New history of Christianity - ‘Dominion’ - out now! Dinosaur lover. Stonehenge Tunnel hater. A 'leading English cricketer' - The Times. Podcast: @theresthistory
17 added to My Authors
May 16 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Murder, jealousy, greed, surfing, refugees, vicars, ancient Egypt, structuralists, sensational impressions, & Dominic Sandbrook's pleasure island: all feature in today's @TheRestHistory on AGATHA CHRISTIE
ALL TO PLAY FOR!!!
Honoured, as acting captain, to present @MirandaMalins with her cap.
Apr 28 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Ankylosaurs, I am charmed to learn from @Dave_Hone, may have signalled that they were in the mood for luuuurve by blowing out little inflatable sacs on their noses.
Tyrannosaurs, meanwhile, seem just to have bitten each other.
Apr 18 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The premium set by Christ on sheltering the needy, which the Gospels could hardly make any clearer, is not necessarily helpful to the government of a country richer & less war-torn than most other countries, & which doesn't want to throw open its borders.
"One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions."
I should probably just add that parts of it are quite gruesome.
Apr 13 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Tomorrow's episode of @TheRestHistory is on THE CRUCIFIXION
That Jesus was not a Roman citizen, that he suffered a slave's death, that crucifixion was the most humiliating form of execution imaginable, has always been for Christians - right from the time of Paul - fundamental to their understanding of who he was.
I love the idea that a British university, by dropping Britain's most signficant female novelist in favour of an American one, is somehow decolonising itself. telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/0…
Why don't British humanities departments just admit the truth: that they're absolutely desperate to become outposts of American university culture?
Apr 4 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I curl up with @Dave_Hone’s very handsome-looking new book - which, he says in the introduction, “is ultimately about what we DON’T know about dinosaurs.”
“We have probably learned more about dinosaurs in the last 20 years than in the previous 200” - @Dave_Hone
Foot, so I learned from @dcsandbrook's 'Who Dares Wins,' grew up in a house containing “240 Bibles, 130 volumes by or about Montaigne & 300 by or about Milton, 3,000 tracts from the English Civil War & an entire room on the French Revolution.”
To @smitf_london, there - in my role as a top arbiter of fashion - to attend the launch of Matty Bovan’s Autumn/Winter collection. Very excited to find out what I’ll be wearing this coming Christmas!
Mind you, I’ll tell you one person who would have been very down on fashion shows: St Martin.
Feb 12 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
To Mayfair, there to plunge into the bowels of London for a tour of Down Street tube station: opened in 1907, closed in 1932, & used by Churchill & the war cabinet as a bunker until the Cabinet War Rooms were up & running.
Thank you, @daisychristo, for sourcing the ticket!
We get a torch! And a lanyard!
Feb 11 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Quite excited, because tomorrow I start the siege of Jerusalem… #Pax
Starting the siege of Jerusalem