Mathew Lyons's Avatar

Mathew Lyons

@mathewlyons

Writer, historian. FRHistS. Recent work: History Today, The Spectator, Slightly Foxed, New Humanist, Engelsberg Ideas.

1,977
Followers
563
Following
2,945
Posts
08.10.2023
Joined
Posts Following

Latest posts by Mathew Lyons @mathewlyons

Preview
Thousands of authors publish ‘empty’ book in protest over AI using their work About 10,000 writers including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman join copyright campaign

I’m one of the thousands of authors who have published this empty book, in protest at AI companies stealing our copyrighted work www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

11.03.2026 09:48 👍 191 🔁 52 💬 3 📌 2

Ooh yes! 😍

11.03.2026 09:33 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I amused myself imagining that I'd come out and there would be a couple of German guys in lab coats standing over a bank of 1970s synths and staring coldly into space while they played

10.03.2026 14:48 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
The Baltic Crusades: A Photo Gallery - Yale University Press London Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, crusading armies unleashed a relentless holy war against the last pagan societies in northern Europe. In the Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, c...

Between the 12th and 15th centuries, crusading armies unleashed a relentless holy war against the last pagan societies in northern Europe. Aleksander Pluskowski, author of The Black Cross: A History of the Baltic Crusades, shares some photographs from the region.

yalebooks.co.uk/the-baltic-c...

10.03.2026 11:34 👍 41 🔁 12 💬 0 📌 2
Post image

Today @plough.bsky.social 47 is out, featuring my short story 'Sieidi' - which has been beautifully illustrated

10.03.2026 07:54 👍 26 🔁 5 💬 2 📌 0

Sad news.

09.03.2026 14:26 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

This was great fun to do. My Writer’s Bookshelf, spanning from Sherwood Anderson to Sue Townsend, via Joseph Roth, the Usborne Guide to the Supernatural World, Peanuts, Toni Morrison and many others… Many thanks to @mathewlyons.bsky.social for asking me!

09.03.2026 07:51 👍 7 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0

Some lunchtime reading from me!

09.03.2026 13:01 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
The Mother's Legacy in Early Modern England | Jennifer Heller | Taylor Using printed and manuscript texts composed between 1575 and 1672, Jennifer Heller defines the genre of the mother's legacy as a distinct branch of the advice

Does anyone have a pdf of Heller's The Mother's Legacy in #EarlyModern England? #CanIHazPdf #HistGender #SkyStorians www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...

09.03.2026 12:23 👍 0 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Many hands In Caravaggio’s “St Matthew and the Angel” (1602), the Bible seems to arrive as a shock to those who wrote it. Matthew, bare-armed and dirty-toed, is a

Fantastic to see William M. Schniedewind’s Who Really Wrote the Bible reviewed in @thetls.bsky.social! Read the full piece here:

09.03.2026 12:02 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Good news that the digitised Beowulf manuscript has survived the digital equivalent of the Cottonian Library fire, the British Library cyberattack of 2023

09.03.2026 11:44 👍 139 🔁 35 💬 2 📌 0
Video thumbnail

Our Autumn/Winter 2026 catalogue is here 🎉 📚

Discover original and impactful new titles ranging from a chilling investigation into modern surveillance states to a history of the kola nut, and more.

Browse the full list ➡️ tinyurl.com/mvkkycsw

See the thread below for some highlights ⬇️

09.03.2026 10:09 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 1
Post image

New on the Writer’s Bookshelf this morning: eight questions about writers, books, and reading with the wonderful @keironpim.bsky.social. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-writer...

09.03.2026 07:42 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 2

Ha!

08.03.2026 21:54 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Post image Post image

What did Amy Mary,my clever village grandmother,think of her grandest employers? The Kindle/phone/computer edition of 'Village' is FREE today.This is not the world of Downton Abbey. But Amy Mary's bag of fragrant mints may rustle open! SEARCH ALISON BRACKENBURY VILLAGE AMAZON #women'shistorymonth

08.03.2026 10:06 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Post image

Some weekend reading from me. First up, a brilliant edition of the Writer's Bookshelf with @j-amesmarriott.bsky.social.
mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-writer...

07.03.2026 09:39 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0

Thanks!

07.03.2026 21:47 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

What platform is that on? We've been watching Man on the Run, and, well, it would be good to watch something better.

07.03.2026 21:30 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Post image Post image

Edinburgh launch for Little Griefs complete! Next up: London in April. Free but ticketed: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/little-gri...

07.03.2026 12:06 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Post image

And finally, ten of my favourite paintings, etc up for auction in London this week. Featuring Redon, Richter, Magritte, Nolde, Man Ray, Sargent and more! mathewlyons.substack.com/p/going-goin...

07.03.2026 09:45 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Post image

Then an essay remembering my week performing in a production of Christopher Marlowe's Massacre at Paris many years back.
mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-massac...

07.03.2026 09:42 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Post image

Some weekend reading from me. First up, a brilliant edition of the Writer's Bookshelf with @j-amesmarriott.bsky.social.
mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-writer...

07.03.2026 09:39 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Preview
Only Howard Jacobson could find comedy in the horrors of October 7 Howl is an angry and surprisingly funny novel — it is his best since The Finkler Question

Let me get this straight: Howard Jacobson has written a novel about Israel, October 7 and Gaza protests - topics on which some may say we've heard enough from him - and it's pizzazzy, funny, and his best novel in probably 25 years?

Me on Howl, and how you needn't agree with a book to like it:

07.03.2026 07:47 👍 17 🔁 3 💬 6 📌 2
Preview
TRUE story of Charlie Chaplin's upbringing that inspired The Tramp Charlie Chaplin was not raised in affluence and comfort, quite the opposite. New book explores the poverty stricken childhood that shaped the star.

'Jacqueline Riding evokes late 19th-century London with an artist’s eye'

Read a review of #HardStreets by @jacriding.bsky.social in the Mail Online and learn more about the working-class streets of Edwardian London that shaped Charlie Chaplin.

www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/a...

06.03.2026 16:03 👍 4 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1
Post image

The House of Lords Digital & Communications Committee just published their report on AI, copyright & the creative industries, and their conclusions could not be clearer.

🧵 1/5

06.03.2026 08:53 👍 1541 🔁 882 💬 12 📌 131
A quote from TS Eliot against a light teal background. The text reads: 'Whether one is a prolific writer or not, the question whether one is a writer at all is one which constantly asks itself and I think ought to go on asking itself ... At any rate I have never got rid of it myself and it attacks me from time to time most unexpectedly.'. – TS Eliot, letter to Henry Treece, 9 Sept 1943' northseapoets.com. The North Sea Poets logo is in the bottom right corner.

A quote from TS Eliot against a light teal background. The text reads: 'Whether one is a prolific writer or not, the question whether one is a writer at all is one which constantly asks itself and I think ought to go on asking itself ... At any rate I have never got rid of it myself and it attacks me from time to time most unexpectedly.'. – TS Eliot, letter to Henry Treece, 9 Sept 1943' northseapoets.com. The North Sea Poets logo is in the bottom right corner.

– TS Eliot, letter to Henry Treece, 8 Sept 1943

#NorthSeaPoets #CommonplaceBook #PoetrySky

05.03.2026 10:25 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Now if we could all stop arguing about World Book Day costumes and buy some fucking books, that would be just lovely. www.hive.co.uk/Search/Searc...

05.03.2026 10:14 👍 35 🔁 8 💬 3 📌 1
Preview
Charlie Chaplin's London with Jacqueline Riding

Catch @jacriding.bsky.social on The Big Smoke Variety Show podcast, discussing her latest book #HardStreets and the working-class neighbourhoods of Edwardian London that shaped Charlie Chaplin 🎧

open.spotify.com/episode/7MK9...

05.03.2026 09:56 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 1

Oh my word, yes. I've only just finished scrolling. Some things I know. Much more that I don't. Thanks so much for opening my eyes!

04.03.2026 22:33 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Bloody hell. And I've just been scrolling through the channel. My heart has skipped so many beats it might as well as stopped. Not only and not least for the Lenny Bernstein…

04.03.2026 22:21 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0