‘Like M.R. James, I grew up in Suffolk, but have long been drawn to the West of England for research. The dirtier and more tattered manuscripts in Hereford’s collection still hold surprises.’ Tom Johnson hunts through the archives: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

Now it has a website and is available to pre-order I'm so excited to announce that my second book — Liverpool and the Un-Making of Britain — will be out next spring with Bloomsbury/Head of Zeus! waterstones.com/book/liverpool…

I wrote about Helen Charman‘s brilliant Mother State, out this week jacobin.com/2024/07/mother…

Exciting news! My article looking at violence in the Lanercost Chronicle has been published now in EPOCH History Magazine , check it out here! epoch-magazine.com/post/a-norther… Special thanks to Tom Johnson for supervising the MA thesis it’s based on

This is one of the best books I've read recently: elegiac but spare, with a twist in the last line that stabs you right in the heart

Still have time to submit your proposal to IMC Leeds next year. Our session is about medieval News and everything about it!!!!

This is a wonderful piece of scholarship and I learned so much from supervising it. Congratulations Sarah!

My book about how we can tell a new history of Britain through the city of Liverpool now has a cover. It's out next year but can be pre-ordered here: waterstones.com/book/liverpool…

Exciting news! We're advertising for a fully funded doctoral studentship at the University of Oxford and The National Archives to work on Chaucer's thameside life and poetry. Supervised by me and Prof Marion Turner. Details below, please share widely! oocdtp.web.ox.ac.uk/ox-cda-turner-…

the biography of a mid-century medievalist never fails to amaze

For the new issue of the LRB, I wrote about tally-sticks, plague bills, and how to use a counting board

‘In premodern England, number had a texture. Three barleycorns laid end to end made an inch. The “long” hundred was 120 for herring, but 112 for measures of tin. Four saltfish made a warp.’ Tom Johnson on the material nature of numbers: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

This article took about 4 years to write together, and another 3 to revise / get through the publication process. I'm not sure what the lesson of this (writing is hard?) is but I'm really pleased to see it out If you would like a pdf and don't have access, drop me a DM

‘In early modern England, numbers were something you could touch. On tally-sticks and abacuses, counting boards and jettons, arithmetic was a feat of hand-eye coordination.’ Tom Johnson on early modern numbers: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

Great episode of London Review of Books with Tom Johnson discussing Dr. Jessica Otis | jmotis.bsky.social's new book 'By the Numbers: Numeracy, Religion, and the Quantitative Transformation of Early Modern England' (Oxford University Press) lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-v…

Thanks Tom Sojka for a great conversation about Intimate Subjects for NB British Studies New Books Network (@newbooksnetwork.bsky.social) podcast. Check it out here! newbooksnetwork.com/intimate-subje…