Lyndsey Stonebridge

BRITISH LIBRARY Chief Executive

The @britishlibrary.bsky.social is recruiting for a permanent Chief Executive. It’s really critical they appoint someone great, who gets the value of serving the research community, and cares about librarianship. £174k. Deadline 13 April
join-britishlibrary.co.uk/job/chief-ex...

"Impotent bigness" (Arendt) it is then (again).

'More time was needed to elapse...' On the mysterious case of Rebecca West and the missing blue plaque

Thank you to everyone who responded to my Rebecca West post. You have all given me heart and courage.

I've written about what I'm up to here. Please forward this to anyone who might be interested

open.substack.com/pub/autumnin...

Thank you for reading - and responding.

"Best of all will be those who know only one thing for
certain: that whatever else happens, as long as we live
we shall have to live together with ourselves."

-- Hannah Arendt

‘Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship’

There is a clue here about why the Epstein files make no difference in the USA.

(so we're back in a war where little girls are killed in parentheses)

Thankfully! Cf also amazing women's non-fiction prize list this year.

*more

The National Year of Reading celebrates the ‘joy’ of books. But let’s not forget they can also be deeply troubling, too | Charlotte Higgins Encounters with great art can be absorbing, unsettling and even painful. How has this been tamed into ‘reading for pleasure’, asks Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer

Reading for pleasure? Reading for survival. Reading for the human condition. Reading for thinking.

Great piece by Charlotte Higgins & I can't think of a time when I haven't wanted to the world to just stop and read.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

*feminist environmentalist to the left of the current UK Labour Party.

Don't know about you loves, but the last two weeks have felt like good weeks to be a feminist.

"Without feminism, the sequence of events that led to Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest would never have happened. It’s a reminder that feminism is powerful and important and even transformative, which is why there’s so much pushback..."

"It's just depravity that they try to make glorious, natural."

- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon.

"There are things the Old Woman can do, say, and think that the Woman cannot do, say, or think."

- Ursula K Le Guin

It's angrier. It's being over 50 & advocating for all those who don't have ff they can can afford to give.

"There are things the Old Woman can do, say, and think that the Woman cannot do, say, or think."

- Ursula K Le Guin

Thank you Virginia Giuffre. Thank you Gisèle Pelicot.

🎙️ Life & Language explores how language shapes the way we see the world.

Hosted by Prof. @michamahlberg.bsky.social. Now in its 5th season with 28 episodes and brilliant guests across disciplines.

Curious about how words shape life?

🎧 Join the conversation.

Toni Morrison dancing

She was BOTD in 1931

I do so wish late capitalism hadn't abolished the quiet.

At any other time and in many other places this amount of rain would be taken as a sign that we should be doing something different

She said if she had been 20 years younger: “I might not have dared to refuse a closed-door hearing."

The untold story of the Pelicot case: age, feminism, and the courage of older women.

Thank you ! Will read soon.

When I first read this post, I thought it was from a history account.

Scandals can be corrected. That's why they're often titillating - think 18thc sentimental comedy, think Profumo, JFK, etc...Scandals are transgressions that reset norms

The Epstein files are not a scandal.

They're proof of the violent misogynist contempt that structures wealth and power.

Never forget Epstein’s little helpers – the powerful men who knew about his crimes, and helped him out anyway | Marina Hyde I’m sorry, but this is not just a political scandal. Time to refocus on the horrific mistreatment of women and girls, and the role of these ghouls, says Guardian columnist Marina Hyde

Every word, Marina Hyde, every word.

Also: the high number of academic men in the files? The problem is not the "funding model" ffs. It's moral depravity.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Jules Verne’s dystopia was a world without humanities. Do... When arts education is dismissed as a waste of time it damages us as a society. The focus of learning is not just to enrich our economy but also to enrich our souls

Thanks to @theobserveruk.bsky.social for their coverage of The 2026 National Humanities Lecture, delivered earlier this week at Senate House by Elif Shafak.

The piece highlights the vital role humanities play in our education and culture.

📰 Read more here: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Public Humanities Fellowship Our Public Humanities Fellowship stimulates new ideas and conversations around public humanities.

www.sas.ac.uk/research-eng...

Beautiful lecture from the ever-wise Elif Shafak at SAS last night.

Elif's talk was part of a suite of events and initiatives by the newly launched Fellowship of Public Humanities - of which I'm delighted to be a member.