it’s a masterclass in how to waste taxpayer money at scale. Imagine what £100 billion could have done elsewhere.

@GardenBrocante Of course!

@Castafi0re Anemones

I’ve used the old glass rosebowl I picked up today… rosebowls aren’t just for roses! Good weekend here, I think I’ve worked quite hard and now only need to cook dinner before having a relaxing 🍷 or two!! Thanks for all the lovely comments! Have a good evening ☀️💐☀️

@PaintingsLondon @amwilson_opera So beautiful.

'Trafalgar Square from the National Gallery' by Alfred de Bréanski (1877-1957) (Private collection)

@MerryTookman @CultureExploreX Friar Laurence is a very interesting character. A very difficult part.

@Castafi0re @CultureExploreX Yes! If my current 9th graders can make/express deep and relevant insights about not just Romeo and Juliet but also Tybalt, Mercutio, Benvolio, Nurse, and Friar Laurence, you know it still has power.

You do not honor other cultures by weakening your own. You honor them by standing firmly in what is yours. Shakespeare is not a symbol of domination. He is one of the clearest expressions of what human language can reach at its highest level. His work survived because generation after generation, across cultures, found truth in it. What they are calling decolonising is diluting something rooted, tested, and refined over centuries. This is what happens when a civilization loses confidence in its own inheritance. The idea that Shakespeare being universal is harmful reveals something deeper. It suggests that greatness itself has become suspect. That if something endures across time and place, it must be explained away, not studied. That instinct erases standards. Tradition is not exclusion. It is memory. It is the record of what a civilization discovered was worth preserving. Once you start apologizing for that, you create a vacuum where nothing holds. A culture that cannot defend Shakespeare will not be able to defend anything else that made it.

@william_whyte Where is this?

Nancy Mitford

@visitnorthyork That could be mistaken at first glance for Greece!

Every now and then we should stop and appreciate the beauty that surrounds us 💙

@Togetherdec 👍

"Council that used LTNs as ‘cash cow’ to refund millions in fines" "Judge ruled that primary motivation of Croydon’s traffic-calming schemes was to generate money" telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/2…

@robjlloyd @_FrancesOwen Yeah, but the late hours wouldnt suit me.

I'm always interested in another author's process.

@_FrancesOwen @SueCooperBridge @17thCenturyLady The incredible lives of the Cavaliers.

@17thCenturyLady Prince Rupert, Privateer of the Caribbean: Rupert's Royalist fleet reached the West Indies in 1652 in search of prizes to finance Charles II's cause. In September a hurricane struck. His flagship survived. But Prince Maurice drowned and Rupert, ill with fever, returned to Europe

Hear ye! 'Tis time for Stuart Saturday! On 22 March 1668, Henry Morgan, a Welsh privateer, landed in Cuba to attack and plunder the inland town of Puerto del Príncipe during the Anglo-Spanish War (1654–1660). Our theme is: 💣🏴‍☠️🦜Privateers, pirates, and war ⚓️⚔️🔥🌊 Images: Henry Morgan from Piratas de la America (1681) by Alexandre Exquemelin and Puerto del Príncipe (Camagüey) - being sacked in 1668 by Henry Morgan - Project Gutenberg.

@monty772011 @Baroness_Nichol So beautiful!

St James’s Park, London, this morning. #StJamessPark #RoyalParks #London #Spring

@paulinepark Yes it was really unbearably poignant.

#TristanUndIsolde will be broadcast live from the Met at 12 noon EDT with Michael Spyres (Tristan), Lise Davidsen (Isolde) & Ekaterina Gubanova (Brangäne), Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting #RichardWagner's revolutionary #opera: wqxr.org/story/wagners-…

@rbripley @classicalcal Yes it was unbearably poignant.

It's been a hundred years since I saw Wagner's Tristan & Isolde. But this Metropolitan Opera's production of the opera is GLORIOUS. And big kudos to Classical California's Debra Lew Harder for her commentary. @classicalcal

@ThaisSher @BBCRadio3blog @BBCRadio3 Perfect.

@BBCRadio3blog @BBCRadio3 Puccini last week ....this week, another great Opera, 'Tristan und Isolde' ... listening to !- 👍🎵

@oldlondonnow @YaleBritishArt One of my favourite artists now.

Lambeth Palace in the moonlight #London 1858. Henry Pether ⁦@YaleBritishArt⁩

@Baerenreiter @Baroness_Nichol Many happy returns.

Happy 341st Birthday, Johann Sebastian Bach

@SamaHoole Evolved for the terrain.

The Highland cow is not a decorative species. The fringe is extraordinary, the calves look like something a child would ask for at Christmas, and yes, the Instagram presence is formidable. But this animal also winters outside on Scottish upland: unhoused, unexcitable, completely unbothered, in conditions that would end most livestock operations by November. The double coat is not aesthetic. The dense inner layer and long rain-shedding outer layer maintain core temperature in horizontal Scottish rain at 400 metres. The Highland forages through snow, pushes through gorse, and grazes steep heathy tussocky terrain no sheep touches in the same way. Its foraging creates heterogeneity: the mosaic of grazed patches, lightly browsed areas, and disturbed scrub margins that supports more species than uniform vegetation ever manages. The Highland was managing this landscape before the habitat management plan existed and will be managing it after the current round of reports is filed. The fringe keeps the rain off its eyes. At 400 metres in Scotland, that is a practical engineering solution rather than a stylistic choice.

@sturgios To think that most of England's churches once had murals like this.

Just speculatively pushed at the door of the church in our village. Not only was it unexpectedly open- but it has one of the best medieval murals I have ever seen. St Christopher, 13th century, St Mary Magdalene, Ditcheat, Somerset. Only discovered during restoration in 1932.

@sturgios That is wonderful. How fortunate that it survived.

@ProudofusUK @Baroness_Nichol Thank you James Dewar.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧 There is something in most kitchens around the world. 🫖 You have probably used one today. A Scottish scientist invented it in London in 1892. And almost nobody knows who he was. His name was James Dewar. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Born in Kincardine, Scotland. 1842. Chemist. Physicist. One of the finest scientific minds Britain had ever produced. 🏅 Nominated for the Nobel Prize eight times. ❌ Never won. In 1892 he was trying to store liquid hydrogen. Not make a flask for your tea. ☕ He built a vessel with two glass walls and pumped the air out of the gap between them. A vacuum. No air. No heat transfer. ❄️ It worked perfectly. ✅ He didn't patent it. He just didn't. He was a scientist. Not a businessman. The science was enough. A German glassblower named Reinhold Burger had been watching. 👀 He took the design. Made it sturdier. Patented it. Named it Thermos. In 1904 it went on sale. It made a fortune. 💰 Dewar sued. ⚖️ The court agreed he was the inventor. But because he hadn't patented it there was nothing they could do. He got nothing. The word Thermos eventually became so common it lost its trademark entirely. Just a word now. For something a Scottish scientist invented in a London laboratory. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧 Every flask you've ever owned. Every cup of tea kept warm on a cold morning. ☕ Every building site. Every school trip. Every football pitch. ⚽ James Dewar. Did they teach you his name? 🇬🇧 These islands have thousands of stories the world has forgotten. We find them. We tell them. We put them in front of millions. You help us make that possible. Be Part Of Us. 👉 proudofus.co.uk/support Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧