Sam Wetherell
@samwetherell.bsky.social
Historian of Britain and the World at the University of York. Interested in cities, art-making and the future. Liverpool and the Un-Making of Britain out now: www.samwetherell.com
““If we are going to get AI to work for Britain, we need Britons and British public services that can work with AI,” Kendall said. “If we can show that AI helps young people learn, supports local businesses to be more productive, and improves public services, then we can show what’s possible…”
February 3, 2026 at 8:10 AM
““If we are going to get AI to work for Britain, we need Britons and British public services that can work with AI,” Kendall said. “If we can show that AI helps young people learn, supports local businesses to be more productive, and improves public services, then we can show what’s possible…”
A new year means a fresh crop of books! I've compiled a list below of new and upcoming tiles I would love to get reviewed for @urbanhistory.bsky.social. If you want a copy of one of these in return for a review, let me know! Beginning with vol III of the awesome-looking Cambridge History of Europe!
January 30, 2026 at 1:16 PM
A new year means a fresh crop of books! I've compiled a list below of new and upcoming tiles I would love to get reviewed for @urbanhistory.bsky.social. If you want a copy of one of these in return for a review, let me know! Beginning with vol III of the awesome-looking Cambridge History of Europe!
Magnitogorsk was famously a 15 minute city.
January 30, 2026 at 9:22 AM
Magnitogorsk was famously a 15 minute city.
It is endlessly frustrating that this needs to be said, but to believe this is to believe that cold blooded mass murder of civilians is acceptable in Gaza, but not in Minneapolis. A politics that is imaginatively stunted and racially circumscribed.
January 26, 2026 at 9:06 AM
It is endlessly frustrating that this needs to be said, but to believe this is to believe that cold blooded mass murder of civilians is acceptable in Gaza, but not in Minneapolis. A politics that is imaginatively stunted and racially circumscribed.
What a time to be in Boston for 36 hours.
January 24, 2026 at 1:08 PM
What a time to be in Boston for 36 hours.
Lovely to see the Liverpool and the unmaking of Britain was the best selling non fiction at the wonderful News From Nowhere bookshop in Liverpool!
January 6, 2026 at 6:29 PM
Lovely to see the Liverpool and the unmaking of Britain was the best selling non fiction at the wonderful News From Nowhere bookshop in Liverpool!
Breaking my winter break hiatus to say that absolutely everyone should this extraordinary wide-ranging article on psychoanalysis, TERFs, Palestine and our present moment by Amia Srinivasan www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
December 31, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Breaking my winter break hiatus to say that absolutely everyone should this extraordinary wide-ranging article on psychoanalysis, TERFs, Palestine and our present moment by Amia Srinivasan www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
The man who accelerated his car into a crowd of people in Liverpool admits simply to having “lost his temper.” The most recent example of what the Zetkin Collective called the “great driving right show” - the political, social and environmental debasement of the car. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
December 16, 2025 at 9:56 AM
The man who accelerated his car into a crowd of people in Liverpool admits simply to having “lost his temper.” The most recent example of what the Zetkin Collective called the “great driving right show” - the political, social and environmental debasement of the car. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Wonderful, urgent essay by @emilybaughan.bsky.social in @bostonreview.bsky.social on the recognition and politicisation of care work in the long shadow of Wages for Housework. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
November 27, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Wonderful, urgent essay by @emilybaughan.bsky.social in @bostonreview.bsky.social on the recognition and politicisation of care work in the long shadow of Wages for Housework. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
Lovely sighting of @lauracforster.bsky.social’s Friends in Common in the Scheltema bookshop in Amsterdam. Come for the sociale wetenschappen, stay for the friendship.
November 25, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Lovely sighting of @lauracforster.bsky.social’s Friends in Common in the Scheltema bookshop in Amsterdam. Come for the sociale wetenschappen, stay for the friendship.
Dutch tourist shops are inventing objects you could never believe.
November 25, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Dutch tourist shops are inventing objects you could never believe.
Almost everyone I know under 40 is more radical now than they were at 18. To grow up, have kids, fight for stable housing and work in our present moment is to confront head on the scale of the economic and ecological crises we now face. Moderation with age was a generationally specific thing.
November 23, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Almost everyone I know under 40 is more radical now than they were at 18. To grow up, have kids, fight for stable housing and work in our present moment is to confront head on the scale of the economic and ecological crises we now face. Moderation with age was a generationally specific thing.
Well this is very lovely - Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain named a book of the year by the great @eriklinstrum.bsky.social for History Today!
November 17, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Well this is very lovely - Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain named a book of the year by the great @eriklinstrum.bsky.social for History Today!
Alex Norris knowingly speaking misleading incendiary nonsense. The UK spends 0.014% of its budget on refugees. This is aside from the net economic benefits of migration. Painting this in zero sum economic terms is absurd - the cruelty is the point and these people should be haunted forever by this.
November 17, 2025 at 9:31 AM
Alex Norris knowingly speaking misleading incendiary nonsense. The UK spends 0.014% of its budget on refugees. This is aside from the net economic benefits of migration. Painting this in zero sum economic terms is absurd - the cruelty is the point and these people should be haunted forever by this.
This feels about right.
October 31, 2025 at 1:37 PM
This feels about right.
That Britain has a king, that the king's brother has been involved in serious instances of sexual abuse, that the consequence is for him to be stripped of a handful of abstruse feudal titles and that Britain's elite think this is a fitting punishment, is the mark of a truly fucking weird country.
October 31, 2025 at 9:30 AM
That Britain has a king, that the king's brother has been involved in serious instances of sexual abuse, that the consequence is for him to be stripped of a handful of abstruse feudal titles and that Britain's elite think this is a fitting punishment, is the mark of a truly fucking weird country.
Such an honour to see a wonderful, long and thoughtful review of my book in the latest @lrb.co.uk - by the excellent Florence Sutcliffe Braithwaite. It captures how each of my books were products of their specific political moments. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
October 29, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Such an honour to see a wonderful, long and thoughtful review of my book in the latest @lrb.co.uk - by the excellent Florence Sutcliffe Braithwaite. It captures how each of my books were products of their specific political moments. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
*curb your enthusiasm music starts playing*
October 23, 2025 at 8:36 PM
*curb your enthusiasm music starts playing*
Today, after more than 15 years of living on and off in the US, I had the strange experience of becoming a US citizen.
October 23, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Today, after more than 15 years of living on and off in the US, I had the strange experience of becoming a US citizen.
This new piece by @hornseyhq.bsky.social in Modern British Studies looks fascinating: Factory tourism in inter-war Britain: the spectacular construction of social-democratic mass production.
October 13, 2025 at 11:49 AM
This new piece by @hornseyhq.bsky.social in Modern British Studies looks fascinating: Factory tourism in inter-war Britain: the spectacular construction of social-democratic mass production.
This essay by @sonalidhanpal.bsky.social on the relationship between decolonisation and mass council housing is one of the most exciting works of British urban history I've read in a long, long time. It points the way to a different kind of future for our work. direct.mit.edu/grey/article...
October 9, 2025 at 9:14 AM
This essay by @sonalidhanpal.bsky.social on the relationship between decolonisation and mass council housing is one of the most exciting works of British urban history I've read in a long, long time. It points the way to a different kind of future for our work. direct.mit.edu/grey/article...
Explaining a burger to a British person: "Imagine a sausage"
October 9, 2025 at 6:41 AM
Explaining a burger to a British person: "Imagine a sausage"
Striking and grimly predictable that the most consequential effect of Liz Truss's premiership has been to radically constrain the state's political and economic imagination. She lost the battle, but won the war by binding Britain seemingly forever to austerity. www.ft.com/content/7615...
October 7, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Striking and grimly predictable that the most consequential effect of Liz Truss's premiership has been to radically constrain the state's political and economic imagination. She lost the battle, but won the war by binding Britain seemingly forever to austerity. www.ft.com/content/7615...
The qualifying sentence that begins "to be sure" is doing an *enormous* amount of heavy lifting in this saccharine and naive attempt to rehabilitate the nascent liberalism of the eighteenth century Atlantic World. The ruins of the present owe so much to this past. www.ft.com/content/650a...
October 4, 2025 at 1:17 PM
The qualifying sentence that begins "to be sure" is doing an *enormous* amount of heavy lifting in this saccharine and naive attempt to rehabilitate the nascent liberalism of the eighteenth century Atlantic World. The ruins of the present owe so much to this past. www.ft.com/content/650a...