Dr Orla Parslow-Breen

He passed away today at 83.Here’s the New York Times obituary. Doubt there are many people in the world who were so plainly and simply admired as he was, and is.

And rather than to be entirely sad about the end of a life lived well and prosperously, here’s a couple of music videos for you.

Rest in peace, Leonard Nimoy. We are, will always be, your friends.

One of the most popular posts on the Thesis Whisperer is How to write 1000 words a day and not go bat shit crazy. Last year a Twitter follower brought to my attention a post called How I went from writing 2000 words to 10,000 words a day by the fiction writer Rachel Aaron.

I did a double take.

Can you really write 10,000 words a day? Well, Rachel says she can, with three conditions:

1) Know what you are going to write before you write it
2) Set aside a protected time to write, and
3) Feel enthusiastic about what you are writing

I read the post with interest. Much of what Rachel did conformed with what I suggest in my earlier post, but I couldn’t bring myself to really believe Rachel’s productivity claims. To regularly write 10,000 words: It’s the dream, right? Imagine if you could reliably…

We’re excited to announce the first Queer London Research Forum event of 2015, which will be a talk by the Wellcome Library’s Lesley A. Hall, entitled ‘‘‘Bearded Fruit-Juice Drinkers”: the Queerness of Interwar Progressives’.

The talk will take place on the 9th of February at 18:30 in the Cayley Room (room 152-3) at the University of Westminster (309 Regent Street). The talk will be followed by a wine reception. Attendance is free, but places must be booked, please email queerlondonresearchforum@gmail.com to confirm your place.

Abstract: “There was a significant mass of individuals and organisations in Britain between the wars, concentrated in the metropolis, who were widely perceived as ‘queer’ both in the contemporary popular sense of generally eccentric and cranky and also on account of their contravention of gender and sexual norms. This paper will look at the ways this somewhat amorphous group destabilised prevalent assumptions of the day, with…