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Dr David Vessey

@davidcvessey

Historian of modern Britain and the media. University of Sheffield. Probably won’t rant about Sheffield Wednesday on here (I’ll save that for the hellsite formerly known as Twitter).

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20.08.2023
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Latest posts by Dr David Vessey @davidcvessey

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‘Public Opinion in England Is Seriously Roused’: Popular Attitudes and National Stereotypes during the Metropolitan-Vickers Crisis of 1933* Abstract. When six British engineers working in the Soviet Union, along with several local contractors, were arrested, interrogated and tried for the crime

New article! David Vessey @davidcvessey.bsky.social on ‘"Public Opinion in England Is Seriously Roused": Popular Attitudes and National Stereotypes during the Metropolitan-Vickers Crisis of 1933'

academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-...

23.02.2026 10:19 👍 5 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 1

Thanks Charles!

23.02.2026 11:25 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The most important event you’ve never heard of! Maybe not, but I’m really excited this is finally out as Metrovick is tremendously entertaining and says more about interwar Britain than you might think.

23.02.2026 11:08 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

If students want to sue us for breaking ourselves to get you through your degree course in impossible circumstances, then feel free to mail back your degree certificates. Address on the website of the university you’re now pushing out of business.

18.02.2026 19:30 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Although I note we’re still on the target list of institutions despite going back in person as soon as practicable.

16.02.2026 19:52 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

It’s been catalogued already by Sheffield’s Special Collections. There’s a lot not there about 84-85 it’s fair to say, but some interesting stuff on the 70s.

03.02.2026 19:42 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

There are no cuts on the table beyond a review for certain programmes that was already in place. The UCU seems to want an extended guarantee beyond this year.

27.08.2025 18:29 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Nicked a couple of my articles it seems. Here’s hoping my shocking grammar brings it down from within …

20.03.2025 20:20 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Fair enough!

13.03.2025 19:41 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Sounds similar to our current predicament. What uni is this?

13.03.2025 19:32 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Does anyone know what the acronym VSO meant in government parlance from the 1930s? It’s a Home Office file on a foreign national’s scientific research, so the latter part is possibly Science Officer. The report makes VSO out to be an individual rather than an organisation.

06.03.2025 15:11 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I don’t understand the figures in this story. Regrettable though it is, £16.5 million has already been saved from VSS, so there’s no way that there will be 1,000 additional job losses. The UCU are just scoring political points as usual, and I’m as critical of our management as the next person.

24.02.2025 19:32 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Unfortunately not a decision based on an objective analysis, and there are other resources on the chopping block.

12.12.2024 19:47 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

This is a problem of how we conflate engineering and science. Students using LLMs to write is like building a robot to lift weights for you at the gym. The point of lifting the weights is for your training, not because weights need lifting

12.12.2024 15:38 👍 567 🔁 137 💬 14 📌 5

The Donny DNA is strong. Would certainly kick the arse of Cambridge.

30.11.2024 20:31 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Hang on, have you been a fellow Doncastrian all this time without me realising?

30.11.2024 19:09 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Very, very late to this particular party (it’s not my field in fairness), but McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom is every bit as great as everyone says it is. A masterpiece.

17.11.2024 19:10 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Our morale is in the toilet. It’s a masterclass in torpedoing performance.

16.11.2024 12:19 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Preview
a cartoon of homer simpson standing in a grassy yard ALT: a cartoon of homer simpson standing in a grassy yard

The excitement when the metrics spot that someone has cited your article, only to find it was me in a subsequent piece indulging in flagrant self-promotion.

14.11.2024 11:41 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Speaking Truth to a Foreign Power: Anti-Bolshevism and Truth in the Early Cold War, 1945–53 - David Vessey, 2024 Analysis of the periodical press allows historians to further their understanding of the turn against the Soviet Union in the West after the Second World War, a...

And finally for now, the equally curious case of Truth in the early Cold War: doi.org/10.1177/0022...

09.11.2024 19:17 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
First-hand Accounts? Walter Duranty, William Henry Chamberlin and Eugene Lyons as Moscow Correspondents in the 1930s Previous studies on Moscow correspondents in the 1930s have prioritised the work of individual reporters over the infrastructure that actually conditioned how Western journalists could operate. Thi...

This next article is on the Sisyphean task of Moscow correspondents in the 1930s: doi.org/10.1080/1461...

09.11.2024 19:16 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Anti-Bolshevism and the periodical press in interwar Britain: the case of the Saturday Review, 1933–6 Abstract. Using the example of the Saturday Review under the ownership of Lady Houston, this article explores how anti-Bolshevism was constituted in interw

Very grateful to see so many new followers. On the off chance that you’re kicking your heels on Saturday evening, here’s some links to my recent work. This first piece is on the frankly bonkers Saturday Review in the 1930s: doi.org/10.1093/hisr...

09.11.2024 19:15 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 0

I’d like to be added please!

08.11.2024 19:31 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Too little, too late and pleases no one. If it’s a sticking plaster pending more serious surgery then fair enough, but I’m not hopeful.

04.11.2024 19:28 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Not historiography but the first Royal Commission on the Press might have something on N. Ireland. There’s also Coglan’s report from 1936, but I don’t remember it having circulation for local papers.

28.10.2024 20:35 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Same. With a quill pen and calligraphy.

18.10.2024 18:38 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Not a great surprise at that point in 1945 when he’s still in the late ’Uncle Joe’ phase. And there was always a tendency to separate Stalin to some degree from the worst tyrannies of the Bolsheviks in the 1930s.

30.08.2024 18:48 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220094241270988

Delighted to finally share this, and open-access too! Journal of Contemporary History, 'Speaking Truth to a Foreign Power: Anti-Bolshevism and Truth in the Early Cold War, 1945–53' - David Vessey, 2024 t.co/amDBE5Hv5f

23.08.2024 10:28 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Going deep on the Morrison ‘coup’ that never was?

07.08.2024 18:12 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I do this all the time. Tomorrow I’ll think it’s a pile of stinking turd 😐

30.07.2024 18:19 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0