BOOK SALE ALERT!! From tomorrow Bishopsgate Institute, we’ll be selling duplicate History, LGBTQ+ & other books in the Main Library! Come & have a buy! Every day, 10am-5pm, until Friday 🖤🖤

does anyone have a bfi contact who could help me see/show John Samson’s 1981 film “Drag Ball”” about the balls that happened at Porchester Hall??? It was shown at BFI Flare 💎 in 2020 but cannot get much further

RIP Borges, you would have loved the dictionary of banned terms on X, formerly Twitter, the free speech app

A charming piece of antiquarian history from the book sale. It may have belonged to Henry Ellis, a librarian at the British Museum.

Gender Critical women have instigated a hate campaign against a woman athlete because she does not fit their conservative and racist definition of ‘womanhood’. This has of course been taken up and amplified by the most racist and misogynistic men. It is beyond disgusting.

Ruskin Pater Vernon Lee

My first ever book review is out! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/14…

Bearing in mind's Musk's support for racist rioting in Britain, and despite having been a regular user of Twitter since 2011, I'd be perfectly happy to see this platform blocked in Britain - even permanently - if that's what it takes to help reduce dangerous disinformation

Major REF news.

Does anyone know of any historical work on diarists who kept a record of masturbation? I'm fairly sure I've found a diary that does so by using a code.

I am so moved to be giving OutStories Bristol's John Addington Symonds Annual Lecture, in honour of Symonds's 184th birthday! I am celebrating by doing the transfag reading of Eve Sedgwick no one asked for. All (esp non-academics) welcome, details here: outstoriesbristol.org.uk/2024/08/5-oct-…

✨Hidden Belfast, Forbidden Love!!!✨ A BBC radio drama series based on my research of an almost entirely unknown gay diary begins airing this Saturday! Read on below to learn more about David Strain: a chronicler of everyday gay life in the 1930s... bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/20…

The agony of knowing I must use this collection of diaries, and then working on them and remembering how difficult they are to decipher. I feel I may need to create some kind of arcane alphabet soon!

This is David Strain. God-fearing, clean-living, hard-working. Never touched the "demon drink". Utterly conventional... apart from in one way. David was consumed by his love & desire for other men. How - in *1930s Belfast* - did he begin to understand what that meant? 🧵

You can now yourself, should you be so inclined, acquire a hard copy of this for yourself. Available through libraries and inter library loan everywhere, as well as presumably, all good bookshops… link.springer.com/book/10.1007/9…

Super happy to share the full program for the Autumn QUB History Seminar Series! Feel free to come along to any that interest. Shoot me a question if there are any queries.

*Please* do this. Students need time & space to be students: to follow their interests, read beyond the curriculum, be intellectually curious, share ideas with each other over a cuppa, go to talks on other subjects. They can't do this when working multiple jobs to stay afloat.

New article in Screen Journal about visibility, invisible labour and the career of a trans production worker in 1940s British cinema - Open Access tinyurl.com/59wcrrty

I have an article in the new issue of Slavic Review on military masculinities & sexuality in the late Russian Empire. It feels like the research (conducted pre-Covid and pre-full scale invasion) happened in a different life. Anyway, free to read here: tinyurl.com/nhe448sn