Of all the stone birds and animals I have seen this week, I think this handsome and sacred baboon is my favourite.
14.12.2025 16:42
👍 70
🔁 9
💬 0
📌 1
Of all the stone birds and animals I have seen this week, I think this handsome and sacred baboon is my favourite.
So glad you enjoyed it!
Just spent a fascinating hour listening to @dustshoveller.bsky.social describe the events of the day Parliament burned down in 1834.
Tough choice this one. Roman road made of oreos or the little animals peering out atop the summit of Mount Ararat?
Vase of flowers, red bottle bag, variety of small gifts on a table
Bag of scones, plate of brownies, jam, clotted cream and butter on a table
Today is my last day working in the Parliamentary Archives after nearly 25 years! I am v grateful to colleagues for many cards and gifts. I have a shiny new website to support next phase of life www.maritakayanagi.com
Very pleased to encounter this very handsome fellow enjoying summer Cambridge.
Charles Barry, architect of the new Houses of Parliament, was born #OnThisDay 1795, a stone’s throne from the old Palace of Westminster. This guest post from @dustshoveller.bsky.social looks at his background and knowledge of Westminster: historyofparliament.com/2025/05/12/c...
Image of Ethel Smyth smiling
Image of Ethel Smyth's Mass in D manuscript
Major news from our Special Collections and Archives! 📢
Our Head of Music, Prof Lisa Colton @lisacolton.bsky.social, identified that we hold the manuscript of Dame Ethel Smyth's Mass in D, which scholars thought was lost. It is now fully available on the Digital Heritage Lab: tinyurl.com/47ce8hkd
And another one @dustshoveller.bsky.social , in the display associated with their excellent London in the Second World War exhibition @thelondonarchives.bsky.social
National Treasures by @dustshoveller.bsky.social featured in my local library’s VE display!
Just in case you’re at a loose end, my book National Treasures explains how #London protected its national art, museums and archives in WWII, mostly returned to the capital from their hiding places by 1945 #VEDay80 #VEDay2025
The Devil Casts his Net: The Winter Hill Air Disaster. Steve Morrin, 2005
National Treasures: Saving The Nation’s Art in World War II. Caroline Shenton, John Murray 2021.
Ok #photofriday #histbookchat. @dustshoveller.bsky.social is the fascinating account of how we protected our art treasures from destruction. Morrin’s book is an account of the crash of a Silver City Wayfarer in 1958. Good books.
JMW Turner’s 1835 painting of the burning of the Houses of Parliament in 1835, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On the left, the old House of Commons goes up in flames, as a crowd gathers to watch on Westminster Bridge on the right.
Happy 250th birthday to J M W Turner. Such a titan of British art, I had to give him his own chapter to end my book (focussing on his paintings of the burning of Parliament in 1834). One critic called him ‘the Fire King’, as an insult - but Turner had the last laugh!
Yay! #VEday80
Devoured this, by the great @dustshoveller.bsky.social over two sittings in the last week. I would highly recommend 🤓
#History #Heritage #Books
How kind! ; )
With perfect timing for the paperback publication of #NecessaryWomen today, why not read this splendid new review by @dustshoveller.bsky.social - herself a great Necessary Woman of Parliament previously of course! londonhistorians.wordpress.com/2025/02/06/a...
Starts at 23:00 mins in
ICYMI, here I am on @bbcradio4.bsky.social talking about the St Stephen’s Chapel Westminster project and the new book which came out of it a month or two back www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Fascinating - part of the archive of the great medieval historian Eileen Power (1889-1940). This box is material relating to her ground-breaking book Medieval People (1924). Was delighted to attend the once-a-decade Power Feast @girtoncollege.bsky.social with @dustshoveller.bsky.social a while ago.
So glad you enjoyed, Will!
“Caroline is a very bossy little girl”. I was 5. Plus ça change…
Maybe more a bit disappointed than grumpy but a lovely piece
A pan with the heated smoking bishop—deep red like mulled wine and slices of bergamot
Two glasses of the Bishop.
The cold snap justifies opening a bottle of Smoking Bishop. Amazing what a year can do to the flavour—needed to add a decent amount of extra sugar. I heated it with bergamot for that lovely perfumed aroma, although I did have to pull them quite quickly to stop it overpowering everything!
Just recapping a few pictures of the unbelievably wonderful painter monasteries of Southern Bucovina, Romania - this summer with @dustshoveller.bsky.social and @davidatkinson.bsky.social.
Imogen Holst’s bookplate showing her dancing with a man with Thaxted church in the background
Gladly speaking at Gustav Holst: an archival legacy 20 Nov 1400-16.30 @britishlibrary.bsky.social. Experts from BL, Britten-Pears and Gustav’s birthplace talking about their archives, and performances of his Terzetto + Imogen’s suite for solo viola. Free tickets by emailing music-events@bl.uk
Nice pic too…the evacuated public records from Chancery Lane in storage at The Oxford Diocesan teacher training college, Culham in WW2!
Do you know of an archive at risk of being lost? The National Archives have grants available.
A good place to enter my 60th year…