Helen Lovatt

@helenlovatt.bsky.social

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Professor of Classics at Nottingham, writing, cats, brass banding, flowers. Power of Sadness, Latin Epic, Argonauts crossing. She/they.

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So I can come back and read some of these later

Esquire put my 31-year old (!!) AMMONITE on it's 75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time list: "Gripping and gutsy, rich in layers of feminist and queer thought, Ammonite gleefully throws a stick of dynamite into the sci-fi firmament." Almost the only one in Top 25 not on sale—BUT I'M NOT COMPLAINING 🤩

The 75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Timewww.esquire.com See if your favorites made our expanded list.

Accountability: goals for today. Finish PowerPoint for paper on Friday. Do first draft of just transitions application. Catch up on admin. (Also: help D learn how to put up the big tent. Remember how to put up the big tent.)

Are there petitions or letter writing templates for communicating with new MPs? We should all get on this before it is too late.

Tell me again how "the grown ups are in the room." 16 kids have died so far. Labour want to make the ban on puberty blockers permanent, based solely on a hateful ideology, not science. www.theguardian.com/world/articl...

Need to think and plan more and write a bit less, so I can stop this situation where I’m getting blocked between first and second drafts. Overwhelmed by my own splurge. Sad.

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For those teaching, researching, or interested in visualizing Greek myth, there is an invaluable new interactive map & database of Greek mythic persons, objects, & places called MANTO. The raw linked open data alone is stunning but the maps are also fantastic [1/4] manto.unh.edu/viewer.p/60/...

Interesting. A nice framework for justifying thinking about ancient world (maybe even Flavian re codex), early modern and late 20th/21st century together in terms of change, resistance and resilience.

my new radio series, starts tomorrow: www.theguardian.com/books/articl... www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

That feeling of sitting in meetings and listening to people propose changes which are Obviously Terrible Ideas and then seeing it all crash in slow motion. Also fascism is really not the answer.

14 years. 14 years of these cruel, greedy shits. Over tomorrow.

Today accountability: 500 words broken walls burnt bodies; notes from project meeting; two tomatoes edits on article. Then I get to go to the cinema with my family!

Had my appraisal and I’m doing Way Too Many Things. I hereby pledge that I will say no to everything for at least six months. I will operate a ‘two out, one in’ policy until I am up to date, and I will prioritise a major project for two weeks between each minor project.

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It is Disability Pride Month - the perfect time to learn about ALT text and start using it! www.perkins.org/resource/how...

‘But there is one toxic ingredient from the last eight years of Tory rule …that can be eliminated more easily: the constant drip-feed of paranoid, xenophobic and anti-intellectual rhetoric from the ruling party, which seeks to win approving newspaper headlines with mindless attacks on academics.’

Quite a solid Long Read from the Grauniad on the current state of the HE sector and how we ended up here, despite universities being (allegedly) one of the jewels in the UK economic crown: www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-...

How the Tories pushed universities to the brink of disasterwww.theguardian.com The long read: Over the past 14 years, the Conservative dream of a free market in higher education has collided with the harsh reality of austerity and the cultural resentment of the radical right – d...

Many frogs ahead of me today. Including: a tricky meeting, editing an article, finding images, doing my annual appraisal form. I will try also to write some words to cheer myself up. Sort of missing teaching, which I do basically enjoy.

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Hooray, hooray, my new book's out today! #DoctorWho www.penguin.co.uk/books/462319...

Doctor Who: Cagedwww.penguin.co.uk Are aliens ever abducted by aliens? And if they were, would anyone believe their story? When the Doctor and Ruby arrive on Cavia, they meet a gentle local who is certain that she has been taken for s...

Tell me it’s ok to have finished my paper for Thursday, to have simultaneously spent too much and not enough time on it and have a handout that is much too big. I need to get rid of the jitters and get on with all the other stuff. Also successfully refilled the stapler #tinyjoys

Love it. Escaping to a place of clarity and renewal, doing work AND having fun. Today the woodlands of Albunea are my sanctuary and escape. Tomorrow I escape to London to talk value of Humanities, then voices in Le Guin, and hang out with my lovely son, as he lives his best musical life.

Following Neil Gaiman's JRR Tolkien lecture, I recalled I’d said a few things about escapism myself, a fair while ago. It’s a challenge thrown down in front of fantasy writers often enough after all. Click through to the blog to read what I've found. www.julietemckenna.com/thinking-abo...

Thinking about escapism … back in 2006www.julietemckenna.com After writing my previous post, another recollection has been prodding me. I’d had a few things to say about escapism. A fair while ago. I must written that up for the blog, surely? It’s a challeng…

So next big thing: trans myth retellings

Trans author here - I have a book released today - Unexploded Remnants by Elaine Gallagher. amzn.eu/d/07S4eqUp Also on Amazon.com and on Kobo

Unexploded Remnants eBook : Gallagher, Elaine: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Storeamzn.eu Unexploded Remnants eBook : Gallagher, Elaine: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Accountability: day 2 homemade writing retreat. Going to do the edits on an article, write 500 words and eat three frogs.

Two big frogs done this morning! Yay. Now writing, washing, relaxing.

Any party disendorsed by JK is good for me

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I fucking love David Tennant SO MUCH! (Source: Georgia Tennant's IG)

Accountability: I’m going to be in the office working by 11, after putting the shopping away.

This is very funny. And not very funny.

Sauron, in The Lord of The Rings is a mysterious figure. I imagine him there at the top of his tower and suddenly see him for who he is. Today's homage to Tolkien... @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com, thought you might like this one.

Beautiful! Queer IN SPAAAAACE

I made this Pride flag using only NASA images and our team thought it would be cool to share on social (I work on the NASA heliophysics communications team), but it's getting all sorts of hate on the bird app and Fbook. Thought y'all might be more appreciative of it here. ☺️🏳️‍🌈💖

Very useful piece for anyone you know taken in by Biggar and his ilk

Cold feet at the Spectator? Another battle in the culture wars re heritage institutions, slavery and indigenous voices all at issue in this new blog from @alanlester.bsky.social on Nigel Biggar's recent Glasgow intervention.

The Right Wing Culture War and the Refusal to Listenalanlester.co.uk Response to Nigel Biggar, ‘History lessened: Who gets to decide how we see the past?’ Alan Lester Background The Spectator emailed me this week to ask if I would record a segment for their Edition …

I decided to keep going, while it’s fresh in my head from teaching. Women read Horace 4. Glycera, Lycoris, Pholoe, Myrtale (Working girls). Odes 1.33 (In memory of Sharon James)

Damn, I always get stuck on that first one.

As always, @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com has excellent advice.

Last Latin script, but should I keep the poems going? Today a famous one: Thaliarchus and his friend. Odes 1.9.

Omg a total blinder of a script! Student reworked unseen passage on early modern court politics as original poem about social media. (I encourage literal and idiomatic translation.) This makes it all worthwhile.

Still marking. Women read Horace 3

Lunchtime conversation with daughter: we agree that The Bear (Christmas party episode) is dystopian While You Were Sleeping meets Abigail’s Party, the ultimate development of dinner party drama (a genre that’s been around since Nero’s murder of Britannicus in Tacitus/ Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis)