Rachel Willie

@racheljwillie

Professional bookworm, amateur hill wanderer, cake, music, and #EarlyModern enthusiast. If lost, likely to be found in the dustier corners of the seventeenth century. Researches early modern English literary history and culture

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Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· 25d

Also, if you want four hours of finding it impossible to read a book or doing any work because you are too busy going “ooooo” at the spectacular landscape, I recommend travelling through the Alps from Chur to Tirano via the panoramic carriages on the Bernina Express.

A stopping point on the Bernina, melting snow forming a waterfall through the lush, green mountains into the lake below.

A crystal clear lake, harnessed for hydroelectric power, nestled between evergreen trees and mountains near the highest point of the Bernina railway in the Swiss Alps 🇨🇭

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Jul 14

Royal Holloway has a campus cat 😻😻😻

Tortoiseshell cat walking through the grassy woody bits of Royal Holloway.

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Jul 5

This energy…

Image of the eponymous hero of the stop animation children’s programme “Bertha” (c. 1985). Bertha was a green factory machine with big googly eyes and a red canonical nose. Bertha’s teeth are positioned menacingly above the conveyor belt, which spits out magically manufactured commodities.

Bertha was prone to malfunction, possibly an indictment of Thatcher’s economic policy, 1980s commodity culture and the paradoxical decline of the UK manufacturing industry.

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Jun 20

Huh?

A graphic I don’t quite understand that apparently says I’m in the top 30% of scholars scrapped by AI 🤖

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Jun 6

This is a bench that has seen Things.

Park bench with three brass plaques on it: one memorialising Peter, who passed way in 2010, another memorialising Doreen who passed way in 2011. These two plaques flank a third plaque that reads “Doreen’s bench”.

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· May 28

Arrived home to this little gem by @rentravailer.bsky.social I had preordered. Now, to resist the temptation of spending the afternoon reading it instead of getting on with the jobs I had planned to do or to succumb?🤔 If you haven’t your copy yet, why ever not?! www.bloomsbury.com/uk/this-litt...

Copy of Nandini Das’s “This Little World: a New History of Tudor and Stuart England”

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· May 25

Pick a Bond villain from pictures you already have on your phone… Choices, choices…

Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, complete with Bond villain cat in the background.

Garden gnomes. The one at the front is a Granny in white flares and top, clutching a disco ball while accessorised with a gold “G” medallion, paired with matching Fuchsia* boots and bandana.

* possibly red; I refuse to look at it fit long enough to determine the precise bright red/pink Pantone.

Caption: “University tuition fees soften is a ‘mess’, says Clegg”

Beneath caption: Nick Clegg

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· May 23

The Laburnum Arch in Bodnant Gardens @nationaltrust.org.uk is looking in particularly fine form this year

A long avenue of laburnum trees, trained into an arch, creating a rich canopy of golden blossom

Close-up of the laburnum blossom, with bees dancing in and around it 🐝 🐝 🐝

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Apr 11

Currently spending no money on electricity in my home: the solar panels are powering everything 💪

Smart meter showing no electricity being drawn from the National Grid

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Apr 11

Some cheery blossoming trees to lighten the general gloom. 🌸 🌸 🌸

Photo taken under a canopy of cherry blossom, with blue sky above

Avenue of trees laden with blossom; green grass below, blue sky above and cotton wool clouds to the right

Photo taken while walking through an avenue of cherry blossom trees

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Apr 9

We’ve been pinching ideas off @shaxbull.bsky.social… (Also, huge thanks generally to @drpetekirwan.bsky.social and @kevinkilleen.bsky.social for being sounding boards in the early days of our thinking about the policies & processes “Sonance” will follow)

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Mar 26

This is quite possibly the silliest title for a paper proposal @eccleshistsoc.bsky.social has ever received.

TITLE OF THE PROPOSED PAPER (20 mins);

Cosmic Colonialism and the Salvation of Aliens

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Mar 11

Is Clegg in competition with Blair to remind people of the thing we hate the most about them?

Photo of Nick Clegg beneath headlines that reads, “University tuition fees system is a 'mess', says Clegg”

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Mar 11

Have they reached the “King Lear” phase of their personal development?

Sarah Ferguson 'homeless' after leaving Royal Lodge as Beatrice and Eugenie refuse to offer her permanent home

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Mar 3

👀 Over the last few months, I’ve been working with the terrific triumvirate @spparkle.bsky.social, @emiliekmmurphy.bsky.social & Hannah Yip to set up “Sonance: A Journal of Early Modern Sound Studies”, a diamond open access journal dedicated to historic sounds in all their wondrous & eclectic forms.

Green-blue-grey blocky soundwaves on background. Centred in black serif lettering “Sonance”, with “journal of early modern sound studies” underneath.

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Mar 1

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus 🌼

Seven daffodils sprouting from the ground in a cluster, surrounded by foliage.

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Feb 25

Many people are struck by the timelessness of my website profile pic…

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Feb 13

It wasn’t me. 😳 www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

That was so out of character’ is the forgiving flipside of character-based ethics. It might mean: ‘Rachel is normally generous, but on this occasion unaccountably stole the last chocolate biscuit.’ The point at which an out-of-character action becomes itself a behaviour so frequent as to be regarded as characteristic is often tricky to determine. How many times can Rachel steal the last biscuit before we start to think it is in Rachel’s character to steal biscuits? (Probably not more than three times: Rachel, you have been warned.) That uncertain tipping point between characteristic and uncharacteristic actions is one reason why our attitudes towards one another tend to flicker and never quite settle, and is part of what makes other people exciting. We constantly form and update our notion of what a person’s character might be, and constantly shuttle in our view of others between judgments about their particular actions and judgments about their underlying dispositions. We do that without necessarily being conscious that we are doing so. And we ourselves might take a quiet pleasure from time to time in doing things that we know will appear to be out of character, because having an established character can be a kind of prison.

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Jan 1

I hope 2026 is MAGNIFICENT for you and yours, Brandi!

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Oct 9

Pity my mother, with offspring such as me…

Signed copy of “In Venezuela”, addressed “To Mummy Willie - Happy Travels” signed by Michael Palin.

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Aug 26

It’s all a bit Scilly, really…

View of part of St Mary’s, the main island of the Scilly Isles, from a helicopter.

Scilly Sea views on a clear summer’s day

Cannon at the Garrison (have to defend against an impending Dutch invasion, after all…)

Scilly sandy beach and calm seas beneath an azure sky.

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Aug 21

YAY!!!!!!

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Aug 11

My darling nephew sent me a thank you card 🙄

On right hand side in messy 5 year old handwriting: “To Auntie Rachel. Thenks! Love”

On left hand side, an abstract person [most likely a portrait of me], with “poop” written above.

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Jul 25

🤔 🤨

Screenshot of detail from Bluesky email reading “Thank you for verifying. You’ve successfully verified that you are an adult”

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Jun 6

Went on a little wander and took with me Mariana’s brilliant book — perfect reading, whatever your acoustical backdrop

Copy of “Sonic Pasts” by Mariana J López on a garden bench

Laburnum arch in all its golden splendour

The inside of an old mill, complete with wheel

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· May 25

Feel for @oskarjensen.bsky.social, who came along to a scholarly day to talk about his excellent special issue plans & suffered the indignity of being forced to sign a copy of his second detective fiction book to Mummy Willie (a fan)

Cover of “Helle’s Hound” by Oskar Jensen: gold font on black background, with green lines (vaguely resembling the lines of a tube map in how they connect and cross over each other, footprints and paw prints. There are also six gold discs positioned almost randomly on the green lines, each containing one of the following icons (running clockwise): a cocktail glass; a paw print; a hammer and sickle a la USSR; a key with a club-shaped top, vaguely reminiscent of a key that might unlock a centuries old church door; a perfume bottle of the bulbous kind with a balloon puffy thing by the side that were popular in the 1980s, a peacock feather.

“And for Val a.k.a. Mummy Willie with great thanks, Oskar” signed edition

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· May 21

👀 @ellierycroft.bsky.social

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· May 10

👀 @earlymodlancs.bsky.social

To Wales (quoth wit), there doth plaine people dwell,
So mayst thou come, to heaven out of hell:
For Fraunce is fine, and full of faithlesse waies,
Poor Flaunders grosse, and farre from hapie dayes.

Ritch Spayne is proude, and sterne to straungers all,
In Italie, poysning is alwaise rife:
And Germanie, to drunkennesse doth fall,
The Danes likewise, doe leade a bibbing life.
The Scots seeke bloud, and beare a cruell mynde,
Irelande grows nought, the people ware unkind:
England God wot, hath learned such leudnesse late,
That Wales methinks is now the soundest state.

Thomas Churchyard, national stereotyping since 1587.

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Apr 2

👀 I spy @marianajlopez.bsky.social’s book in the wild! www.routledge.com/Sonic-Pasts-...

Peter Alexander’s copy of “Sonic Pasts: Acoustical Heritage and Historical Soundscapes” by Mariana J Lopez

Rachel Willie@racheljwillie· Mar 31

We’ve reached that point in the semester where it’s time to whip out the sparkly shoes