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Nick Higham

@highamnews.bsky.social

520 followers 780 following 520 posts

Mavericks: Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One published by Bloomsbury 9 October. Water news, London history, laundry, ghost pubs etc. Former BBC correspondent…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 5h

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Isabel Amaral Lapa Vasques. Gaston Marquet (1848-1923), Lavoir Saint Pierre, a Montmartre (The Washhouse). Perhaps Marquet’s most famous painting. She looks exhausted…

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 6h

Art of Laundry. Two paintings (c 1928) by Diego Rivera of a washerwoman or pair of washerwomen and “zopilotes” (black vultures or buzzards). Most images of laundry are relatively benign: the buzzards lend this one a rather threatening aspect…

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 1d

Hat tip to @santorim87.bsky.social who featured Toffoli (though not this picture) on her blogpost this morning…

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 1d

Art of Laundry. La Lavandière, 1987, lithograph by Louis Toffoli (1907-1999). Born in Trieste, Toffoli fled Fascist Italy for Paris in 1928. Known for his pictures of craftsmen and women at work and for his use of colour, flat almost translucent shapes and geometric compositions…

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 1d

Confession time: I saw your post and thought “Toffoli looks like the sort of chap who’d paint washerwomen”. I couldn’t quite work out how to credit you for the tip. Will rectify instantly… x

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 1d

Art of Laundry. Via Ex-Twitter/Laundry. A typically exquisite woodcut by the great Thomas Bewick, 1797 Northumberland…

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 1d

Art of Laundry. Quiet Work, by Australian artist Richard Claremont, who writes: “No one ever talks about the laundry. Yet somehow it always gets the best light — the kind that makes even socks look poetic. I love painting these quiet corners, where the ordinary turns quietly magnificent…”

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 1d

Art of Laundry. La Lavandière, 1987, lithograph by Louis Toffoli (1907-1999). Born in Trieste, Toffoli fled Fascist Italy for Paris in 1928. Known for his pictures of craftsmen and women at work and for his use of colour, flat almost translucent shapes and geometric compositions…

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 2d

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Isabel Amaral Lapa Vasques. Brita Granström's Rescuing the Washing. Granström (b 1969) is a Swedish-British artist and children’s book illustrator…

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 2d

Great to meet up with old friend and former colleague Debby Moyse at the Isle of Wight literary festival. And she bought book…!

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 3d

Cannon to the right… etc. The one on the battlements of Cowes Castle (aka the Royal Yacht Squadron) they use to start sailing races. But what crew of scurvy boarders are the rest of the battery supposed to repel…?

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 3d

Spot on. I’d read that…

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 3d

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Rita M. Sjöholm. Dry clothes and rain..1927. Charles Tunnicliffe (1901-1979) was an internationally renowned naturalistic painter of British birds and other wildlife. He spent most of his working life on the Isle of Anglesey…

Reposted by Nick Higham

Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 3d

In 'The Print,' (1931) Harold Knight depicts his wife Laura holding one of her prints from the pile on the table. Another of her works, 'Circus Dressing Room,' can be seen hanging on the wall behind her as can her reflection in the glass of the frame.

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 4d

Orchids and Marigolds: a study…

Reposted by Nick Higham

The English Oak Project @thekentacorn.bsky.social · 4d

If you see a tree in the middle of the road, please be patient as it takes time for them to cross

A tree in the middle of the road

Reposted by Nick Higham

Sanat Tarihi @sanatintarihi.bsky.social · 4d

Tullio Crali - Prima che si apra il paracadute 1939 (at the modern art gallery in Udine)

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 4d

This is what they did in the 1850s. Appalling it still happens…

Brent River Park @brentriverpark.bsky.social · 4d

Properties discharging sewage directly into rivers is a nationwide problem.

Here’s a story from Hampshire:

“Multiple properties built in the 1980s were illegally plumbed into surface water drains.”

www.advertiserandtimes.co.uk/news/sewage-...

Sewage flowing straight into Lymington River from illegally plumbed homes for decades, water firm finds

Untreated sewage from homes and businesses has been flowing directly into Lymington River for decades, it has been revealed.

www.advertiserandtimes.co.uk

Reposted by Nick Higham

Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 4d

'Our Lady of the Hills.' (1921) The word anathemata, as David Jones unpicks it in his introduction to what later became an epic poem, means a lifting up and a setting apart of something for our particular savouring. A precise reading of what art is and always should be.

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 5d

This was a very jolly saunter with @lauracoffey along a waterway close to my heart. To learn more about London’s New River try this: www.amazon.co.uk/Mercenary-Ri...

Retracing the lost river that was built to quench London’s thirst

www.thetimes.com/article/1054...

Retracing the lost river that was built to quench London’s thirst

The New River Canal has largely been lost to history, but there remain clues to this extraordinary construction. One expert leads the tour

www.thetimes.com

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 5d

This was a great interview with the charming and knowledgeable Miranda Melcher on @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social about the remarkable men featured in my new book, and the forgotten battle of WW1 that brought them together… newbooksnetwork.com/mavericks

Nick Higham, "Mavericks: Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One" (Bloomsbury, 2025) - New Books Network

newbooksnetwork.com

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 6d

I am at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival on Sunday morning. Come hear about the Kipling character who went to war for real, the younger brother of a British general with an addiction to dangerous sports and the lad from Liverpool who spent his life in fear of communist assassination… #Mavericks

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 6d

Ghost pubs in the 1970s and 80s (a fine collection) plus some still very much alive…
spitalfieldslife.com/2025/10/09/j...

Jeffrey Johnson’s Favourite Pubs | Spitalfields Life

spitalfieldslife.com

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 7d

Great pictures by Thomas Purkis of my talk in Lichfield the other day promoting my new book Mavericks. Great audience too, some good questions, and they bought lots of copies…!

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 8d

“Meticulous research”, “varmint characters” and “a rakish adventure for autumn”! There’s a recommendation. Many thanks to @unseenhistories.com…

Unseen Histories @unseenhistories.com · 8d

From the Caspian Sea to Burma, the Regency to U Boats; our history book picks for the month ahead. With new books from
@theprofrog.bsky.social
@lmbd1418.bsky.social
@highamnews.bsky.social
@andrewrsorkin.bsky.social
@fourredshoes.bsky.social
@edmond-smith.bsky.social
@rory-stewart.bsky.social👇

New History Books for October 2025 - Unseen Histories

Our picks of a range of vibrant new history books that will be released over the month ahead.

www.unseenhistories.com

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 9d

This could be awkward for the BBC: CBS News is its US partner…

NPR @npr.org · 9d

JUST IN: CBS' parent company is buying The Free Press and installing Bari Weiss, its contrarian founder, as editor in chief of CBS News.

Bari Weiss joins CBS with a mandate for 'balanced and fact-based' news

CBS' parent company is buying The Free Press and installing Bari Weiss, its contrarian founder, as editor in chief of CBS News.