Last in my reviews of the year comes books (I saw many films but time has run out for making a constructive narrative out of them). I read a lot in 2024, though it never feels like I have read enough, always with a book at my side to the point that I practically panicRead More
One of the goals I have for this website is to make as many of the texts I have written as I can available for free download. You can find what is available as hyperlinks on the Publications and Talks sections of the site. One text I have just added is a 12,000 word essayRead More
Nine years ago I started up a website that gathered examples of eyewitness testimony from people going to see motion pictures. I called it Picturegoing, which felt catchy, and the dot com address was available. Today, I am happy to announce, the book version has been published. The book is entitled Picturegoers – because aRead More
Such has been the flurry of business surrounding the British Library’s exhibition on the history of British news, Breaking the News, that I have neglected to mention here what should be its most lasting legacy: the book. So, at the end of April 2022, the British Library published Breaking the News: 500 Years of NewsRead More
In a world of websites, databases, digital archives offering every kind of information, and every manner of finding such information, why do I cherish some printed reference works? In part it is familiarity – there are works that have sat on my shelves for many years, old friends, reassuring to see, pleasing to handle. InRead More
I have been reading We Are Bellingcat, by Eliot Higgins. Subtitled ‘an intelligence agency for the people’, it is an account of the rise of of a group of dedicated open-source investigators, whose means of analysing openly available material on the Internet to investigate such stories on the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 to theRead More
The oldest item in my book collection dates from 1809. It is small volume with 314 pages of minuscule type entitled The Tablet of Memory. The early nineteenth century being an age of grandiloquent book titles, its full name naturally fills most of a page: The Tablet of Memory; Shewing Every Memorable Event in History,Read More
I was spending two weeks in the Lake District, and I wanted to seek out one of the lakes I had not seen before, despite having visited the area many times. Ennerdale Water is one of the least known and least visited of the lakes, owing to its remote location to the west of theRead More
Well, perhaps I can retire now. I’ve been at the British Library for eleven years, and we have finally got round to doing that which several must have expected of my being there, which is to digitise the silent film era trade journal The Bioscope. The fact that I had nothing to do with theRead More
Earlier this year I wrote a blog post about the director Peter Jackson’s plans to produce documentary featuring colourised footage from the First World War. Though nothing was available of the film bar a single still, I was alarmed by the rationale behind it. The argument seemed to be that digital technology now allowed usRead More