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Something for the weekend

History Carnival will soon be up at (a)musings of a grad student… and here it is!

And Carnivalesque will come tomorrow at Earmarks in Early Modern culture… and it’s here!

Bardiac has posted the NEXT draft of the REALLY dead women writers meme…

(Since the texts went behind a paywall, I hadn’t taken much notice of the Brown Women Writers Project. But there are still a few useful resources there that are free to view.)

How to create a digital library of early modern texts…

Dan Cohen has written about Search Engine Optimization for Smarties…

A good contribution to the bad academic writing debate from the Guardian…

Something for Easter… and a Jewish joke for Passover…

Is there such a thing as a British intellectual?

Intellectual or not, guess where I’ll be at 7.15 this evening?…

PS: decided not to get an Easter Egg this year… but I did buy a bar of the good dark stuff instead. I am not alone.

PPS: Spam email oxymoron of the week: “Academic Qualifications available from prestigious non-accredited universities”…

Weekend reading

The Guardian on Bellini and the East, a new exhibition at the National Gallery.

Charlie says… Public Information Films at The National Archives.

A newish website on Historical Fiction looks fun.

The Reading Experience Database 1450-1945 is looking for contributions. Perhaps it’ll (eventually) be able to add something to the debate now heating up over gendered reading preferences.

Rob MacDougall has discovered The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society. (And see Giornale Nuovo for more on Athanasius Kircher.)

Is it a fish? Is it an ugly bugger? Neener-neener-neeeeeeeeeener! (And, unless you’re scared of insects… Wow.)

… And here’s an upcoming centenary to celebrate: TH White was born 100 years ago next month.

Weekend reading

Books and reading
Bookish (lit/culture blog)
2005 Lyttle Lytton winners (shorter worst opening sentences of imaginary novels)
Where have the editors gone?
PotterCon
Louise Welsh (we are not worthy)
Secret signals in lotus flowers (review of book on the ‘Indian Mutiny’ and the British imagination)
Soldiers’ letters
Setting the slaves free
On guard! (buckling some Spanish swash…)

Robin Cook
BBC obituary
Guardian obituary
Profile
One of the greats – out of office
Acerbic master of the despatch box
A lifetime passion for politics
An intellect that enthralled the House
The resignation speech

Destroyer of Worlds
60 years ago today: Hiroshima
A poem for the anniversary of Hiroshima
The atom bomb: a different perspective
Hiroshima Archive
Hiroshima remembers

Finally, on a lighter note…
Watching Braveheart (from Popcorn and chainmail – if you’re fed up of bad historical movies, there’s much here to enjoy)

Oh yes, and Channel 4 has just started a repeat run of one of my favourite history series of the last year or so, which has a marvellous mini-website: The worst jobs in history. (Tony Robinson getting the shit scared out of him or trying not to vomit at the latest disgusting stench every few minutes – not your average history presentation style.)

A little Sunday reading

Prosaic, the Little Professor on academic writing and reading

Where the wild things were, on nature writing, the particular and the universal

Back to the future, on the film The battle of Algiers

Another review of The Historian (I’ll still wait for the paperback, but it does look as though it will be fun to read)

Feature on Reginald Hill (it might even make me forgive the Telegraph for that British identity codswallop)

Sunday reading

“As I knew I could not attain a heavenly paradise … I became a historian.” The reviewer has some criticisms, but The Historian could be worth reading. (It’s an updating of the vampire novel, and Count Dracula himself is the historian.)

Searching for women who wrote in Latin: not quite as difficult as you might think.

Winners of the alternative Harry Potter ending competition.

Live coverage of rain at Lords. The British weather might just save our sorry hides from the complete thrashing that we thoroughly deserve.

Review of a book on fashion and politics in history. Sounds fun.

OK, yet another article on the Harry Potter phenomenon, but quite interesting.

Reading for a Sunday afternoon

(When not watching the OC, that is. Love OC. Hate T4. Who is that moron “interviewing” Josh Schwartz?)

How the west was spun, Annie Proulx on the heroic myth of the American west

…And Howard Zinn on myths of American exceptionalism

Salman Rushdie on facts

Blake Morrison on Richard Ingrams on William Cobbett

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in verse

Antony Gormley (you’ve just got to see what he’s made this time…)

JG Ballard claims to be hooked on CSI. I found myself wondering whether it was quite the same CSI (the original, never the spinoffs) that I’ve been hooked on for several years. Hmm.

Germaine Greer on photography and politics

Right, OC’s on. More later.

Coffee. Mmmm, coffee. Is it too hot for coffee this afternoon? Maybe not if I make it with ice cream…

I so want to go to this new Stubbs exhibition.

Horation Nelson. It’s the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar this October, so there’s going to be a lot of Nelsonia over the coming months.

Dressing down at the Civil Service. (C4 News viewers will know that this story prompted Jon Snow to strip in the studio during the week. Shocking. Jon without his funky ties? Unthinkable!)