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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Guardian copy-editors, you are killing me.

Quotation from the Guardian review of the videogame Silver Pines: "But what makes this game much more than an amalgam of familiar adventure tropes is its brilliant sense of style, it’s considered pace and it’s wonderfully constructed mythology." In a list of three aspects of the game, "its" is used correctly (without apostrophe) the first time and then incorrectly (with apostrophe) the following two times.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

PPE has always been above the law.

A marbled pillar in the Arts Building at the University of Birmingham. Above, a printed notice saying,"Please do not put notices on these walls." Below, a more recent notice directing students to a "PPE (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics) induction."

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Why isn't one of the broken mugs here (in this Guardian cartoon) the famous "Controls on Immigration" one? Or is that not a slogan Burnham fans are prepared to say was bad?

A political cartoon from The Guardian showing a pile of broken mugs, with slogans on them saying "NI rise," "Doom & Gloom," "Two-child cap" and "Winter fuel cut" (all references to bad Starmer policies), and on top an intact mug with steam rising from it, an image of Andy Burnham and the word "Hope".

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

A little bit of good news (although of course clamping these cars in place means they're still blocking footways and visibility).

Two cars fully parked on the pavement in south Birmingham, both with yellow triangular wheel clamps.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Some people in my city think it's ok to park like this, not just on the pavement but entirely blocking it, and not just anywhere but on the road to a primary school. #waronwalking

A car parked right over the entire pavement, blocking all safe pedestrian travel.

A second car doing the same thing on the other side of the same road.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

It's official publication day for *Empire Ablaze: The American Revolution and the Atlantic Working Class*! 🔥 You can find it right on the front page of the @versobooks.bsky.social website, and yes, it is part of the summer sale. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...

Three beautiful books on a table, one of them is Empire Ablaze. The text says you can save 30% on related books when you buy one of them!

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Still six weeks to publication day, but it's nice to hold Empire Ablaze in my hand! Thanks to those who came out in London last night to hear about it.

A copy of Empire Ablaze: The American Revoltion and the Atlantic Working Class, held in my own left hand.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Not pictured: free labour, free men.

A pile of earth outside a house with a hand painted sign reading, "free soil."

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

And now, the first physical copies! (Modelled here by the lovely Eva in Verso's NY office.)

A physical copy of the book, Empire Ablaze, in front of a row of shelves full of other books.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Beautiful evening for one final round of @brumgreens.bsky.social deliveries... 💚

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Also an opportunity to share this image of James Aitken as a demonic apparition in shackles, which does not appear in the book...

Cartoon engraving from 1777, in which a line of well-dressed British notables wait at the throne of hell while one, Lord Irnham, is crowned by the devil himself. Aitken, a ghostly, dishevelled figure, stands immediately behing Irnham, looking on. The caption quotes Milton, "To reign is worth ambition, tho' in Hell."

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Listings for *Empire Ablaze* now include some very kind comments from brilliant fellow historians. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...

"Passionate, provocative, and deeply humane, Cutterham's urgent reinterpretation of the American Revolution restores sabotage, solidarity, and working-class dreams to the center of a world-changing upheaval." Richard Bell, author of The American Revolution and the Fate of the World.

"Tom Cutterham uses the picaresque life of arsonist James Aitken to tell a ripping good yarn about labor, class, radical ideas, and the American revolution. A vivid and well-researched transatlantic history from below." Marcus Rediker, co-author of The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic.

"In this beautifully-written gem of a book Tom Cutterham tells the story of James Aitken, a Scot who sought to sabotage the Royal Navy in Portsmouth in the name of American independence. In so doing Cutterham makes a larger argument about class and the roles played common people, like Aitken, in making a new, revolutionary, world. In Cutterham's hands James Aitken emerges as a subject worthy of Broadway musical or a Netflix series. The 250th anniversary of US Independence will see the publication of many books on the American Revolution. Empire Ablaze stands out from the crowd and deserves the widest possible audience." Frank Cogliano, Professor of American History, University of Edinburgh

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

How to park (Porsche drivers' edition).

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Here's a question in my university's AI-in-teaching survey which is going to force everyone who doesn't use it in their classrooms to say they have no more than a "basic" understanding of it. What's the betting the analysis will conclude, "people who don't like AI also don't understand it?"

A multiple choice question, which reads: "Which of the following statements best describes your understanding of AI?" The possible answers are, (a) "I have little or no understanding," (b) "I have a basic understanding of AI, data, and common AI tools, and can interact with AI at a basic level," (c) "I can use various AI tools effectively in my teaching, writing good prompts, understandin their limitations, and critically evaluating outputs," and (d) "I have a strong technical understanding of AI and can customise, fine-tune, and integrate AI tools into my teaching workflows."

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

The rollback of Tory anti-union legislation, and restoration of workers' rights, is happening incrementally. For #UCU, the really big change is going to be this one in August. That's going to make it even more important for members to engage in internal union democracy!

ACAS summary of changes to workers' rights rules:

August 2026 changes
Trade union ballots
These changes will happen in August 2026:
1) trade union members will be able to vote electronically or in-person in ballots for industrial action, union elections and other statutory ballots – if the employer and trade union agree
2) the requirement for a 50% turnout for industrial action ballots will be removed – this had originally been expected in April 2026

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Morgan McSweeney's Labour Party: low-energy Trumpism.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Extra wide pavement? Extra wide car-park! #yplac

Pavement (sidewalk) in south Birmingham, England, on which three cars are parked parallel to each other and the road, totally blocking access for prams, wheelchairs, etc.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

In the mid-nineteenth century there was a flurry of debate about Paine's pre-1774 authorship of the Junius Letters. From Gregory Claeys' talk last week, it sounds like his new edition of Paine's writings will confirm the attribution for at least some of Junius. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Headlines from an 1880 pamphlet advertising the 1872 book "Thomas Paine Unmasked." They read, "Thomas Paine Was Junius. All objections confuted. Savants confounded. No incompatible fact. The Franciscan theory exploded. The integrity and eloquence of Junius."

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

Love this characterisation of what consultancies actually do: "selling PowerPoints."

"Building tools is a lot harder than selling PowerPoints, and without scale it also yields a much lower return on investment," she added.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

A familiar phrase, in @rickbell.bsky.social's American Revolution and the Fate of the World!

A paragraph about Molly Brant, with the sentence "nevertheless, she persisted," highlighted.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Artist's impression of me making my way through Storm Goretti to get from Birmingham to Lewes for @theitps.bsky.social Common Sense at 250...

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Maybe it's just that time in the teaching term, but I'm really feeling all of this (from Steven Mintz's very prolific substack). substack.com/home/post/p-...

$Screenshot of three paragraphs of text: Many students now regard class attendance as optional, shaped by remote learning during COVID, increasingly flexible high school environments where asynchronous work became normalized, and a general expectation that content will always be available elsewhere—recorded, transcribed, or summarizable by AI. Reading loads and writing expectations have eroded, not because faculty abandoned standards, but because enforcing those standards became impossible when students arrived chronically under-prepared and overwhelmed. The omnipresence of technology has fractured student focus in ways that are cognitively and pedagogically unavoidable. Multitasking is not a choice students make; it is the default cognitive mode in which they operate.$

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Not my place, not my period, but I'm looking forward to some "intimate history" in the present tense, in my colleague @tricksterprince.bsky.social's new book.

Matt Houlbrook's new book, Songs of Seven Dials, in my hand (against zigzag pattern rug in my office).

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

What it feels like to work in "one of an elite group of School's" these days... 😑

Digital screen displaying an ad for Birmingham Business School, "one of an elite group of school's worldwide to hold Triple Crown Accreditation." There is a misplaced apostrophe in the word "schools".

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Can student journalism survive and thrive? Tanshpreet Kaur and I spent part of the summer talking to student journalists and other interested parties. Our report focuses on Redbrick, the flagship paper here at Birmingham. You can read it here: drive.google.com/file/d/1QiJG...

The offices of Redbrick, University of Birmingham student newspaper founded in 1936!

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

In 1776, a Scottish housepainter called James Aitken set out on a secret mission to destroy the British navy and win the War of Independence for the United States. His story is the core of my book, EMPIRE ABLAZE: The American Revolution and the Atlantic Working Class, out next summer with Verso!

The cover of "Empire Ablaze: The American Revolution and the Atlantic Working Class," which features an image of an eighteenth-century building on fire, with small sailing boats visible on a river in the foreground.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Can I just ask what exactly is up with these Early American Studies spines, @easmisc.bsky.social? My delicate aesthetic sensibilities are shook.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

For the catalogue of claims that aged poorly:

"Even the most dedicated Marxist would concede that there is a variety of subjects on which Marxist historical method does not throw much light - the history of climatic changes, the invention of the flush toilet, or what have you." John Langbein, "Albion's Fatal Flaw," Past & Present (1983)

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

My institution's VC today: "I was honoured to attend the annual awards ceremony of the Royal Academy of Engineering as a guest of Rolls-Royce..." Also today:

Advertisement for a protest, organized by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, at 6pm Friday 11th July, King's Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9AG. It reads: "Protest Rolls Royce Complicity in Genocide. Rolls Royce produces critical parts for F-35 fighter jets Israel uses to drop 2,000lb bombs on Palestinians in Gaza."

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Stumbled across this neat summary of how most scholars seem to have read and applied The Making of the English Working Class: as a negative argument about the non-existence of a working class in the earlier eighteenth century.

Pauline Maier, reviewing Philip Foner's Labor and the American Revolution, writes: "In The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson argued that there was no English "working class" until the 1790s when it emerged against a background of economic hardship and political repression."

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Wonderful to celebrate eighteenth-century studies at @unibirmingham.bsky.social last week, with colleagues and friends of BECC both new and old. Thanks to everyone who took part!

Photo of Linda Colley and Tom Cutterham speaking to an audience at the BECC twentieth anniversary conference, including balloons!

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Stop trying to make SHAPE happen. In principle an arts and humanities equivalent to STEM is fine, but the "for people and the economy" just reeks so much of desperation and moral bankruptcy.

Regina George from Mean Girls (2004) in Christmas hat.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Good morning to everyone except this guy who thinks cycle lanes are carparks.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Enjoying a bit of half-term public history (Tudor propaganda) at Warwick Castle!

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Art, history, theory, comic. Love this from @willpooley.bsky.social, Oliver Gruner, and Louis Netter. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

The Birmingham Eighteenth Century Centre is holding a small conference to mark our twentieth anniversary. It's on the 26 and 27 June, and Linda Colley will be there (as will brilliant Birmingham colleagues like Karen Harvey, Kate Smith, and Hiroki Shin). Join us! blog.bham.ac.uk/18c/2025/05/...

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

The University of Birmingham's student newspaper is once again asking for donations to keep afloat. Just a little microcosm of the ongoing collapse of UK higher education... www.justgiving.com/campaign/red...

Bernie Sanders in his raincoat, "once again asking" for your support.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

My mental image when anyone starts talking about "motoring" or being a "motorist":

Toad of Toad Hall, from Wind in the Willows, driving his motorcar.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

I do like the cute illustration, though...

Illustration (by Dominic McKenzie) from the above Observer article, a parody of the Trumbull "Declaration of Independence" painting but with Trump in place of John Hancock and everyone else looking shocked.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

This Will Hutton paragraph is like carefully-designed torture for historians of the eighteenth-century United States.

The opening paragraph of a column in the Observer by Will Hutton: "The founding fathers of the USA – James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and more – were quintessential disciples of the European Enlightenment. Their intent was to embed Enlightenment values into the government and culture of the New World. America would be a republic of laws. Its constitution would ensure governance of the people, by the people, for the people. Through checked and balanced branches of government, it would expunge the possibility of monarchical discretionary power and inaugurate proper democracy."

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Loved this utter rout in the (last but one) @lrb.co.uk, by @tomlukejohnson.bsky.social. "Uncles deserve better" indeed!

Photo of title and text in the LRB: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n03/tom-johnson/who-plucked-the-little-dog

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

There is a world where "university" is still the winning card.

"University" card (one victory point) from Settlers of Catan.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

I'm sure the book's great too but I LOVE this cover. @uvapress.bsky.social knocking it out of the park!

Cover of Patrick Spero, The Scientist Turned Spy (University of Virginia Press, 2025), to which I'm afraid I cannot do justice via text description.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

This (from @janerockhouse.bsky.social's excellent substack) is about Birmingham city council, but frankly it could be any institution in the UK, especially universities. Accountability? Nah. The people responsible for out, and they've all got jolly good pensions too.

Clip from an interview with Joanne Rooney. She says, "I hear your point about accountability, but what can I say…the people who were involved (in senior officer roles) are not here anymore."

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

I did the same last week: posted my ballot, voted for @ucucommons.bsky.social candidates. Then forgot to post my postbox pic, so here it is!

My hand placing an envelope into a red postbox. The envelope contains my ballot-papers for the UCU NEC election.

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Is this what the kids would call "a baller move"? (I will accept your guesses for whose CV this is...)

Section from an academic CV listing "endowed chairs and professorships offered and declined."

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Tom Cutterham @tomcutterham.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Selfish, illegal parking like this obscures visibility at the junction and puts cyclists and other road users in danger.

A car and a van parked over the pavement on the corner of a residential street in Birmingham.

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