Mark Humphries | Lightnews

Julia Hillner @writinghelena.bsky.social · 19d

Tomorrow, 21 January, 4-6pm, in person and online!
Until March, you will also be able to get a 35% discount, see below.
(I realise that the volumes are still prohibitively expensive 😢)

Julia Hillner @writinghelena.bsky.social · 25d

For real!

Female torso holding the two volumes of A Companion to Rome, c. 400-1050

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Jan 6

6 January is Epiphany, marking the visit of the Magi from the East to the infant Christ (Matthew 2.1-12). It always prompts me to reflect on how late antique Christians imagined this episode, repurposing iconographic tropes from secular art to visualise this key moment in the Nativity story.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Jan 6

❤️ Back where it all started (in spite of the university starting to renovate the rooms we had booked the day before it started...).

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Jan 6

I pretended to be Brian Clough and got the whole team to lay into her.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Jan 6

After nearly 19 and a half years, I must be beginning to look somewhat native to these parts. A woman just approached me in Greggs in Pontardawe and said: "I thought you were Michael Sheen for a moment." Luckily for her, there is an optician just across the road....

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Jan 5

We had snow. The kids loved it!

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Jan 1

Happy New Year! Ianuarius from a calendar mosaic, c.200, from El Djem, Tunisia. Image: Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons.l

Antiquity Journal @antiquity.ac.uk · Nov 15

After Islamic State militants took Mosul, Iraq in 2015, they vandalised the Mosul Cultural Museum and its collections. Now, the museum is gradually being brought back to life so that the citizens of Mosul can again identify with and learn from Iraq’s rich cultural heritage.

🏺 #Archaeology 1/2

A man in a suit (Zaid Ghazi Saadallah, Director of the Mosul Cultural Museum) in front of the damaged interior of a building, lecturing to a group of schoolchildren.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Nov 15

More defaced images of Constantius II and Eudoxia from Friday's Being Human event in Cardiff.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Nov 15

Really busy week, part two. I was invited by colleagues in Cardiff to participate in a Being Human Festival event on satire for high school pupils. I got them to deface images of Constantius II and Eudoxia in line with how those figures had been lampooned. The results were fabulous.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Nov 15

Really busy week, part one: on Wednesday I participated in an online discussion of Hendrik Dey and Fabrizio Oppedisano's new book in Justinian's Legacy. Thanks to colleagues at Perugia for honouring me with the invitation.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Nov 7

Pedagogical highlight of the week: (1) discussing Ammianus Marcellinus' account
of the death of Valentinian I, in which the emperor, in his fatal seizure, attempts to communicate by flailing his arms like a boxer; and (2) having one of the students voluntarily acting out what this looked like.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Nov 4

And now for something completely different: more proofs! This time featuring: how I became a historian of the ancient world thanks to the combined effects of a trip to Egypt and growing up in Belfast and Dublin.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Oct 10

This is a terrific novel. The cadences of the language brought me back to a Belfast I left more than forty years ago.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Oct 3

Shostakovich: a programme marking 50 years since his death. There is, for understandable reasons, a small group with Ukrainian flags outside the hall.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Oct 3

All set for an orchestral concert for the first time in goodness knows how long. I used to go quite frequently to such events. I couldn't pass up a chance to listen to the mighty Seventh: it must be twenty years since last I heard it performed live.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 26

#readingcharitably Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, from the Swansea Oxfam Bookshop. A lyrical exploration of the meanings of humanity and existence. The looming presences of the Earth and the space station impressiveness not as much as the astronauts carrying all humankind's dreams and anxieties.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 24

Episode 4, which I think will air this Friday -- we watched all episodes on streaming.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 24

Always a satisfying feeling. Incidentally, the new Mitchell and Webb series on Channel 4, though very, very hit and miss, contains one gem of a sketch in which E. M. Forster discusses writing Howards End with members of a writers' workshop, who attempt to offer him advice on how to make it better.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 24

In my lunch today, I found a happy chickpea with a very unconvincing comb over.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 24

More proofs. This time for a review of a gem of a book.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 17

Exciting new series from @livunipress.bsky.social , Translated Texts from Antiquity (TTA to join TTH and TTB) , launches with two excellent volumes on #pomponiusmela and #suetonius I'm very honoured to be involved in this new venture.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 17

#readingcharitably I just finished Bernardine Evaristo's _Girl, Woman, Other_. (Purchased for a quid in the Swansea British Heart Foundation shop.) What a revelation of a book: a life affirming, celebration of a Britain enriched by multiculturalism and intersectionalities.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 17

Summer reading 2025, eclectic as ever. (Not shown: articles, typescripts, student drafts.)

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 11

Hunting the (bitter and belligerent) legacy of antiquity in Place Vendôme, Paris.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 10

Yes, indeed: with that horror McGregor somehow being presented as an acceptable choice for the presidency. (Telling that *he* got to see the Orange Mussolini on actual St Patrick's day, but the government reps were shunted to another day.)

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 10

It is shocking how retrograde opinions have become mainstream in recent years. This country has changed so much in the 18 years since I moved here. The poisonous debates that began with the Brexit referendum have just grown worse.

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 9

*Notre 🤦

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · Sep 9

Not only have I made the TTH book cover drawings into t-shirts, but today I wore one (Conference of Carthage 411) to visit its inspiration, Van Loos' Augustine disputing with the Donatists, Note Dame des Victoires, Paris @livunipress.bsky.social

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