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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The library at St Gall was just as amazing as promised with awesome mss and bindings on display. The church is an absolute wedding cake monstrosity. I feel like I need to scrub my eyeballs after seeing all that bling #skystorians #MedievalSky #reformazing

Abbey library of St Gall with wooden bookcases and elaborate painted ceiling

Abbey church of St Gall with painted ceiling

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Finally went on a little pilgrimage to Basel to see all the Erasmus sites, including his tomb and the beautifully carved cabinet commissioned after his death to preserve his collection of coins and plate. I found his little knife kind of charming for some reason! #EarlyModern #skystorians

Tomb of Erasmus of Rotterdam in Basel Cathedral

Side panel of wooden chest with medallion portrait of Erasmus

Museum cabinet displaying Erasmus’s small knife and a box with gilt lettering

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I was particularly struck by Henry VIII's careful drawings of birds and manicules in this book. he was clearly a prince with time on his hands... 🗃️ #BookHistory

Ink drawing of bird in margins of printed book

Ink drawing of the head of a bird in the margins of a printed book

Ink drawing of a hand pointing at text in the margins of a printed book

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

It was a perilous business getting a haircut in the Middle Ages and many did not survive. (From the Cluny Museum yesterday)

Ivory carving showing St Denis kneeling before a man with an axe. On the right, two angels carry the headless saint away to the right

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

There’s a piece by me on Erasmus and his use of print ‘pile-on’ tactics in this months History Today! If you buy the magazine you'll also get it in glorious technicolour #EarlyModern #BookHistory 🗃️

A double-page opening from History Today magazine with the title 'Erasmus and the Hedgehog' and a sixteenth-century print of Leuven

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Thanks for posting. I came across a Greek book owned by Winifred Clement, one of Mary’s sisters, in Texas a while back. John Clement seemed to be in the habit of giving his children books

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Is it just me or are my emails trying to tell me something?

Email header reading: ‘Tim, you ride the rails tomorrow’

Email header offering alerts for ‘natural disasters and urgent disruptions in Hereford’

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Same old garbage by people who despise teachers

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

Currently on its latest travels!

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

Made a little pilgrimage to the Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp today which was wonderful. The new ‘Women’s Business’ exhibition is fab as well #BookHistory #skystorians #EarlyModern #museums

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Constantly amazed at the efforts of scholars in 20thC to edit the materials on which so much Renaissance history still relies. Here's Henry de Vocht's account of rushing the famous Cranevelt letters through the streets of Leuven during WW1 #skystorians #EarlyModern

Thus I had that treasure with me during the dreadful night of August 25/26, when the approaching blaze drove me out of a friend's hospitable house into the fire-lit streets, where bullets whizzed past me until I found a shelter, and where at daybreak I was kept standing for a time beside a pile of burning corpses under the brazen look of the statue of Justus Lipsius;

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

The picture label just said ‘Reviewer 2 delivers feedback’ #AcademicSky #Skystoriana

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Went to the new V&A and it was just a load of old ikea furniture (Jk it was fun, they even had a Donatello on display)

A view of the new V&A storehouse with exhibits arranged on shelves around a courtyard

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Peter Burke being astute as ever on the disproportionate impact of exiles, emigres and expatriates in the history of knowledge. If only a govt minister or two would pay any notice... #skystorians

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Talking @srsrensoc.bsky.social conference tomorrow. Come along to hear about how one early Tudor scholar got interested in a mythical rock-eating worm… #EarlyModern #skystorians

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

A couple of nice eighteenth-century finds in Paris this weekend #BookHistory

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

Mildly obsessed with this title page woodcut for a Venetian edition of Jacopo di Porcia's letters. Have any of you lovely book people seen other examples like it? #BookHistory #EarlyModern #skystorians

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Very sad news from Myanmar over the last few days. I was lucky to visit several years ago when it looked like the country might be on a different path. A simply stunning place with wonderful people. My thoughts with them

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

What better way to whet the appetite for a book on printing types than a tale of a bibliographer lost on a glacier… #BookHistory

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Though I love a fancy leather binding, I am always most excited to find limp parchment bindings in the library. These take us closer to the look and feel of most books from the sixteenth century. Here's a couple of snaps of a recent find at Norwich Cathedral #BookHistory #EarlyModern #skystorians

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

I guess we’ll just have to risk it

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Tim Wade @tpwade.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

A little reminder of how fragile the library can be (from the BL)! Nearly 250,000 books were destroyed in WW2 at the British Museum, even after efforts had been made to protect large numbers of them #bookhistory #libraries