Mathew Lyons

@mathewlyons.bsky.social

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Writer, historian. FRHistS. Recent work: History Today, The Spectator, Slightly Foxed, New Humanist, Engelsberg Ideas.

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Mathew Lyons

This is ESSENTIAL if you still have a twitter/X account and it WAS turned on for me so clearly at least some UK/EU accounts are affected. Share widely, turn it off.

If anyone's wondering how things are going on the hellsite: This setting was just turned on by default for everyone. if you still have an account with content, go log in and disable this so Grok can't use your tweets as training data. Direct link: twitter.com/settings/gro...

A new lease of life on The Broken Compass for a piece I wrote on the tragic story of Thomas Kyd, scraps and echoes and all bit.ly/3YkS7tH

Thomas Kyd: fragments of a lifebit.ly Searching for traces of one of the first great Elizabethan playwrights

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Mathew Lyons

Right, so this is the story of the old mate I was out with last night, didn't happen to me, but too good not to repeat. Will probably only work for the Brit adjacent.

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George Macdonald wrote the original Three Lions

Reading about the Tudor diplomat and statesman Sir John Mason, who served successfully under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. His motto, he said, was "do and say nothing".

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Mathew Lyons

I’ll say it before and I’ll say it again, the most tangible manifestation of the problem with how the streaming services see art is their complete aversion to differentiating between any of it.

Went up to the V&A to look at the Nottingham alabasters again. Planning to write about them

Really enjoyed writing this for ⁦Engelsberg Ideas about Michael Gilson’s Behind the Privet Hedge. The book has its flaws but it makes an eloquent case for the cultural and social importance of the suburban garden and for the utility of beauty too. engelsbergideas.com/reviews/gard...

Gardens for allengelsbergideas.com The transformative impact of suburbia on the British landscape between the wars is often viewed in negative terms. But the development of the suburban garden is indivisible from the wider cause of pro...

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Mathew Lyons

I've picked twelve history & non-fiction books to look out for through July and August. Obviously by this I mean twelve books that I want to read. There are *tons* of other great books out there and I haven't scoured every publisher's list. Let me know what I've missed! bit.ly/4cxTABm

Books to look out for in July and Augustbit.ly Twelve upcoming titles that have caught my eye

Christian IX, the 19th-century King of Denmark, used to say that the Danish summer began on July 31 when you took off your coat, and ended on August 1, when you put it back on again. Can't think why that's been on my mind lately…

I’ve written some background to my History Today piece about the decipherment of Linear B. ‘Background’ here being code for ‘all the colour I couldn’t fit into the piece in the first place…’ mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-deciph...

The decipherment of Linear Bmathewlyons.substack.com Some background to my column in History Today this month

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Mathew Lyons

Good Day! Interior of Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate by John Sell Cotman 1831 Watercolour (Victoria & Albert Museum)

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Mathew Lyons

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Dr Francis Young

Furthermore, nothing requires you to treat voting as a political act; you could treat it as some sort of magical or divinatory practice and interpret the ballot paper as an occult sigil of some sort

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Mathew Lyons

We visited the Old Masters auction viewings at Sotheby's and Christie's yesterday. I've picked ten of my favourites and written about them on Substack. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/going-goin...

Going, going, gone…mathewlyons.substack.com Ten of the best works at this week's Old Masters auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's in London

We visited the Old Masters auction viewings at Sotheby's and Christie's yesterday. I've picked ten of my favourites and written about them on Substack. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/going-goin...

Going, going, gone…mathewlyons.substack.com Ten of the best works at this week's Old Masters auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's in London

@stephenkb.bsky.social Further to your newsletter this morning, I wholeheartedly recommend a trip to the Green Knowe house www.greenknowe.co.uk. Do it soon because Diana, Lucy Boston's daughter in law, is still doing tours afaik and they are almost as magical as the house.

Greenknowe Lucy Boston Open Gardens Hemingford Grey Cambridgewww.greenknowe.co.uk The Manor is a house in the village of Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire. It was built in the 1130s. Much of the original house remains intact.

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Mathew Lyons

📢Another ticket sold for... Middleton’s Endgame: A Game at Chess LIVE! Join us for our pop up Thomas Middleton Festival! With a live performance of A Game at Chess & a host of panels and background into the close of Tom’s career. Book Now or miss out! www.ticketsource.co.uk/beyondshakes...

"Middleton's Endgame: A Game at Chess LIVE!" at The White Bear Theatrewww.ticketsource.co.uk Tickets are now available for Middleton's Endgame: A Game at Chess LIVE! at The White Bear Theatre, London on Sun 11 Aug 2024 at 1:00PM. Click the link for further information and to secure your tickets now!

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Mathew Lyons

I saw this painting a few weeks ago in Lisbon and absolutely fell in love with it - especially the look on the woman's face. I've written a piece on my Substack about the artist, Domingos Sequeira, his life and work, and why I love this as much as I do! bit.ly/4b9DjAV

I have a review of the National Portrait Gallery's fascinating new exhibition about the lives of Henry VIII's six wives up on Engelsberg Ideas. engelsbergideas.com/reviews/six-...

Six Tudor lives in their own rightengelsbergideas.com Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr were distinct and individual women, each compelling in their own right, and not just tragic adjuncts...

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Mathew Lyons

would you like to see my favorite letter i've ever found in our records? it's from 1925 and i think about it every day of my life

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Mathew Lyons

I wrote a thing on my Substack about the cartoonist Fougasse, the hapless Mr Sunak, and the D-Day commemorations last week. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-men-wh...

The rememberedmathewlyons.substack.com Reflections on the ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day

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Mathew Lyons

The representative asked not to be named because they don't want to take responsibility for crashing arts funding into the ground with their entitled puritanism

Yeah right. Name them.

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Mathew Lyons

BTW the Evil Empire seems to be selling the DE hardcover right this second for about half off, and as much as I don't like to send business their way, a deal's a deal, and you can always spend your savings at your local indie. And it's almost Father's Day.

I wrote a thing on my Substack about the cartoonist Fougasse, the hapless Mr Sunak, and the D-Day commemorations last week. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-men-wh...

The rememberedmathewlyons.substack.com Reflections on the ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day

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Mathew Lyons

My new book, The Roads to Rome, is out today! Here's a thread with a few highlights of what's inside.

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Mathew Lyons

Some D-Day related reading. I've written a long piece about landscape and memory and the Battle for Normandy in the summer of 1944. I broke it into three sections to make it a bit easier to read. Loosely, part one is about cemeteries and memorialisation… mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-sense-...

The ‘sense-haunted ground’: landscape, memory and the battle for Normandy 1944, part onemathewlyons.substack.com Remembering the dead

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Mathew Lyons

If you’re able to do so, please visit the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of works by Julia Margaret Cameron and Francesca Woodman. The photographs astonish, no matter how familiar they might be. My Favourite Picture of all My Works (Julia Jackson), 1867

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Mathew Lyons

This is a good read

Part two is about the experience of the Allied troops fighting in the bocage… mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-sense-...

The ‘sense-haunted ground’: landscape, memory and the battle for Normandy 1944, part twomathewlyons.substack.com The experience of combat through the bocage