Godwin_lives

At The Scottish Border. 5°C and blue skies. Deer

At The Scottish Border. 5°C and blue skies. Deer.

A lot of folks seem extremely eager to outsource the work of being human, and I just have to ask: What are they all doing instead? What is more important than doing the work of being human?

Me too - despair, I mean, not appreciation. (Classic FM now superior to R3 in some respects.)

EMCO Internship Programme A digital edition of the complete letters of Elizabeth Montagu 1718-1800 - ISSN 2753-9091

Elizabeth Montagu's Correspondence Online project @montaguletters.bsky.social has announced their next round of paid internships, focusing letters from Montagu to Classicist and poet Elizabeth Carter - emco.swansea.ac.uk/project/inte...

@bsecs.bsky.social @bars.bsky.social @oxford18thc.bsky.social

A bright blue flower in grass, against a blurred green background.

A pretty Common field speedwell, West Cambridge. #WildflowerHour

#wildflowerhour. The daffodils in the garden have shown themselves to celebrate St Davids day this year.

Y cenin Pedr yn yr ardd yn dangos eu hunain er mwyn dathlu dydd ein nawddsant eleni .Dydd Gwŷl Dewi hapus iawn i bawb.

View down a spring border with white plum blossom on right, lots of small yellow narcissi in the middle, yew hedge, gravel path down the left. In middle distance talk ornamental grasses left standing over winter, and bronze dry leaves on hazel hedge.

Some things to be happy about today, cont.

Very pleased to find these in the post this morning. Now available as a physical object!

Drop in overseas workers is ‘car crash’ for UK hospitals and care homes, say experts Care roles hit particularly hard by UK’s lurch to the right on migration, according to analysis of Home Office data

From the department of "No Shit, Sherlock"

www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Fight the power – in your pyjamas: the film about the day Glasgow kicked out immigration enforcers A neighbour in nightwear, a local imam, a schoolkid, the activist known as Van Man – they and many more stood firm. The director of a prize-winning film about the battle of Kenmure Street reveals how ...

“People need to hear a story like this now,” says Pinar Aksu … “We don’t always have a victory at the end of our stories, but hope is all we’ve got.”

The award-winning EVERYBODY TO KENMURE STREET premieres at the Glasgow film festival, 25 February
www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

Congratulations to wonderful colleague @claireconnolly.bsky.social on her new book, Irish Romanticism: A Literary History, launched this evening by @jfcryan.bsky.social, VP for Research & Innovation @ucc.ie, and Prof. Clair Wills, King Edward VII Prof. of English Literature at Cambridge.

Promising signs of Spring out there this morning - snowdrops and daffodils out, birds singing, woodpecker drumming away and geese flying north. Wonderful!

#OTD 14 Feb. 1793: philosophical anarchist William Godwin published his celebrated love letter to the world, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, in which he envisaged a society based on justice, equality, tolerance, benevolence, & mutual moral accountability. #Valentine’sDay #LoveThyNeighbour

#OTD 14 Feb. 1793: philosophical anarchist William Godwin published his celebrated love letter to the world, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, in which he envisaged a society based on justice, equality, tolerance, benevolence, & mutual moral accountability. #Valentine’sDay #LoveThyNeighbour

Cathedral of St Mary, Newcastle Industrial Heritage 2006 Joseph A Nuttgens Ship building - the vessel towering over the worker’s terraced housing as they leave work.

Cathedral of St Mary, Newcastle

Industrial Heritage 2006
Joseph A Nuttgens

Ship building - the vessel towering over the worker’s terraced housing as they leave work.

#StainedGlassSunday

'Pilot Boat, Moelfre, Anglesey.' (c1970) Writing about why he started to paint, Kyffin Williams said it was record the land, the people and natural history. I never intended to produce works of art but if this did happen by chance, it was all to the good.'

We are all the Clarion Occasionally we are asked “Who is behind the Oxford Clarion?” At our core is a small writing team who work for free – we have no funding from anyone. Among them are people with backgrounds in journal...

Hello to all our lovely new followers! Many of you, mysteriously, seem to be in America. You all okay there?! (We read the news)

This is us, if you want to know more. Greetings, from Oxford, UK.

oxfordclarion.uk/we-are-all-t...

Bitter easterly, uniform grey sky

3rd February 2026 08.16

“Not your typical social issue film, this documentary utilizes a touch of humor & a wide diversity of perspectives to call upon people to stand up for their neighbors”

EVERYBODY TO KENMURE STREET wins the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Civil Resistance at the Sundance Film Festival

Robert Burns (1759-1796) / © National Portrait Gallery, London

On this day (267 years ago), date of birth of Robert Burns (1759-1796).

Poems appear in the #EighteenthCenturyPoetryArchive:
https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/authors/pers00307.shtml

#c18th #poetry #DH #18thCentury #OnThisDay #OTD

I guess so. Burns rewrote many of the 'traditional' airs he collected, as did other collectors of Jacobite song – unless he wrote it himself, as some later collectors did.

'Jamie' was Prince James Edward Stuart (1688-1766), the King over the Water, son of the deposed James VII of Scotland & II of England, & leader of the short-lived 1715 Jacobite rising. His son, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, led the last Jacobite rising of 1745, which ended in defeat at Culloden. 2/2

'There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame', by Robert Burns (b. 25 Jan. 1759), based on what he described as 'a beautiful Jacobite Air', was sent by him to the Edinburgh lawyer Alexander Cunningham on 11 March 1791, & published, set to music, in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (1792). 1/2

Robert Burns in Edinburgh: peers, patrons, and politics In the wake of Burns Night, it is worth considering how the patronage of a small number of Scottish nobles helped Robert Burns become established as the

Tonight is Burns' Night, an annual celebration of the Scottish poet Robert (Rabbie) Burns.

Dr Charles Littleton explores how his rise to become Scotland's national bard was partly helped by the patronage of a few Scottish nobles.

The New National Health Service Your new National Health Service begins on 5th July. What is it? How do you get it? “It will provide you with all medical, dental and nursing care. Everyone-rich or poor, man, woman or child – can use it or any part of it. There are no charges, except for a few special items. There are no insurance qualifications. But it is not a “charity”. You are all paying for it, mainly as taxpayers, and it will relieve your money worries in time of illness.”

One of the most beautiful documents ever created: the leaflet that everyone received when Britain's NHS was launched (1948)

"Everyone—rich or poor, man, woman or child—can use it... There are no charges, except for a few special items...it will relieve your money worries in time of illness”

The lesson of history is that tyrants cannot be appeased.

Appeasement only feeds their insatiable hunger for power.

Tyrants prey on people who feel unsafe and vulnerable.

But without mass submission, a tyrant is powerless.

Remember this.

Second proof just landed, worryingly entitled 'OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF'. #thelongestjourney

global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Absolutely! Argued this in my now ancient Broadview edn. of Memoirs, co-edited with Gina Walker, so I'm unpopular too. It has always been easier to demonize Godwin than understand him. Very touching letter where he admits to an error judgement in terms of timing.