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Spycraft. Tricks & Tools of the Dangerous Trade Nadine Akkerman Universiteit Leiden discusses the deadly games of espionage and how it influenced some of history’s most iconic figures, in this Security History Network lecture Utrecht University on 24 Feb Spycrafty Geschiedenis | Historiek.net uu.nl/en/events/lect…

Inside the early modern spy’s toolkit | Dr Pauline Blistène engelsbergideas.com/reviews/inside…

One of the most calmly insightful pieces I have ever read on Parkinson's, and I speak as a man who has known it all-too-well for seventeen years lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/…

It's incredible how the president and v-p of the USA, still the world's most powerful country, seem intent on showing everyone that they are just a pair of sad, stupid, pre-school bullies. They don't even reach tin-pot dictator levels of statesmanship.

When I heard that the final seasons of Good Omens, The Handmaid's Tale and [insert appropriate tv show to taste], I didn't realise that they were going to be reality no tv shows ...

Spycraft Yale University Press London 📖 awarded best academic book publicity campaign honour by PPC - thebookseller.com/news/ppc-revea…

Today's word is 'Hobbernobbing-touching with yours the rim of the person's glass with whom you drink wine.'

In the 1670s, people apparently played a card game called 'Bone Ace', which was described as 'a licking game for money'

I know this isn’t what the poster was concerned about but does anyone else find this sentence troubling or is it just me? ‘ICE picks up random Latino man who was born in Chicago while buying a pizza.’

Anyone seen my website? It appears to have escaped ...

Is even Trump's glass half full? The pandemic brought with it a noticeable reduction in emissions (of the atmospheric sort) ... will Trump's New World Trade Order have a similar effect? In destroying the modern world, will he save humanity?

The book is out in UK bookshops today!

Odd that the Yanks are still blustering on about the Panama Canal when they seem hell-bent on stopping global trade in its tracks ...

The Faintest of Tickles: A new anthology of cricket writing amzn.eu/d/bRB3GCm #Amazon A must read for cricket lovers

Chastening/heartening (delete as the fancy takes you) to know that some writers get sales figures weekly ... yes, weekly, and yet still they chunter ... tempted now to talk in absolutes ... theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/m…

Was that the first Leiden cuckoo calling or am I going soft in the ears?

Very happy to read Catherine Bates’ review of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts in Renaissance Quarterly, which calls the ‘superb, exhaustive, and scholarly’ Queen of Hearts ‘the first [truly] historical biography of this remarkable woman’. I’ll take that for the win OUP History

According to the Graun's cricket correspondant, an early review of a Root LBW shout 'showed the ball would have clipped the bails but not with sufficient force for the on-field decision to be reversed.' What? Is this a Star Wars intervention?

Professor Lucy Easthope so many useful takeaways from your lovely #DesertIslandDiscs BBC Radio 4 Today

The appointment of Blaise Metreweli as head of MI6 would come as no surprise to anyone who has read Invisible Agents and Spycraft by Professor Nadine Akkerman - if you have yet to do so, maybe now's the time ... @financialtimes ft.com/content/741772…