YES
13.03.2026 14:19
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YES
A miniature of the construction of the Tower of Babel, from Boccaccio's Des cas de nobles hommes et femmes (Add MS 35321).
The British Library’s Medieval MSS team now have a presence on Bluesky @blmedieval.bsky.social
Follow for updates as we restore more of our digitised content online!
It is completely mad that the government is expelling high flying Sudanese students from British universities - from a scheme that is explicitly aimed at the future leaders of countries.
Dear everyone,
As per the post from the Bodleian librarian below, AI bots and scrapers are putting just about every website under great pressure, British History Online included.
A lot of excellent tech staff are working hard to keep everything working, but outages and siruptions are inevitable.
hoping for the best!
Anybody else trying to search the BL digitised MSS catalogue and getting a warning that the connection isn’t private and attackers may be trying to steal information? 😩
Photo of a cuneiform tablet fragment shaped a bit like an irregular diamond. It preserves nearly 20 incomplete lines of text separated by a horizontal ruling
There's a broken cuneiform tablet from the Old Babylonian period, nearly 4,000 years ago, which preserves a tiny portion of a dialogue between two friends.
It feels a bit like the conversations I've been having for the past week, so I wanted to share it.
A black retriever puppy in the grass, retrieving a pink foam stress ball
A tiny black retriever mix puppy stands on a wooden stairway. She has just learned to climb them, and she looks happy and proud.
A tiny black retriever mix puppy with fuzzy earmuffs sits in the grass.
A tiny black retriever mix puppy sits in the grass, her earmuffs are larger and fuzzier than the last picture. She looks serious. I mean she isn’t, but for a moment she feigned seriousness.
The world is terrible, but not *everything* in the world is terrible. Proof? Puppies! Mine, specifically, but all the other puppies too, and especially yours, if you have one. If you don’t, I’m happy to share! #tinyjoys #uglydogs
The opening of Beowulf from the unique surviving manuscript of the Old English text, beginning with a large initial 'H'.
Hwaet! The Beowulf manuscript (Cotton MS Vitellius A XV) is now back online.
You can consult the entire manuscript through the online catalogue:
searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/040-...
Detail of a lithograph showing an aerial view of a city.
The site of Central Station in McCulloch's bird's-eye view from 1853. The then-new building we've just lost is on the far corner, ironically obscured by the smoke from the sugar refinery on Alston Street.
Christine de Pizan and the Sibyl surrounded by sun, moon, and stars
#InternationalWomensDay
BL Harley 4431; Christine de Pizan, Various Works including Le chemin de long estude; c.1410-c.1414; France, Central (Paris); f.189v
@blmedieval.bsky.social
Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick
Anyone who wants Britain to join the war in Iran needs their head examined open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/...
a scribe sitting at a writing desk, in a setting of around 1400 Europe. he is writing with a quill in one book, while another book is opened, and two more books are present on and in the writing desk.
Tab hoarding is leading to stress and information overload, and distraction, since the Middle Ages. #tabhoarding
A riddle from Bledri, a 12th-century Welsh storyteller, as relayed by Gerald of Wales:
"There are among us men who, when they go a-hunting, carry their horse on their shoulders until they come near to their quarry. Then, to catch their prey, they mount their steeds. ...
Do you want to improve your knowledge of medieval manuscripts from England? Book now for this summer school course, in person, in London, 8-12 June. 👇☀️📚 #medievalsky please repost!
palaeography.uk/study/short-...
I certainly wasn’t expecting this article in the Guardian on the Milan fashion week to have a final section on Sutton Hoo
Nationally, Labour is losing twice as many voters to Greens and Lib Dems as they are to Reform. (John Curtice on BBC)
🔴 BREAKING NEWS: The Green Party's Hannah Spencer has achieved a stonking win in the Gorton and Denton by-election! Reform UK came second, and Labour in third.
The terrifying rise of the letter G will plunge us into a permanent socialist winter
For @ccurran.bsky.social !
This is incredible
Thank you 😀
Just checking — is it Jun or Jul? I have a sixth former who is interested but he’d have to miss a day of school …
![Comic. [Person is sitting at a desk with a laptop, turned toward voice coming from off-panel.] VOICE FROM OFF-PANEL: I got you the ingredients for dinner tonight. Oh, and the plums in the fridge drawer are for my yogurt tomorrow; you should just leave them. Be back later! PERSON’S THOUGHT BUBBLE: Oh no. [caption] Help. It actually happened. I shouldn’t. But how can I not!?](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreigse57u6yvi5or4mnvpm5jbn3y3kzbxyzypmjmhbu7spcn6fe4wtm)
Comic. [Person is sitting at a desk with a laptop, turned toward voice coming from off-panel.] VOICE FROM OFF-PANEL: I got you the ingredients for dinner tonight. Oh, and the plums in the fridge drawer are for my yogurt tomorrow; you should just leave them. Be back later! PERSON’S THOUGHT BUBBLE: Oh no. [caption] Help. It actually happened. I shouldn’t. But how can I not!?
Plums
xkcd.com/3209/
I was impressed & moved: the BM had obviously worked carefully on the presentation with members of the Hawaiian community. The presentation of images stolen from Honaunau was incredibly powerful — they are in a display case behind a gauze sheet, with a soundscape from their original home playing.
Ki’i (image) of Kū (god of governance and warfare) stands high on a pillar outside the Joseph Hotung Great Court Gallery. He is of dark, shiny wood — carved from the trunk of a breadfruit tree — and stands in a haka position, with legs braced, fists clenched and mouth open. He wears an apron of paper mulberry barkcloth (donated by its artist, Vera Takashima, in 2018, and worn for the last big exhibition Kū appeared in: Oceania, at the Royal Academy).
Hawai’i: a kingdom crossing oceans @britishmuseum.bsky.social : thoughtful, respectful, mind-expanding, beautiful.
definitely never left! 🏴
A pattern among women's names gave me a reason to dig very deep into linguistic prehistory, lost grammar and language's arbitrariness. These rank among my favourite interests, along with 1990s pop music.
Put them all together, and I can offer you this long read:
dannybate.com/2026/02/19/m...
