Matt Houlbrook
@tricksterprince.bsky.social
Cultural history, Britain, cities, sexuality & gender, #20s30s.
Now - Songs of Seven Dials: An intimate history of 1920s and 1930s London (MUP)
Next - The Self-Improvers: The people who remade themselves and made the modern world
Now - Songs of Seven Dials: An intimate history of 1920s and 1930s London (MUP)
Next - The Self-Improvers: The people who remade themselves and made the modern world
Pinned
If you're after a festive gift or want to treat yourself @manchesterup.bsky.social are offering a 40% discount on Songs of Seven Dials at the moment.
A new history of London and the 1920s and 1930s for the knockdown price of £12: what's not to like?
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/
A new history of London and the 1920s and 1930s for the knockdown price of £12: what's not to like?
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
Thinking about this a lot today - 'Live, Love and Laugh' meant nearly two years of hard labour, but the queans who organised and celebrated together would not be stopped.
More work at the National Archives today, and this advert for a 1930s queer/trans dance is making me want both to cry and laugh at my desk. 'Live, Laugh, Love' London Quean-style, in a beautiful private mansion in bougie Kensington. 'Lady Austin' and 33 of her 'camp boys' were put on trial for this.
December 4, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Thinking about this a lot today - 'Live, Love and Laugh' meant nearly two years of hard labour, but the queans who organised and celebrated together would not be stopped.
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
If you're after a festive gift or want to treat yourself @manchesterup.bsky.social are offering a 40% discount on Songs of Seven Dials at the moment.
A new history of London and the 1920s and 1930s for the knockdown price of £12: what's not to like?
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/
A new history of London and the 1920s and 1930s for the knockdown price of £12: what's not to like?
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/
December 4, 2025 at 9:46 AM
If you're after a festive gift or want to treat yourself @manchesterup.bsky.social are offering a 40% discount on Songs of Seven Dials at the moment.
A new history of London and the 1920s and 1930s for the knockdown price of £12: what's not to like?
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/
A new history of London and the 1920s and 1930s for the knockdown price of £12: what's not to like?
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
A statement from Woodcraft Folk re: the ban on trans girls from Girl Guiding.
Trans girls deserve to belong everywhere. But when bigots win the day (not for long I hope), at least there remain places where trans girls and everyone else can belong.
woodcraft.org.uk/woodcraft-fo...
Trans girls deserve to belong everywhere. But when bigots win the day (not for long I hope), at least there remain places where trans girls and everyone else can belong.
woodcraft.org.uk/woodcraft-fo...
Woodcraft Folk statement on the exclusion of trans children from Girlguiding - Woodcraft Folk
Woodcraft Folk stands in solidarity with every trans child, young person and volunteer who faces exclusion from Girlguiding UK following the announcement on Trans inclusion. We recognise that Girlgui...
woodcraft.org.uk
December 4, 2025 at 4:37 PM
A statement from Woodcraft Folk re: the ban on trans girls from Girl Guiding.
Trans girls deserve to belong everywhere. But when bigots win the day (not for long I hope), at least there remain places where trans girls and everyone else can belong.
woodcraft.org.uk/woodcraft-fo...
Trans girls deserve to belong everywhere. But when bigots win the day (not for long I hope), at least there remain places where trans girls and everyone else can belong.
woodcraft.org.uk/woodcraft-fo...
This is an absolute brilliant song - getting me through a dismal Thursday afternoon in south Birmingham.
open.spotify.com/track/4uYeKl...
open.spotify.com/track/4uYeKl...
You On My Mind
open.spotify.com
December 4, 2025 at 2:56 PM
This is an absolute brilliant song - getting me through a dismal Thursday afternoon in south Birmingham.
open.spotify.com/track/4uYeKl...
open.spotify.com/track/4uYeKl...
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
This is the first I’ve heard of this and it’s astonishing - a group of white, PR-backed business owners suing a Pakistani-Iranian woman for calling her book a common word from her own language. Delighted that it’s over for her, but astonishing that someone had the brass neck.
An excellent piece by Yasmin Khan in @theguardian.com – and I’m very relieved the preposterous case against her has been dropped. www.theguardian.com/food/comment...
I called my recipe book Sabzi – vegetables. But the name was trademarked. And my legal ordeal began
The granting of patents and trademarks to foods and words from the global south is part of a long colonial grab. It’s time to realise we share what we cook, and what we call it
www.theguardian.com
December 4, 2025 at 1:12 PM
This is the first I’ve heard of this and it’s astonishing - a group of white, PR-backed business owners suing a Pakistani-Iranian woman for calling her book a common word from her own language. Delighted that it’s over for her, but astonishing that someone had the brass neck.
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
1. Historically, eugenics was not a pseudoscience. It was *science* Almost every scientist, social scientist, academic, etc. believed in the validity of eugenics. You would have to search far & wide to find a scientist that didn't believe in some form of it. They taught it in college!
December 4, 2025 at 12:44 PM
1. Historically, eugenics was not a pseudoscience. It was *science* Almost every scientist, social scientist, academic, etc. believed in the validity of eugenics. You would have to search far & wide to find a scientist that didn't believe in some form of it. They taught it in college!
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
It's pretty damning that the Adelphi was well-known as a place for people to sleep rough from at least a century ago.
A homeless tent village on London's Strand is to be demolished. Photographer Marc Davenant captured the stories of the people who live there.
What a row over a tent village in London says about the homelessness crisis
www.bigissue.com
December 4, 2025 at 9:30 AM
It's pretty damning that the Adelphi was well-known as a place for people to sleep rough from at least a century ago.
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
This is the disability angle to go with.
Have seen the idea that the UK is *causing* mental health and developmental conditions because it's so shit, and that's not the progressive take the people making it think it is.
Have seen the idea that the UK is *causing* mental health and developmental conditions because it's so shit, and that's not the progressive take the people making it think it is.
This just seems like the wrong end of the telescope to me. Review should be into barriers to employment, not diagnosis.
I really *do* have a fine motor condition, but in the 21st century this poses absolutely no barrier to me working in 90 per cent of jobs in the UK.
I really *do* have a fine motor condition, but in the 21st century this poses absolutely no barrier to me working in 90 per cent of jobs in the UK.
Wes Streeting orders review of mental health diagnoses as benefit claims soar
December 4, 2025 at 10:46 AM
This is the disability angle to go with.
Have seen the idea that the UK is *causing* mental health and developmental conditions because it's so shit, and that's not the progressive take the people making it think it is.
Have seen the idea that the UK is *causing* mental health and developmental conditions because it's so shit, and that's not the progressive take the people making it think it is.
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
Note how these awful people are getting exactly the exclusions of children that they demanded and *that still isn’t enough for them*: they demand everyone be delighted about it and kiss their arses for being brilliant.
December 4, 2025 at 7:33 AM
Note how these awful people are getting exactly the exclusions of children that they demanded and *that still isn’t enough for them*: they demand everyone be delighted about it and kiss their arses for being brilliant.
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
Familiar! Treadwell's is just one street from the great monolithic building that is Senate House. Among our bookshop customers are many of the staff and students of the libraries and institutes therein.
December 4, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Familiar! Treadwell's is just one street from the great monolithic building that is Senate House. Among our bookshop customers are many of the staff and students of the libraries and institutes therein.
The new Uxbridge underground station was opened OTD in 1938, replacing the 1904 Met Railway station on the outskirts of the town. Designed by Charles Holden, with Bucknell & Ellis, the station has a curved facade, concrete train shed and stained glass www.modernism-in-metroland.co.uk/uxbridge.html
December 4, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
GB News now broadcasting calls to remove the ethnic minority MPs from parliament
December 3, 2025 at 7:07 PM
GB News now broadcasting calls to remove the ethnic minority MPs from parliament
If you're after a festive gift or want to treat yourself @manchesterup.bsky.social are offering a 40% discount on Songs of Seven Dials at the moment.
A new history of London and the 1920s and 1930s for the knockdown price of £12: what's not to like?
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/
A new history of London and the 1920s and 1930s for the knockdown price of £12: what's not to like?
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/
December 4, 2025 at 9:46 AM
If you're after a festive gift or want to treat yourself @manchesterup.bsky.social are offering a 40% discount on Songs of Seven Dials at the moment.
A new history of London and the 1920s and 1930s for the knockdown price of £12: what's not to like?
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/
A new history of London and the 1920s and 1930s for the knockdown price of £12: what's not to like?
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
‘In 1904, in one twelve-hour period, observers recorded 2582 omnibuses, 1285 hansom cabs, 790 trade vehicles, 286 four-wheelers, 228 bicycles, 112 carriages and 93 barrows passing along the Strand.’
Ysenda Maxtone Graham on a history of the London street.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Ysenda Maxtone Graham on a history of the London street.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Ysenda Maxtone Graham · Busiest Thoroughfare of the Metropolis of the World: The Strand
After reading Geoff Browell and Eileen Chanin’s concise history of the Strand, you will never walk down that street...
www.lrb.co.uk
December 4, 2025 at 9:30 AM
‘In 1904, in one twelve-hour period, observers recorded 2582 omnibuses, 1285 hansom cabs, 790 trade vehicles, 286 four-wheelers, 228 bicycles, 112 carriages and 93 barrows passing along the Strand.’
Ysenda Maxtone Graham on a history of the London street.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Ysenda Maxtone Graham on a history of the London street.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
It's pretty damning that the Adelphi was well-known as a place for people to sleep rough from at least a century ago.
A homeless tent village on London's Strand is to be demolished. Photographer Marc Davenant captured the stories of the people who live there.
What a row over a tent village in London says about the homelessness crisis
www.bigissue.com
December 4, 2025 at 9:30 AM
It's pretty damning that the Adelphi was well-known as a place for people to sleep rough from at least a century ago.
And this feeling is the gift that keeps on giving - no matter how long you're in the job.
Academia has this way of making you feel utterly unsuccessful even when by any reasonable standard you are doing just fine.
December 4, 2025 at 9:26 AM
And this feeling is the gift that keeps on giving - no matter how long you're in the job.
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
#BirminghamTheatre Vesta Tilley (1864 - 1952) made numerous appearances on the Birmingham stage as a male impersonator. This cartoon is from The Owl, April 1890. Ref - LF 08.2 #LibraryofBham
December 4, 2025 at 9:00 AM
#BirminghamTheatre Vesta Tilley (1864 - 1952) made numerous appearances on the Birmingham stage as a male impersonator. This cartoon is from The Owl, April 1890. Ref - LF 08.2 #LibraryofBham
Thinking about the costs of flying a lot at the moment as assorted cycling influencers jet off to warmer climbs in search of big climbs and bigger content. I can't understand how anyone can justify 72 hours in Malaga as the world warms.
Did you know that a return flight to New York causes the same emissions as driving a car for an entire year? Let's stop sweeping the climate impact of flying under the rug 🌎
December 4, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Thinking about the costs of flying a lot at the moment as assorted cycling influencers jet off to warmer climbs in search of big climbs and bigger content. I can't understand how anyone can justify 72 hours in Malaga as the world warms.
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
Did you know that a return flight to New York causes the same emissions as driving a car for an entire year? Let's stop sweeping the climate impact of flying under the rug 🌎
December 4, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Did you know that a return flight to New York causes the same emissions as driving a car for an entire year? Let's stop sweeping the climate impact of flying under the rug 🌎
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
#TimeTravelAdvent #Day4, and we're inside the 12th-century civil war or 'Anarchy'. I wanted to share another perspective on Henry of Huntingdon's vision of the earth ripped open and hell broken loose. In civil war, even the ground beneath your feet is torn apart... #AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems 1/3
December 4, 2025 at 9:01 AM
#TimeTravelAdvent #Day4, and we're inside the 12th-century civil war or 'Anarchy'. I wanted to share another perspective on Henry of Huntingdon's vision of the earth ripped open and hell broken loose. In civil war, even the ground beneath your feet is torn apart... #AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems 1/3
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
#4 on my @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast’s look back at the year is an outstanding history book (& one of the great books about Liverpool) @samwetherell.bsky.social discussing Liverpool and the unmaking of Britain newbooksnetwork.com/liverpool-an...
Sam Wetherell, "Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain" (Bloomsbury, 2025) - New Books Network
newbooksnetwork.com
December 4, 2025 at 8:52 AM
#4 on my @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast’s look back at the year is an outstanding history book (& one of the great books about Liverpool) @samwetherell.bsky.social discussing Liverpool and the unmaking of Britain newbooksnetwork.com/liverpool-an...
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
And every one of those Glasgow children will grow up sounding like a proper little Weegie, while also being multilingual, unlike most REFUK thugs.
2 in 3 of Nigel Farage’s current and former partners do not speak English as their first language.
December 4, 2025 at 7:55 AM
And every one of those Glasgow children will grow up sounding like a proper little Weegie, while also being multilingual, unlike most REFUK thugs.
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
Enjoying this book *so* much right now, to the extent I am only allowing myself to read a few pages at a time to eke it out as much as possible… Would love more biography (in its loosest form obv) recommendations for 2026 (as I continue to ponder whether I want to write one myself…) #historians
December 3, 2025 at 11:05 PM
Enjoying this book *so* much right now, to the extent I am only allowing myself to read a few pages at a time to eke it out as much as possible… Would love more biography (in its loosest form obv) recommendations for 2026 (as I continue to ponder whether I want to write one myself…) #historians
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
For anyone in Manchester next week, I'm speaking at the Department of History's research seminar about my research on racism in prisons in England during the 1970s to mid-1980s.
Speaking at the University of Manchester's History Department in early December about my work on prisons and racism if you're in town and interested.
Dr Liam Liburd (Durham University), An Accidental History of Prisons and Race in Late Twentieth Century Britain | Events at The University of Manchester
Department of History Guest Seminar
events.manchester.ac.uk
December 3, 2025 at 11:11 AM
For anyone in Manchester next week, I'm speaking at the Department of History's research seminar about my research on racism in prisons in England during the 1970s to mid-1980s.
Reposted by Matt Houlbrook
People Without History are Dust uncovers long overlooked stories of same-sex desire in the Holocaust, exploring the lives of queer Jews that have been silenced by homophobia & reminding us why an inclusive approach to history is essential: bit.ly/483yOtz
@ankahajkova.bsky.social #LGBTQHistory
@ankahajkova.bsky.social #LGBTQHistory
December 3, 2025 at 3:33 PM
People Without History are Dust uncovers long overlooked stories of same-sex desire in the Holocaust, exploring the lives of queer Jews that have been silenced by homophobia & reminding us why an inclusive approach to history is essential: bit.ly/483yOtz
@ankahajkova.bsky.social #LGBTQHistory
@ankahajkova.bsky.social #LGBTQHistory