@HackBlackburn Tom Licence is a serious historian (his biography of Edward the Confessor is excellent). So, looking forward to his research.
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Tom Watson
6.7K posts
Tom Watson
@Watson950
Historian, Emeritus Professor, Waratahs, Blue Jays, Winchester Cathedral
Winchester Katılım Aralık 2010
365 Takip Edilen869 Takipçiler
BIG history news this morning
Harold Godwinson’s famous march where he sped from Stamford Bridge to Hastings in four days is a tale as old as time
But now it looks as though the march never happened
thetimes.com/article/a4b978…
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Tom Watson retweetledi
Just 4 days until my lecture and Q&A with @PStiffell for @TudorsDynasty! 🎉
Join us this Sunday at 2pm UK time (10am Eastern) for our 30-minute lectures and Q&A afterwards, all about Mary I and the precedent she set for Elizabeth I 👑
drjohannastrong.ca/2026/03/08/que…
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@axios That’s not an “exclusive”, it’s an advertorial. Not news, either
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Exclusive: Taco Bell adds new chicken items amid growing fast-food battle trib.al/Avk819u
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@george_w18 The current (10th) Lord Nelson was a policeman. Sleuthing trio?
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Definitely space for a weekly BBC show where Earl Attlee and Lord Soames (Churchill’s grandson) go undercover investigating various frauds and oddities.
George@george_w18
Clement Attlee’s grandson who looks just like him going undercover to investigate fraudulent lorry deliveries What a wonderful political side plot
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Maybe crush them with iron, as we did Blessed Margaret Clitheroe.
Christopher Hale@ChristopherHale
NEW: Pete Hegseth's pastor and mentor says the United States should ban public Masses, Marian processions, and Corpus Christi devotions. Hegseth invited the anti-Catholic preacher to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon on February 14. thelettersfromleo.com/p/pete-hegseth…
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Who was the 'pre-eminent' man remembered by the statue in @WinCathedral? It’s Sir John Clobery, one of General Monck’s agents in 1660. @Cromwellorg
hampshirechronicle.co.uk/news/25893358.…
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Tom Watson retweetledi
I'm delighted to announce that I'm joining @TudorsDynasty and @PStiffell for a lecture event on "Queenship Before Elizabeth: How Mary I shaped the Foundations of Elizabeth I's reign"! 👑
Further information and tickets are available here: drjohannastrong.ca/2026/03/08/que…
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@MrJohnWemmick Charlotte Yonge outsold Dickens in mid C19th Britain with incredibly prolific output of moral tales. But who reads her now?
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Related to this, I was recently looking up the best-selling books of the 19th century.
80% of them are books/authors that even the most knowledgeable 2026 reading enthusiast has never heard of.
There is a whole world out there, waiting for rediscovery.
T. Greer@Scholars_Stage
This is a very good thought experiment. Who are the five authors that most 20th c writers have read but most 21st c writers have not? What about 19th c writers?
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As Small Island returns to the stage. I've written about how Andrea Levy's saga mirrors some of my own family history.
thetimes.com/article/9b8856…
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@datsunland I was on The Australian in 1973 when White won Nobel and first journo to knock on his front door in Centennial Park. Upper window opened and a voice loudly responded with "Why don't you 'eff off' and come back in the morning?" And that was it.
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@RAGriggsauthor @KPW1453 Much of the early medieval tiled floor in the retroquire is now cordoned from visitors’ shoes while @WinCathedral decides what to do: conserve, close off or allow tiles to be walked over as was their purpose. Seriously difficult questions when the tiles are from C13th.
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Medieval floor tiles at Winchester Cathedral — vast pavements of tiles with many different designs.
📷 from a visit on 2022
#TilesOnTuesday #medieval
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@hantschronicle It’s the awful buskers, not beggars, that deter people from the High Street. Loud and usually talentless.
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People too scared by beggars to come into city centre, meeting hears ift.tt/VqzT4Cg
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@gilescoren Great post in The Times, Giles. What you wrote needed to be said out loud.
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If Nando’s, KFC, Wagamama and Popeyes are going to go back on their (piddling) chicken welfare undertakings because it’s making a teeny dent in their massive profits, they might as well use slaves to save on wages. Fat lazy punters still wouldn’t boycott.
thetimes.com/article/bfdd55…
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Tom Watson retweetledi
Interesting anecdote in the Mail today from AN Wilson. 20 years ago the brother of the editor of the newspaper he worked for became a foreign ambassador. Then the late Queen and Prince Philip came to visit…
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@JohnRentoul Agree! Shout it from the rooftops on FOI and the lawyer-benefit "public inquiries". No more, please
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The “humble address” had not been used since 1866 when Keir Starmer revived it in 2017
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It’s time parliament put away the humble address for another 151 years independent.co.uk/voices/humble-…
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Just finished Anna Reid’s excellent ‘A Nasty Little War’ (2023) about the Allies intervention in the Russian Revolution 1918-20. Essential background to current war in Ukraine 🇺🇦. Deeply researched and very readable.
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#Cat joke in today’s Times: Dog and cat are at the Pearly Gate: God asked the dog, "Why should you enter Heaven?" Dog said, "I loved and obeyed my master, served him well." "Yes, you may enter." He asked the cat the same question. It responded, "you're sitting in my chair."
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@NicholasOShaug1 Are you sure about the Bedford man being sentenced in 1860 for transportation to Australia? Most histories say transportation there ended in 1839. Would be an interesting exception to explore.
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Terrible. But England was the same. Around 1860 a Bedford man was sentenced to transportation to Australia for hunting hares. There is a photograph of him, as the gaol governor recorded convict images. He looked like Errol Flynn.
BUCHANAN: Dublin Time Machine@RobLooseCannon
Poaching in Ireland during the British occupation wasnt just about illegal hunting or fishing. It was about using hunger as a tool of colonial power. Now long before the Great Famine, the Irish countryside was already a contested landscape. Our rivers were teeming with salmon, and our luscious forrests and hedgerows were alive with hares and birds. But the poorest inhabitants, disenfranchised from their ancestral lands were legally barred from touching any of it. Under British rule, Ireland’s land was dominated by the Anglo-Irish landlord class, whose property rights extended far beyond soil. They "owned" the rivers and lakes and land on their estates and all the livestock, game and fish contained their. Freshwater fishing rights for salmon, trout, and eels were strictly private. Game laws reserved hares, pheasants, grouse, and deer for landlord sport. What had once been shared resources, governed by custom and necessity, were now enclosed by statute even amid the cycles of famines. The Night Poaching Act of 1828 was particularly feared. It made it a serious offence to hunt or fish after dark, precisely the time when the poor could act unseen. To be caught at night, armed, or in the company of three others transformed hunger into a criminal conspiracy. Punishments ranged from imprisonment with hard labour to transportation for seven years. A rabbit taken to feed a family could end with exile to Australia. Informers were despised, yet they were often forced in to it to save their own skins after being caught by the feared gamekeepers. Magistrates were heartless and distrusted. The civil law was really just an extension of landlord power, designed to protect sport for aristcrats rather than starvation. An Gorta Mór, the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849 shattered whatever fragile balance had existed between breaking poaching laws and desperation. When the potato failed, the grain, cattle, butter, and bacon continued to leave Irish ports in vast quantities, bound for Britain. When gobshites ask why people didnt "just fish" when the rivers still ran thick with salmon and the lakes teemed with trout and eels. Well fishing meant trespass on landlord property. Being caught meant being shot, prison or transportation or eviction. During the Famine eviction was effectively a death sentence for whole family. And dont forget that man jailed for stealing food could miss a relief distribution. A family evicted for poaching could be dead within weeks. So wild game like rabbits or hares or birds, anything that could be trapped or shot became food. The ecological impact of famine poaching was real. The desperate hunting of birds and animals during these years is believed to have contributed to the decline of native species such as the Irish Grey Partridge. Nature itself became another casualty of starvation and law. Contemporary accounts are full of people eating hedgehogs, crows, and rats. Even frying worms for protein. Turnip stealing from fields became widespread, another small crime punished harshly under the law. Please support the Dublin Time Machine Book ko-fi.com/buchanandublin…
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@SciFiArchives @JohnRentoul It’s a terrifying prospect. Who would want to buy a book there? Anti-retail.
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The interior of the Zhongshuge Bookstore in Shenzhen is pure architectural sci fi.
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Tom Watson retweetledi
