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A fabulous walk around #Rothbury Terraces with views over Simonside, Coquetdale, and the Cheviots. Saw my first swallow and skylark of the year, plus this stone engraved by E. Rigby in 1908. Was she up here on holiday from Liverpool perhaps?

Applications are now open for the BSECS-Northumbria Fellowship - up to £4000 to research the culture, history, and identity of the North East of England and the Scottish Borders in the long eighteenth century. Find out more at bsecs.org.uk/prizes-and-awa…

My thanks to Marika Ceschia for this lovely review of my book The Unnatural Trade: Slavery, Abolition, and Environmental Writing, 1650–1807. The full review is in the @ASLEUKI journal Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism. You can read it in full at: doi.org/10.1080/146884…

I have just voted at my local polling station in #Alnwick, in the newly renamed 'Alnwick Hotspur Ward'. Presumably this rebranding of the electoral map is in honour of local lad Henry 'Hotspur' Percy's lurid political career of treachery and rebellion...

Typical #Alnwick. It’s a Saturday evening so naturally all the pubs in the Market Place are closed.

I spilled some peanuts on the ground while refilling the bird feeder. Shortly after, a single jackdaw took a single peanut and flew away. 20 minutes later, an entire flock arrived. Did the first jackdaw invite the others? Or did it return and the others just followed? Discuss.

This artefact in the Newcastle station café purports to be an antique coffee machine, but it is in fact clearly waiting to be activated by its mother ship.

The BSECS-Northumbria Fellowship offers up to £4000 to research the history, culture, literature, and/or identity of the North East of England and the Scottish Borders in the long eighteenth century. Deadline for applications is 31 May 25. Find out more at bsecs.org.uk/prizes-and-awa…

Today is Linnaeus’s birthday and I have celebrated by visiting his house and garden in Uppsala as well as his grave in Uppsala cathedral. Tomorrow I’m speaking at the annual meeting of the Swedish Linnaeus Society. I’ve had a very warm welcome in Sweden so far!

I’ve had a lovely morning birding at Årike nature reserve near Uppsala. Around 40 species including kingfisher, marsh harrier, yellow wagtail, pied flycatcher, and my first ever thrush nightingale.

This afternoon I was at Hammarby: Linnaeus’s summerhouse a little outside Uppsala. He entertained and lectured here, and the garden, woods, and meadows are full of species he was the first to describe. I also saw a hen harrier fly over!

Uppsala is at the same latitude as Shetland, but everywhere there are trees, woods, forests. The bare, wildlife-depleted hills of Scotland and Northern England have little to do with climate, but rather centuries of clearance and excessive sheep grazing. Let’s replant the hills!

Stockholm appears to be a city of dreaming spires, at least in the Gamla Stan, or old town.

Further to my earlier post about Stockholm old town and its dreaming spires, these spires seem to be counterbalanced by Gamla Stan’s numerous and curious subterranean passageways.

I did the tourist thing and took a short “motor-boat sightseeing” trip around Stockholm. It was lashing with rain when I started, but the sun eventually struggled through in a kind of half-hearted northern way. I saw only about eight of Stockholm’s eight trillion or so islands.

Nice views of Bass Rock and the first, second, and third Forth bridges on the approach into Edinburgh on my return from Stockholm. Now for an afternoon at the National Library of Scotland before heading back to Northumberland.

Last Call! The BSECS-Northumbria Fellowship offers up to £4000 to research the history, culture, literature, and/or identity of North East England and the Scottish Borders in the long eighteenth century. Application deadline is 31 May 25. Find out more at bsecs.org.uk/prizes-and-awa…

I asked ChatGPT to list all ten of my books. In fact, I've only written nine, but it listed ten anyway. The first title is incorrect but recognisable. The other nine are completely made up or by others. Compare the covers or see the *actual* list at brycchancarey.com/bookshop/index…

I’m in Stirling for a few days which, unusually for a Scottish city, perhaps uniquely, has an eighteenth-century pub in which Robert Burns once stayed. Literary B̶r̶i̶t̶a̶i̶n̶ Ireland