iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

A sunflower- bush?! Quite unusual looking. It’s the traffic cone as sets them off in their full glory. 🌻

Yellow sunflowers behind a green bench in front of a green hut with a red and white traffic cone in between.

Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

And here’s John Hawkins of Plymouth. A figure that featured greatly in my historical rites of passage as a young person. All of these historical figures have had immense impacts on our lives, yet most British people know so little about it. A Forgotten History it is. That has to change for progress.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

An important and much-needed history book, ‘Britain’s Slave Traders *A Forgotten History*’. Acquired in the bookshop of Britain’s national library, where the author, Prof. William Pettigrew, undertook much research. The featured portraits of Harley and Sloane are apposite as founding collections.

Front cover of book with a collage design featuring an engraved Britannia and the building of The Royal Exchange.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Pet Peeve: that MS Word refers to layout margins that are hugely wasteful with too much white space as ‘Normal’. I’m ’Narrow’ all the way!

Screenshot of the different options for Word Document
Margins.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Years ago I read this stunningly emotional novel ‘The Angel of History’ by Bruno Arpaia. It tells the story of one of the many refugees / exiles fleeing Nazi Germany. It reminded me of Erich Maria Remarque’s amazing (& underrated) ‘refugee’ novels on this theme. So sad, Benjamin’s harrowing plight.

Front cover of paperback edition of Bruno Arpaia’s novel ‘The Angel of History’. The artwork is based on a 1930s or 40s era photograph that captures a solitary man in raincoat and hat descending a public staircase in the driving rain. It is evocative of isolation, exposure, meditation, and vulnerability.

Back cover of the book with synopsis text.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

“Sir Archy Mac Sarcasm is a pseudonym.” Cataloguers, huh?! 😀

Screenshot of a catalogue record for an 18th-century English printed book.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Great book! Distributed copies for a Community Reading Circle a year or so ago (it’s been remarked that many Black British people learn about Black history from American circumstances more than from British; says so much about how history is taught here).

A pile of copies of Percival Everett’s novel ‘James’ - a retelling of Mark Twain’s ‘Huckleberry Finn’ through the eyes, mouth - and pen of the enslaved man characterised by Twain as ‘Jim’.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Loved your paper - such a lot in it! And I’m still thinking about how these bindings made me think of dried chillies! 🌶️ 😋

A shelf of early printed books bound in age-coloured vellum wrappers which have the lush browned appearance of dried chillies!

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

September 17th: no longer barefoot-at-home weather.

Feet in blue espadrilles in a living room. Brr!

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Things I was frightened of as a child:

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Merrydown! A blast from the past of my youth! 🤪

Supermarket shelves with bottles of cider.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

H.N. Brailsford is one of the best relaters about the English Revolution, the British Civil Wars, and the history and trajectory of political change in the British Isles. His clarity and emphases are liberating for the reader.

Front cover of book ‘The Levellers and the English Revolution’

Back cover of book ‘The Levellers and the English Revolution’

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Today I am mostly communicating at work by Sesame Street gifs

Emo and Oscar from Sesame Street on an Outlook chat message thread

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Culture wars kill. Bastards. The Telegraph led this social lynching.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Keir Starmer, recently liberated, and now appearing in antiquarian book sale catalogues …

Screen shot of a page from a book sale catalogue with descriptive texts and a photograph of a Quaker who looks like ex-UKPM, Keir Starmer

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

“things in your kitchen can also make good eclipse viewers. A colander or a draining spoon will give you lots of mini-eclipses, with the images projected on to the ground while you stand with your back to the Sun.” Psychedelic! 👨‍🍳

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

ECLIPSE!! (Obvs only saying because some people do not know 😀) ESTC No. R224630

Late 17th-century English printed broadside with woodcut illustrations of sun and moon and the locations from which the eclipse may be seen.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

LEE LIBROS ANARQUISTAS Y SERAS UN HOMBRE

Reproduction Poster from the Spanish Revolution with a slogan ‘Read anarchist books and become a man’.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

'Plain reasons for the growth of sodomy, in England ...' The only known copy of an early 18th-century pamphlet that is *all* Jordan Peterson and Tate brudders (particularly lolled at "Our men are grown insensibly more effeminate" since the intro of Italian Opera! books.google.co.uk/books?id=HPl...

title page of an early 18th-century pamphlet

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Cats in Greece are excellent 🇬🇷😽

Stupidly cute cat stretching out on a stone pillar.

Cats congregated outside a fishmonger’s waiting for their chance.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Stunned by the beauty and depth of Anna Maria Matute’s novel, Primera Memoria (translated by Laura Lonsdale as The Island) I’ve read a lot of fiction around the Spanish Revolution & Civil War; always emotional. This story spans from the heart and mind of a formidable teenage girl ‘lost’ in its world

Front cover of a book with a photograph of a large wicker barrel full of flowers and grasses, set against a pale coloured cement wall with a girl sat next to it wearing a straw hat, a yellow top and yellow espadrilles.

Back cover of the book with publisher’s summary and a small black and white photo portrait of the author.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Re Anthropic, AI, and (ab)uses of historical, rare and early printed books, their ‘capture and destruction’ As someone immersed in the world of historical books, a friend asked me “is this true?” My thoughts are … novaramedia.com/2026/07/29/a...

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

My partner has disowned me. Harsh but fair, I suppose.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Willy culture. God, I hate these idiot supremacists.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I’ve had a really shit tattoo (a crucifix with crossed bones that looks like it was done in prison) since I was 16. I’ve thought about getting it covered up, but the older I get the more I think I might just get some more really shit tattoos. I keep it, mostly, to remind me what a twat I can be.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Entirely unrelated nice things I liked in work today. Everything else was predictably shit. #nicethings #bookssavinglives #hiedebe

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Am excited for tonight lads! My favourite Island Cooking with Accras de Moure and Jerk Pork 🕺🌶️❤️‍🔥 (crushing whole pimientos is one of my favourite culinary tasks).

Pork shoulder steaks in a Jerk paste made at home.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Ah man, saw it coming but it was one of my favourite cinemas 😔

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Who knew?! (🙌 to the determination for exorcising the ignominy of ‘Home of the Margaret Thatcher’). #england #thenorth #imgettinganosebleed

Signpost for Grantham in its rail station in the north of england. It has a surrounding celebratory notice ‘the home of the woodland trust’

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

By hilarious coincidence, a band at Sandwich Beer and Folk Festival have just belted out … @miaout.bsky.social 😃🙉

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Definitely a hill I will die on. I have an entire album for interesting examples and uses in historical print, but for some amicable balance here’s an example of a book featuring both fists and ms manicules … ‪☞

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Lot 1265 from a book auction in 1826: 9 early 17th-century tracts. 3 are unrecorded works 3 are unrecorded editions 3 have 3, 1, and 1 copies known. 😳 ‼️ A dream volume, sadly broken-up but imagine where are those 6 rare pieces?! #bookhistory

Detail from a printed book sale catalogue.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

We are all Menocchio! 🖤 Rest in Peace, Carlo Ginzburg. His work hammered home the fact that curiosity, original thinking, independence of mind, strength of character and belief, resistance to ‘the norm’ and to power and authority has *always* been a part of human history.

Book cover of Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms. An engraving of a male figure walking across fields reading a book with a windmill in the background. This represents an ‘ordinary’ miller from Italy whose story Ginzburg traced in 16th-century archives and tells a story of a fiercely independent literate miller whose reading defied authority and norms.

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Holy Moly!! Living wages for a #rarebooks job - and free dentistry thrown in too!! 🫠

Advert for a vacancy at Huntington for curator of early printed books with BIG 💰💰💰💰

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Christian Algar @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Putting the finishing touches to the best and most meaningful work I have ever done. Really looking forward to presenting this (and I’m keeping the faith with old school wordcloud pictograms! 😀) #bookhistory #culturalheritage #britishhistory #moneyforoldbooks #historicalredress #slavery