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Going to try to make this accidental 'livelihoo' on the OUP website into a thing: capricious quality of life and lifelikeness, essayistic esprit, careless brilliance.

Devastating & infuriating news from Exeter, & from Glasgow, & from so many universities. The humanities foster critical thought, articulate values, imagine alternative ways of being & acting, create possibility, & curate & revitalize history & culture. Never more needed, never more threatened.

Two-year early modern English job, at Oriel College and the Oxford English Faculty, starting October. Happy to field any questions! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

I've had the privilege in the last year of talking to the artist Olivia Plender about c17th literature & medicine, women's health, & extra-institutional care for bodies & minds. Her exhibition, Little Fennel's Complaint, opens at Modern Art Oxf on Saturday: go! modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/oli...

It's the Feast of the Ascension! This time last year, I wrote about the flagrant silliness of paintings of disappearing feet in paintings for @apollo-magazine.com, and why their silliness (believe this non-sense if you can!) is the point. apollo-magazine.com/ascension-fe...

Prompted to look up 'obviate' in the dictionary, by hearing a friend misusing it; only to realize that though he is misusing it, my own sense of it deviates (hm) from the OED. What do you think 'obviate' means?

This is a great collection, with a brilliant introduction (and afterword, o'course). I commend and recommend!

Looks like I picked a good time to start learning Hungarian.

In writing my book about the Anatomy of Melancholy, with which I'm now tinkering for the last pre-proof time, I appear to have assembled two documents of cut bits, one of 41,029 words, one of 22,122. The publisher insists the book itself must be no longer than 70,000 words. All very unBurtonian.

In awe of the two women sitting on the Victoria line this morning applying eyeliner -- eyeliner! -- between Highbury & Islington and King's Cross: the shoogliest stretch of this most shoogly line. Their black lines impressively unshoogly.