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judithflanders.co.uk
JudithFlanders
@judithflanders.co.uk
4.9K followers 420 following 4.4K posts
Crabby historian. Less crabby now blue skies beckon.

She/her • Agent: Bill Hamilton, amheath.com
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judithflanders.co.uk
‘Tory defect’ — the Freudian slips, they buuuurn!
HOUSE OF COMMONS LONDON SWIA OAA Nigel Farage MP House of Commons London SWIA OAA 13 January 2026 M, Farge Visiting Bermondsey and Old Southwark I am writing following your public engagement on 7th January in London Bridge, which is in my constituency: Bermondsey and Old Southwark. I appreciate you are unfamiliar with constituency requirements given your inattention to Clacton since being elected. But given you have spent three decades in and around Parliament, you should be aware that established protocol requires any MP conducting official business in another Member's constituency to notify the relevant Member in advance. You failed to follow parliamentary protocol on this matter last week. As someone who has so desperately attempted to be in Westminster for such a long time, I hope you are capable of learning and adhering to procedures, although I won't hold my breath. Given you have described our capital city as 'crime-ridden' and 'unsafe' it must have been very difficult for you to pluck up the courage to book a venue in the centre of the capital for your event to promote yet another Tory defect in your ranks. But please do conform to the rules should you ever come back. Your preference for spending time in London rather than Clacton (which is your constituency by the way), demonstrates the typically deceitful nature of your attacks on our capital. Deep down, you agree with me and the millions of UK and international visitors every year, that London remains our greatest city and well worth spending time in! I would say I look forward to your next visit to the best constituency, in the best city, in the best country on the planet, but unlike you and the former Tories who riddle your party, I am not comfortable spouting untruths. Sincerely, Nei Neil Coyle MP
January 14, 2026 at 6:33 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Heck of a job, Trumpland! 1 million fewer Canadians went on holiday to the US this summer.

I mean, hell, who needs tourist dollars?
Graphic showing number of Canadians visiting the US, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025. 2025 shows fewer visitors throughput 2025 apart from the first quarter of 2022, post covid.
January 13, 2026 at 2:41 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Today's reading.

Although I have to say that last item is a let-down.
Chapter title: 'The Everyday Life of a Wexford Parson: The Rev. William Hughes' Taste for Drink, Blasphemy, Indecent Exposure, Criminal Damage, Bestial Voyeurism and Field Sports'
January 12, 2026 at 6:38 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Fascinating slippery use of numbers here: percentage used for those without power, to indicate its smallness; absolute number used for those with power restored to make it look bigger.

I’m willing to bet good money that the first figure is multiples larger than the second.
“A No 10 spokesperson said: "The latest data I have is that around 0.21% of British customers are without power. Engineers and staff are working to reconnect them as quickly as possible. The latest numbers I have is approximately 150,000 customers have had their power restored so far."
January 10, 2026 at 11:12 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
How they think she should dress:
A 19th-centur photograph of a woman wearing mourning dress: a white cap, black dress from neck to wrist to feet, with great layers of ugly black crape, a non-shiny fabric, around the skirt.
January 10, 2026 at 9:24 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Oooh, yes! I wrote about it in my last book. At St Giles Cripplegate, the Barbican church.
More mementoes and celebrity souvenirs were to be found among the relics of writers and poets, and their pedigrees were enhanced not merely by the items themselves and with whom they originated, but also by those people who were handing them along. Leigh Hunt, a literary critic, had been given a lock of Milton’s hair, which he in turn presented to the poet Robert Browning, and the names of both men were carefully recorded and kept with it. What was not recorded was how Hunt came to have the hair. It is unlikely that it came directly from Milton’s descend- ants, or Hunt would have said so. More possible is an unsavoury episode, although it is extremely unlikely that Hunt himself knew of it. In 1790, over a century after the poet’s death, Milton’s grave at St Giles, Cripplegate, in London, was dug up, ostensibly for the purpose of locating it precisely so that a monument could be erected. A local antiquarian said both that the body had initially appeared ‘perfect’, and also that the ribcage soon collapsed, even as one of those present ‘pulled hard at the teeth, which resisted, until some one hit them a knock with a stone, when they easily came out’. Another said that ‘he had at one time a mind to bring away the whole under-jaw with the teeth in it; he had it in his hand, but tossed it back again’. Contemporaries added that the dead poet’s hair was pulled out in clumps from the skull, a leg bone was also removed, as were unnamed ‘other body parts’, as well as secondary relics like wood from the coffin. The body was then exhibited for a day and a half, first at 6d. a viewing, then dropping to 3d., and finally 2d., while pieces of the shroud, hair and bones were sold off when they were not pilfered.5
January 7, 2026 at 3:00 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
@terribleman.com ‘s helpful suggestion.
A hand holding up two concert tickets that read: STAY HOME AND DO NOTHING AND GO TO BED EARLY. The seat number is ‘COUCH’.
December 31, 2025 at 11:40 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
My grandmother sold my mum’s wedding dress to a film company, and it ended up being worn by Heather Sears in Room at the Top. (Mum left; Heather Sears right)
My parents’ wedding Heather Sears wearing my mum’s wedding dress in a publicity shot for Room at the Top.
December 30, 2025 at 12:02 AM
judithflanders.co.uk
An academic essay on the media published in 2009. Ah, sweet summer child...
Even when it comes to news, the media do not take a neutral stance on their stories and how they report or present their stories. They decide what topics or events are important enough to present or report – in other words, what’s important and what the public should pay attention to – and they broadcast or print their stories with a certain angle, slant, or approach. In effect, the media set an agenda and impart to that agenda a certain feeling-tone. They “frame” their stories in such a way that a particular way of thinking about them seems reasonable. When editors and reporters choose the words with which they construct a story, they are involved in translating or representing reality in a particular way. This is inevitable; how could things be otherwise? A mindless “objectivity” that gives any and all sides of a story “equal time” would produce an endless stream of marginal opinions. Try to imagine the American Nazi Party getting equal air time with the Democratic and Republican parties. [The last sentence is highlighted in the screen grab]
December 29, 2025 at 3:56 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Delightful. By using ‘Rebel yell’, @theobserveruk.bsky.social equates Labour MPs fighting to retain welfare benefits with US Confederate soldiers fighting for the right to enslave people.

Not sure whether they’re insane or catastrophically stupid. Either way, truly now a disgusting newspaper.
Rebel yell: the bitter fortnight that ruined Keir Starmer's year
December 28, 2025 at 3:25 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Opening of a remarkable review by Kathryn Hughes in @theguardian.com. Remarkable because Oscar Wilde appears to have converted to Catholicism at least a decade after *checks notes* his death.

Oh.
n the five decades between 1910 and 1960, more than half a million - people in England and Wales became Catholics. Among them were a clutch of literary stars: Oscar Wilde,
December 28, 2025 at 12:53 AM
judithflanders.co.uk
Thank you, @sturdyalex.bsky.social and @quietriotpod.bsky.social Your year update took me all the way through marmalade-making!
Pot of marmalade still liquid, boiling happily on the stove. 8 pots of marmalade, finished.
December 26, 2025 at 5:07 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Yeah, dude. Being holier than thou is sort of the job description for being Pope.
Tweet: Pope Leo said… Jesus being born in a stable…should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor and strangers is tantamount to rejecting God himself. Then some dipshit commented ‘It’d be interesting to see how this holier than thou man behaved if 1000s of illegals bum rushed Vatican City and refused to leave…’
December 25, 2025 at 6:20 AM
judithflanders.co.uk
Among the many shocking and disgusting revelations in the Epstein files: the discovery that the Andrew formerly known as Prince had a valet from the age of TWO.

As Hemingway said, the rich are different: they’re batshit insane.
"Distraught! You probably wouldn't know but I lost my valet on Thursday. He died in his sleep. He had been with me since I was 2. I am a little off balance as not only has
December 24, 2025 at 6:49 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
December 23, 2025 at 6:09 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
I would just like it on the record, m'lud, that I did NOT say Clement Clarke Moore wrote *checks notes* The Nightmare before Christmas.

@the-independent.com
However, there’s no proper evidence of this ever happening, according to historian and author of Christmas: A Biography, Judith Flanders. “We have no real idea of when and where it came about,” she says. “The first mentions are in the 1810s in the US, where it appears in a little clutch of Christmas paraphernalia from one circle of friends, so our guess is that they invented it.” This group of friends included The Nightmare Before Christmas author Clement Clarke Moore and short story writer Washington Irving, who penned The Knickerbocker’s History of New York, both of which included references to stockings. “It was supposed to be a history, but it was actually a comic satire,” Flanders says of the latter text.
December 22, 2025 at 3:18 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Short answer is this National Archives flowchart: cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/in..., but there are a few little tweaks. Longer answer I sent:
I am unaware of a legislation change as outlined by ChatGPT. (Disclaimer: I have never used an AI chatbot, and I trust them about as far as I can throw a grand piano.) It may well have been passed, but it would have felt more reliable if we’d been given the name of the Act, or the date. I have checked the National Archives website, which is pretty good on copyright information, and its flowchart suggests your material is in copyright until 2039: https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/non-crown-copyright-flowchart.pdf. I assume if there were updated legislation, the NA would know about it, but there is no mention of it online that I can see. The chatbot is certainly incorrect in stating that unpublished letters are literary works and that therefore they fall into the public domain 70 years after the death of the author. Unpublished works in general have a copyright that *begins* on the date of first publication, and the material only comes out of copyright 70 years after that publication. The only exception is for items held in a publicly funded archive in the UK. This is the information I usually follow in that case: For unpublished works in publicly funded collections in the UK, there is a special exemption that permits the copying and first publication of an unpublished literary, dramatic or musical work, together with any illustrations (but not an artistic work alone). The exemption applies when: · the work is available to the public in an archive or similar institution · the work is at least 100 years old · the work’s author has been dead for at least 50 years · the present copyright owner is unknown to the publisher So even if that’s where the letters are, it looks to me like that last item might catch you out, since the Carroll estate appears to be functioning. The final query is whether the material you want to quote falls into the ‘fair usage’ category. Here the law is vague — you cannot quote a ’substantial proportion…
December 21, 2025 at 6:31 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Katherine Rundell’s biography of John Donne, Super-Infinite, is every bit as good as everyone says. On the same page:
T. S. Eliot, a man who had in common with Donne both poetic iconoclasm and good clothes, loved his writing. He said: "When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped enough to fit. Sir Robert Southwell (there are many famous Robert Southwells of the period: in this case, the President of the Royal Society rather than the saint who was disembowelled) had a commonplace book in which some headings were confidently
December 20, 2025 at 5:21 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
And, of course, like all white male 'artists', he has (female -- shame on you, honey) enablers:
Laura Berman, who was the Hanover State Opera’s artistic director when the episode occurred, said she wasn’t surprised that companies kept staging his productions. “In the dance world, there aren’t zillions of people at his level,” Berman said. “That’s why I hired him in the first place.” She called Goecke’s behavior in the 2023 incident “inexcusable” and said that bystanders had feared that he might attack them, too. But Berman said that Goecke had apologized and also told her that he had undertaken media coaching to help improve interactions with journalists.
December 19, 2025 at 2:42 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Well, there's this newspaper interview.
he told Süddeutsche Zeitung that the media reaction to the 2023 incident had made him “more famous than ever,” and provocatively claimed that he would sell his mother “to a men’s prison in Istanbul” in exchange for a headline calling him “the coolest German since Marlene Dietrich.”
December 19, 2025 at 2:42 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
And it’s not as if she didn’t have a proud record in the Making Shit Up sweepstakes. Wikipedia on her very first book:
Accuracy Christina Hoff Sommers criticized Wolf for publishing the estimate that 150,000 women were dying every year from anorexia. Sommers said she traced the source to the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association, which said it was misquoted; the figure refers to sufferers, not fatalities. Wolf's citation came from a book by Brumberg, who referred to an American Anorexia and Bulimia Association newsletter and misquoted the newsletter. Wolf acknowledged the error and changed it in future editions. Sommers gave an estimate for the number of fatalities in 1990 as 100-400, (39) [40) The annual anorexia casualties in the U.S. were estimated to be around 50 to 60 per year in the mid-1990s. (41) In 1995, for an article in The Independent on Sunday, British journalist Joan Smith recalled asking Wolf to explain her unsourced assertion in The Beauty Myth that the UK "has 3.5 million anorexics or bulimics (95 per cent of them female), with 6,000 new cases yearly". Wolf replied, according to Smith, that she had calculated the statistics from patients with eating disorders at one clinic. (32)) Caspar Schoemaker of the Netherlands Trimbos Institute published a paper in the academic journal Eating Disorders demonstrating that of the 23 statistics cited by Wolf in Beauty Myth, 18 were incorrect, with Wolf citing numbers that average out to 8 times the number in the source she was citing. (42)
December 19, 2025 at 1:07 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
My humble contribution:
Olivia Nuzzi, not pursued by a bear.
December 15, 2025 at 9:56 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Separated at birth?
Glamorous photo of journalist and RFK Jr hypester Olivia Nuzzi as promoted in a weird thirsty NYT article.
December 15, 2025 at 9:55 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
The staggering self-absorption of the British upper-middle-classes. Tell that to every working-class woman throughout history, Joanna Trollope.
The changing expectations of women were a central concern. "I was born at the very end of 1943, and for my generation there were almost no women who worked," she said in a…
December 13, 2025 at 11:08 PM
judithflanders.co.uk
Hmm. That winter brown is a bit Australian. I’d suggest silver.
A snowy path in winter, the trees on either side covered in snow.
December 13, 2025 at 2:40 PM