iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Coming back from self-imposed social media exile to show you what it looks like to make colour! Shots from a couple of short films we made about "artists' colourmen" and making paints, for the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. As ever, I think Cal did the subject matter (and us!) proud. 1/2

Colour recipe book pictured from above, with colour-making materials surrounding it. Swatches, jars, pigments.

Mixing paint, creating colour. Abstract pattern of swirls in purple, orange and pink

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Patricia is stopping off in Bristol today, as it happens, on her way to do a gig in Somerset. It's only a whistle stop, though, to talk to some journalist or other!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Ohhhhh, then you have to time it for when @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social is next down as well!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Depends what you mean by 'waste'!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Ohhhh good job Jo! This is the kind of thing you miss when you don't really use social media!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Well, we're now communicating via BlueSky instead of WhatsApp and I'm not getting as much work done, so I suppose so! And I DO like the fact that @joparsons.bsky.social spotted all this and surprised her!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Ah-ha! I see your game, Fitzharris. It's another ploy to make me post more!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

And look at this, Dr Fitzharris! You've succeeded!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Your surprise is well warranted, Jo! But this is the most social media I've done for weeks, months maybe!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I do, but I also realise that the more I mention it, the more I come across as afflicted

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

As soon as the fairy explodes at the start, you know you're in for a good ride!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I think you really ought to pre-order this. It's a guaranteed gorgeous read. You'll also feel left out if you don't!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

And you would have been correct 😂

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

The value of this exchange would differ depending on where we were. It might be worth £18 in London and about £7 in The North!

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Dr Lindsey Fitzharris @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

There's a lot of bad in the world right now. But @tealcartoons.bsky.social and I have a new kids' book coming out called DEAD ENDS that reminds us that failure isn't just inevitable but essential to success. There are a limited number of SIGNED copies from @mysteriousbookshop.com - shorturl.at/1A9CS

A photo of the cover of DEAD ENDS featuring a cartoon of a doctor zapping a patient in a coffin back to life. There are signed book plates and medical oddities all around the book.

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

It's now 2025. We visited the RCO a few weeks ago to film John's instruments in the their care, and being used by the extraordinary eye surgeon (and magician!) Ananth Viswanathan. It's been nearly 10 years since John's death and it's a privilege to have had a part documenting his remarkable legacy

Close-up shot of Ananth Viswanathan's eyeball with the supertitle 'Filmed at the Royal College of Opthalmologists'

One of John McKenzie's instruments, held by Ananth Viswanathan

Still from a film demonstrating an eye operation

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Hospitals in the global north tend to use disposable instruments, so John's collection represents an obsolete craft. He was keen his work was preserved, so entrusted his collection to Roger, who a decade later found a home for it at the Royal College of Ophthalmologists in London 2/3

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

In 2015, Roger Kneebone (left) and I (behind camera!) were privileged to film John McKenzie (right), who over a lifetime made thousands of tiny ophthalmic surgical instruments in his shed. You can see some of his collection in the foreground. John died shortly after we made this recording ... 1/3

Roger Kneebone (left), in discussion with John McKenzie (right), about his ophthalmic instrument collection (foreground).

Some of John McKenzie's instruments up close, in 2015

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

You're right, of course. I apologise to the nacho-munching community!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

I didn't think my first post in weeks would be about nachos ... I'll now have to temper this was something deep and meaningful!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

I don't charge her, Margaret! 😉

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

One for academic historians at Oxford! Medical Humanities and HSMTE have invited me and Cal to give a talk about film production as a research methodology for historians. Should have mentioned this earlier, but it didn't occur to me to share on here!

torch.ox.ac.uk

Filmic Humanities and Film-Making-As-Research

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Alex Churchill @alexchurchill.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Less than a week to go now. All preorders greatly appreciated! Numerous options via geni.us/RingOfFire Thanking James, @thehistoryguy.bsky.social @iaindale.bsky.social @charliehigson.bsky.social and James for their kind words 🙏🏼 @iainmacgregor1.bsky.social @headofzeus.bsky.social

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Patricia Hammond (mezzo-soprano, historical music specialist, and my wife!) found and performed this 1890s piece of American sheet music with a contemporary resonance ... @patriciahammond.bsky.social

youtu.be

All On Account of the Tariff - 1890 song

YouTube video by patriciahammondsongs

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Dr Lindsey Fitzharris @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

For #Caturday: a poignant photo by my friend Paul Koudounaris of a beloved pet's tombstone. "'He was only a cat,' but he was human enough to be a great comfort in hours of loneliness and pain." Check out Paul's book on pet cemeteries, FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH: bookshop.org/p/books/fait...

An old tombstone that reads: DEWEY 1898 - 1910. "He was only a cat" but he was human enough to be a great comfort in hours of loneliness and pain.

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Thanks so much! Are you the Stuart Semmel who wrote Napoleon and the British? (If so, I read you back in my PhD days!)

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Surely there's a lesson here: we should think twice before letting the rich run our societies. Even the best of them have blind spots. If a man as famously ethical as Boulton can deny humanity to a child, what can we expect of the even more individualistic rich today? Anyway, here's the story! 4/4

wellcomecollection.org

The girl with no name

When a now anonymous teenager sold her tooth for transplant, she couldn’t have predicted that she’d end up at the heart of a troubling story about 18th-century beauty ideals.

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

What I can't quite wrap my head around is that Matthew Boulton is celebrated for his stance against slavery and famously looked after his own workers into their old age. You get the sense, reading his letters, he has a tender heart. So, why did he think it okay to see a child's body as property? 3/4

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

We sometimes celebrate the eighteenth century as a time of individualism (big issue today too!). And the stories of Matthew and Anne Boulton are both stories of strong individuals. But when it came to the girl who sold her tooth for a guinea, they don't even bother to find out her name 2/4

Cover of the Hardware Man's Daughter: Matthew Boulton and his "Dear Girl", by Shena Mason

Cover of Matthew Boulton: Selling what all the world desires by Shena Mason

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

I tried to write about a girl with no known name, no description. Bloody hard to do! Nothing to go on but the fact that in 1787 she sold one of her teeth to the industrialist Matthew Boulton. He paid a dentist to prise it from her mouth and transplant it into his own daughter, Anne ... 1/4

Images from from The Costume of Great Britain by W.H Pyne

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

I can oblige! We've finished the rough cut of the film and I'll be sure to share when it's done (though it's really rather more upsetting than I thought it'd be)

Diary entry reading 'I wonder where he is'

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

We're making a film about a man who started collecting other people's pocket diaries after discovering something dark in his own childhood diary – something he'd repressed. More about that later. For now, I wanted to share a few of my favourite tender, funny or laconic close-ups!

Diary entry from Friday 24th July, 1942, reading 'Air Raid in the Night'

Diary entry from Sunday 26th (month unknown) reading 'Uncle Walter came. We picked our first tomato'

Diary entry reading 'in case of accident please inform WIFE'

Diary entry reading '1st wedding anniversary'

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

If you like stories about bad men doing bad but also sometimes v. funny things in the 1880s, I have new blogs! 👊🏻Denny Harrington, Irish, drunk, jumped on sailors 👊🏻Constantine Morris, Brummie, drunk, bad hitman 👊🏾Felix Scott, Barbadian, less drunk, bit a cop's ear off www.grapplingwithhistory.com

grapplingwithhistory.com

Grappling With History

By Sarah Elizabeth Cox | Rediscovering the wrestlers and boxers of late-Victorian London

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Dr Lindsey Fitzharris @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Very proud of @oispooky.bsky.social, who is set to become a lot cooler than me soon with her own amazing projects on the horizon. She runs one of the best history blogs on the internet - all about the gritty world of Victorian bare-knuckle fighters. So vivid you can smell the sweat. Follow her!

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Dr Lindsey Fitzharris @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Bloody gloves belonging to Abraham Lincoln. When the President was shot by John Wilkes Booth, some of the blood ran down his sleeve and pooled in the pocket which contained the gloves. Photo: Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

A photo of Lincoln's gloves which have yellowed with age. Near the cuffs are visible blood stains.

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Metropolitan Police Museum and Crime Museum @mpsheritage.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

A donation recently on display in our new acquisitions case, this 1890s prescription log book of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen was examined during his trial in 1910 for the murder of his wife Cora Crippen (aka Belle Elmore). #SomethingNew #Archive30

Photograph of a prescription log book, open to show two pages with handwritten text.

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

In his novel Stoner, John Williams's eponymous character has a full-time, tenured position as an assistant professor at a the University of Missouri. And he's considered a failure. Today, that kind of stability would be an impossibility for many academics – a dream job. How things have changed!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

Or maybe a new income stream for JanePlan

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

The proprietors of these incredibly popular 'shows' (the Mr Beasts of the '30s!) sold tickets. Vast queues formed of those hoping to gawp at the starving young couples. The clergy, politicians and many others denounced the shows, though, and they were outlawed in 1935 2/2 h/t David Hewitt

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

In Summer 1931, there was a new sideshow in Blackpool, Lancashire. ‘Brides and bridegrooms straight from the altar starve for 30 days’. The deal: newlywed couples were challenged to stay in glass 'coffins' without food for a month. If they made it, they'd win £250 (about £18,000 today) 1/2

A newly wed woman in a glass 'coffin', starving for 30 days for £250 in the 1930s

1930s, Starving Bride sideshow, Blackpool's Golden Mile

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Seconded! Thirded! The fact that anyone could have the slightest problem with Lindsey or any aspect of Lindsey is baffling; she's honestly how you know that you can be a success and an uncomplicatedly good person. I want to be like her when I grow up!

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

This kind of thing is paralysing. As someone who's worked with you a bit, I promise you that you're worth far more than this awful system makes you feel. Doesn't help much, I know, but you're a gem and deserve better.

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

The article and film is a plea for historians (and other knowledge professionals!) to make more use of film to publish their research and for journals to encourage film publication. It's hard to study the body and things like performance, craft and art when writing is your only option 4/4

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

My creative partner, Cal, and I took him and his workbench to the studio and filmed him at work. He couldn't muster the strength to carve stone anymore, but despite having not picked up his tools for nearly 30 years, he could carve wood just as he could the the day he retired 2/4

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

This is Tony Webb and his wonderful wife Cecily. Tony is 90 and the only remaining master carver of stone AND wood left in the United Kingdom (to his knowledge) 1/4

Master stone and wood carver Tony Webb, at his workbench in a infinity cove studio

Master stone and wood carver Tony Webb and his wife Cecily seated amongst woodchips in an infinity cove studio

Close-up of Tony Webb, master stone and wood carver, with his chisel and mallet

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Paul Craddock @pwcraddock.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Extra special post by an extra wonderful historian and friend. Read through to the end and listen to her on Best Medicine. You won't regret it!

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