Matthew Kilburn
@matthewkilburn
Freelance writer, editor and consulting historian - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Doctor Who Magazine - and now former Alzheimer's carer. Ex-History of Parliament, also liable to write about North-East England and Oxford as well as television.
From earlier in the week: the arrival of a @vch-home.bsky.social red book, volume 20 of @wiltshistory.bsky.social, where I wrote a draft text for the parliamentary representation and (some of) the municipal government of Chippenham, back in 2018-20. I'm glad to be remembered with this copy.
'Where We Stand, Where We Fall' by @lizbethmyles.bsky.social has arrived. The politics of Doctor Who from nuclear annihilation to transhumanism, via feminism, colonialism, environmentalism and scientific responsibility.
The play script book. That's Colin on the right, I think, as the Second Shepherd.
Of amusement to Doctor Who fans - a nineteenth-century newspaper from South Wales, The Silurian. Not the Eocene.
Welcome to Classical Encounters in England's North East, edited by Edith Hall, Rory McInnes-Gibbons and Edmund Thomas, and featuring my chapter on Frank Graham: A Communist on the Wall, liberally illustrated with work by Ron Embleton. Available now from Routledge.
A newspaper masthead with a sense of place, courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive. The Bridport, Beaminster and Lyme Regis Telegram, 1886.
"You Shall Not Pass." Buttons the cat from next door (she disputes that) is at least mildly cross with humanity.
Next door's cat, who as almost always shows no inclination to go home.
The last tale of Lyra from Philip Pullman, a book almost over-rich in detail, but this asks us to dream ourselves as Lyra sidesteps one end to her story. Injury chooses the possibility of healing. Imagination - metaphor, empathy, interconnectedness - stands against destructive techno-finance.
...an arts festival in Barbados. Giants of children's television - Biddy, Edward, Monica, Anna and more - all present (in the book, not in Barbados), among many surprise guests, but the namedropping supports the author's talent for friendship and observation of theatrical vicissitudes. 2/2
'All my Worldly Joy' by @laurarichmond.bsky.social has arrived.
Even more dippable-into than I'd expected, @brushingboots.bsky.social - an entertaining survey of the hereditaries. I didn't know about the non-legitimate Fitzwilliams, and your telling of Manny Shinwell's making an example of the 7th earl and Wentworth blends well wartime necessity and resentment.
I appreciate the Borthwick Institute's second choice of place access point for the Terrance Dicks archive - probably the first such catalogue entry of its kind.
Here is Buttons from next door asserting her right to my mother's orthopaedic chair.
Editor: Biddy Baxter. One of the first television credits I noticed. Farewell to someone with a distinctive understanding of what the modern British childhood should and could be.
In London for Target Book Club 2025 tomorrow. Today, the sun - tomorrow, the deluge (of rain and facts and reminiscences of Doctor Who books old and new).
In which Doctor Who fans fond of a character played by Christopher Benjamin in a 1977 story (etc.) realise where Robert Holmes might have found his character's name. Henry Gordon Jago, music hall impresario, translated from the real and now late football manager Gordon Harold Jago, perhaps.
I loved The Phoenix and the Carpet on television. My dad bought the book for me one evening after diverting into Newcastle city centre after work. However, this wasn't the TV tie-in edition but an earlier one with a cover adapted from one of the original line illustrations.
The first of the new batch of Doctor Who novelizations through the letterbox is Scott Handcock's Empire of Death. Presumably this means Sutekh is supreme, as in Pyramids of Mars 4.
Frank Graham's 1974 edition of volume 4 of John Hodgson's History of Northumberland (1840). Very much brought into the Graham list, with a new introduction by Eric Birley and jacket illustration by Ron Embleton.
A curious paragraph in today's Times report on the waning fortunes of Kemi Badenoch. Something is evidently thought to be up with Oliver Dowden - a job incompatible with remaining an MP, perhaps - but they don't speculate what.