TIL one of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's ambassadors to Great Britain went to school in Bury St Edmunds - Charles Lee, who represented the Commonwealth at the Court of St James between 1766 and 1768. He is now better known for misadventures in America, of course

Apparently I’m now the 13th most popular historian on Substack - this can’t be lucky…

Today over on ‘All Old Strange Things’ I write about how historians (and non-historians) can take scepticism too far… substack.com/home/post/p-...

One of my great passions is ploughing through the complete organ works of middlebrow Baroque composers, but I can't forgive Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748) for writing SO MUCH that his complete works cost *£80*! Give it a rest, ffs Johann 😩

My phone is now suggesting I experience a ‘new personal intelligence system’, I thought I already had one of those 🧠

At IKEA, an encounter with Dalek Owl

Unboxing the paperback edition of ‘Twilight of the Godlings’ - now available (with free delivery in the UK) from @cambridgebookshop.bsky.social 📚 www.cambridgebookshop.co.uk/products/twi...

I always have huge respect for scholars who, like academic equivalents of Rambo the one man army, take on an entire field alone because no-one else can. For example, there's basically just one scholar who writes on new religious movements in modern Lithuania

Ooh do I see a new forthcoming book on pagan Lithuanians?? brill.com/display/titl...

Burial crowns exhibition opens today at the Vilnius Church Heritage Museum, brilliant for Goths and Grand Duchy of Lithuania enthusiasts alike 💀👑🇱🇹🖤

The baptism of Mindaugas (c17th painting), whose coronation in 1253 (with a crown sent by Pope Innocent IV) is marked by Lithuanian Statehood Day - celebrated today by Lithuanians around the world singing the national anthem (Tautiška giesmė) 👑🇱🇹🎶

It's only a few years since everyone was making fun of this, yet now this sort of thing is apparently ok if it's made by robots

I saw this poster yesterday depicting ‘Ely Cathedral’. There are loads of royalty-free images of Ely Cathedral available (and if you live there, you could even take your own), so why do people and organisations choose to soil themselves in public by using AI slop like this?

I'm excited to say that the first Element in this series is now scheduled for publication in September - an Element about the functions of folklore by none other than the inimitable Jeremy Harte: www.cambridge.org/core/element...

‘Byl has opened up an almost entirely unmapped treasury of material on the prosecution of witchcraft in East-Central Europe, in a meticulous, thorough and authoritative study of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.’ My review of Vital Byl's new book: drfrancisyoung.com/2026/07/03/r... @dependencybonn.de

Just got Vital Byl’s new history of witch trials in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania - a subject I wrote about in the Bloomsbury Cultural History of Magic, but until now little studied. This book looks like a game-changer. Review coming soon…

Butterflies this morning

I'm interviewed in this month's @psychicnews.bsky.social about fairies 🧚

I'm saddened to hear of the passing of Timothy Fenwick, a keen historian of English Catholicism with whom I collaborated ten years ago on a chapter about post-Emancipation Catholicism in East Anglia. May he rest in peace.

“The book’s key conclusions are important, numerous and compelling.” I’m honoured by Prof. Ronald Hutton’s review of ‘Fairies: A History’ in the latest @thetls.bsky.social 🧚‍♀️📚 www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

We need to persuade @helleborezine.bsky.social to start a TV network where I host a show sitting in my garden and rambling esoteric lore about gnomes as my hair gets ever longer

Five years since I made my most 1970s TV appearance

The Nativity of St John the Baptist is a good day to show some love for the world's dwindling community of Mandaeans - for whom John the Baptist is the central figure of their faith

Proofs time! For a chapter in a forthcoming book with Brill

“There isn’t much that Francis Young doesn’t know about fairies.” Thank you to Mark Mason for this latest review of ‘Fairies: A History’, in The Critic 🧚‍♀️📚

A propos of nothing here's an extract from my in-progress translation of Jan Radwan's epic poem Radivilias (1592) - Ivan the Terrible has just heard the Lithuanians have successfully attacked Muscovy:

I launched ‘Silence of the Gods’ a year ago today! Thank you to @cambridgebookshop.bsky.social and everyone who has made this book such a success 📚 www.cambridgebookshop.co.uk/products/sil...

Tomorrow evening I'm speaking for Peterborough Cathedral about the destruction of the medieval library of Peterborough Abbey, and 18th-century attempts to recover it

Opening yet another royalty statement that's just page after page of 0s. One book has sold a total of one (1) copy, another however is absolutely slaying it and has sold SIX copies 🥳

Thank you to everyone who organised and attended yesterday's excellent workshop at @ucl.ac.uk that set the 200th anniversary of UCL's founding in the context of the build-up to Catholic Emancipation. I gave a paper about a dead guy who appeared in a wine stain drfrancisyoung.com/2026/06/15/t...