Category Archives: Uncategorized

CONTENT NOTE: This post contains discussion of suicide. I have just found out that I have had my abstract below accepted for the Telling Stories: History, Narrative and Fiction conference at Queens University, Belfast in September. I have been thinking … Continue reading →

I want to write about them. Not yet. Hers are still the arms that hugged me when my gerbil died. His face is still the one he kept straight to make me giggle. I am convinced that my grandparents can … Continue reading →

At Accident and Emergency, I go up to the desk and am ready to tell the waiting room the whole sorry business, as I have become used to in the last two weeks, but am given a ticket – number … Continue reading →

In preparing this eulogy, I consulted one of Dad’s notebooks in his study and found a typical lament from one of our family holidays in France, so quintessentially Dad that I could hear his voice saying it. You might recognise … Continue reading →

Since writing a blog post here about newsagents, I have started to research their history more seriously and was recently asked to contribute to a wonderful exhibition of drawings and watercolours of Glasgow newsagents by the artist Will Knight, taking … Continue reading →

I fairly recently came across a school report where I had, when forced to make a ‘pupil comment’, moaned that ‘I’m really rubbish at source work. I spend ages looking at paintings and never find anything to say’. My History … Continue reading →

This is the first in an occasional series of bits of sources and writing that I quite like that no longer fit into the book or an article. This is a orphan text in two ways: not only does this … Continue reading →

‘Where are the women in this thesis?’ Picture the scene: late May or early June 2011, in my PhD supervisor’s office, in my mock viva discussing my thesis on the British publication and reception of Karl Marx’s Capital. I’d like … Continue reading →

I love newsagents. The local newsagent was the first place that I was allowed to walk to on my own, when I was about six or seven, armed with 20p (often in actual pennies) to buy some cola bottles from … Continue reading →