Anna Girling
@annagirling.bsky.social
Teaching English at the University of Edinburgh. Generally reading, writing, day dreaming. Writing and thinking about Edith Wharton, Nancy Cunard, modernism, decadence, anti-colonialism, anti-fascism, cosmopolitanism, & other people and things like that.
Postwar austerity meets mid-century cosmopolitanism in 1949 egg recipes. Obsessed, and will be serving eggs boiled for twelve hours in Turkish coffee at at least one Christmas party.
December 7, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Postwar austerity meets mid-century cosmopolitanism in 1949 egg recipes. Obsessed, and will be serving eggs boiled for twelve hours in Turkish coffee at at least one Christmas party.
A lovely article to mark forty years of the wonderful Peepal Tree Press - including this discussion of the contemporary scene, and the novel form: www.theguardian.com/news/2025/de...
December 3, 2025 at 2:02 PM
A lovely article to mark forty years of the wonderful Peepal Tree Press - including this discussion of the contemporary scene, and the novel form: www.theguardian.com/news/2025/de...
sometimes the universe does provide: I misread the first poster as 'Couscous Edinburgh' and was disappointed to realise my mistake. But then, 30 seconds later, another poster: Edinburgh's Couscous Festival!!
(no shade on Conscious Edinburgh - I'm sure it's great! but couscous is couscous)
(no shade on Conscious Edinburgh - I'm sure it's great! but couscous is couscous)
December 2, 2025 at 6:55 PM
sometimes the universe does provide: I misread the first poster as 'Couscous Edinburgh' and was disappointed to realise my mistake. But then, 30 seconds later, another poster: Edinburgh's Couscous Festival!!
(no shade on Conscious Edinburgh - I'm sure it's great! but couscous is couscous)
(no shade on Conscious Edinburgh - I'm sure it's great! but couscous is couscous)
In April 2020 I bought a 10kg sack of Elephant Atta chapatti flour which I have since used for absolutely everything (bread, crumble, sauces, many many birthday cakes) – even if at a depreciating post-lockdown rate. Tonight I used the last of it – does this mean my pandemic is finally over??
November 16, 2025 at 9:57 PM
In April 2020 I bought a 10kg sack of Elephant Atta chapatti flour which I have since used for absolutely everything (bread, crumble, sauces, many many birthday cakes) – even if at a depreciating post-lockdown rate. Tonight I used the last of it – does this mean my pandemic is finally over??
mystic bridge (with train window filter)
November 10, 2025 at 8:57 AM
mystic bridge (with train window filter)
Marcus Garvey in Scotland in 1914: 'I have seen wonders, I have learnt wonders and I hope to teach wonders... At some places I have been the only black man seen for a good time... I have had access to places that only the aristocracy would think of going... some take me for an African millionaire'
October 13, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Marcus Garvey in Scotland in 1914: 'I have seen wonders, I have learnt wonders and I hope to teach wonders... At some places I have been the only black man seen for a good time... I have had access to places that only the aristocracy would think of going... some take me for an African millionaire'
hand-drawn angels from the cover of one of Sylvia Townsend Warner's scrap-books and on the plaster above a cell door in a fourteenth-century Umbrian convent
September 27, 2025 at 9:59 AM
hand-drawn angels from the cover of one of Sylvia Townsend Warner's scrap-books and on the plaster above a cell door in a fourteenth-century Umbrian convent
Some images from Wael Shawky’s amazing opera Drama: 1882 - first shown at last year’s Biennale and now on as part of an exhibition of his work at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh. It ends tomorrow - I highly recommend catching it if you can!
September 25, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Some images from Wael Shawky’s amazing opera Drama: 1882 - first shown at last year’s Biennale and now on as part of an exhibition of his work at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh. It ends tomorrow - I highly recommend catching it if you can!
Central Italy says Free Palestine
September 6, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Central Italy says Free Palestine
'Dreaming of A Woollen World' by Maya Hall de Bueno: cat follows mouse into woollen paradise/underworld and is rewarded with a fellow being. There is something about this Leonora Carrington-inspired short film that I really love - a kind of feminist fantasy Andy Goldsworthy, on a domestic scale?
August 19, 2025 at 5:13 PM
'Dreaming of A Woollen World' by Maya Hall de Bueno: cat follows mouse into woollen paradise/underworld and is rewarded with a fellow being. There is something about this Leonora Carrington-inspired short film that I really love - a kind of feminist fantasy Andy Goldsworthy, on a domestic scale?
"Without labor nothing prospers":
Sophocles, miners, worker co-operatives, no tips, and Samuel Gompers - labour history and organising in Athens, Ohio.
Sophocles, miners, worker co-operatives, no tips, and Samuel Gompers - labour history and organising in Athens, Ohio.
August 14, 2025 at 9:21 AM
"Without labor nothing prospers":
Sophocles, miners, worker co-operatives, no tips, and Samuel Gompers - labour history and organising in Athens, Ohio.
Sophocles, miners, worker co-operatives, no tips, and Samuel Gompers - labour history and organising in Athens, Ohio.
Further to this @thetls.bsky.social essay about Una Marson's early work as a publisher, the full run of Marson's 1920s/1930s magazine, The Cosmopolitan, is now freely available on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (@dlocaribbean.bsky.social): www.dloc.com/AA00114844/0...
August 12, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Further to this @thetls.bsky.social essay about Una Marson's early work as a publisher, the full run of Marson's 1920s/1930s magazine, The Cosmopolitan, is now freely available on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (@dlocaribbean.bsky.social): www.dloc.com/AA00114844/0...
And... I am very happy to share that the digitised copies of the full run of The Cosmopolitan are now available on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (who made this all possible!): www.dloc.com/AA00114844/0... cc: @dlocaribbean.bsky.social @soccaribbeanuk.bsky.social
August 12, 2025 at 2:38 PM
And... I am very happy to share that the digitised copies of the full run of The Cosmopolitan are now available on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (who made this all possible!): www.dloc.com/AA00114844/0... cc: @dlocaribbean.bsky.social @soccaribbeanuk.bsky.social
NUJ protest in Edinburgh tomorrow in response to the targeted killing by Israel of the Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed Noufal - 6 pm, outside Waverley Station.
August 11, 2025 at 4:09 PM
NUJ protest in Edinburgh tomorrow in response to the targeted killing by Israel of the Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed Noufal - 6 pm, outside Waverley Station.
Faces of Charleston (a Virginia Woolf Society conference latergram)
August 4, 2025 at 9:11 AM
Faces of Charleston (a Virginia Woolf Society conference latergram)
From this 1977 collection, edited by Andrew Salkey, with cover by Errol Lloyd
July 14, 2025 at 9:38 AM
From this 1977 collection, edited by Andrew Salkey, with cover by Errol Lloyd
For Bastille day, 'Revolution is not simply a word', by Cuban poet Alberto Rocasolano: 'Revolution is [...] the only way of trampling/ cactus memories/ until the future thrusts up a pattern,/ one day squeezed into another.'
July 14, 2025 at 9:38 AM
For Bastille day, 'Revolution is not simply a word', by Cuban poet Alberto Rocasolano: 'Revolution is [...] the only way of trampling/ cactus memories/ until the future thrusts up a pattern,/ one day squeezed into another.'
The light here nicely capturing my ambivalence about being in Hardy country (can’t stop thinking about the mayor of casterbridge’s frumenty)
July 10, 2025 at 6:25 AM
The light here nicely capturing my ambivalence about being in Hardy country (can’t stop thinking about the mayor of casterbridge’s frumenty)
A taste of last week’s wonderful Neo-Historical Fiction conference at @temporal-communities.de @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social - I came away with so many new ideas, and in awe of all of the important work being done. Thank you @carolinekoegler.bsky.social et al for your fabulous hospitality!
June 8, 2025 at 9:16 AM
A taste of last week’s wonderful Neo-Historical Fiction conference at @temporal-communities.de @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social - I came away with so many new ideas, and in awe of all of the important work being done. Thank you @carolinekoegler.bsky.social et al for your fabulous hospitality!
top tier opening anecdote - from @andrewhartman.bsky.social's much anticipated own magnum opus, Karl Marx in America: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
May 14, 2025 at 10:03 AM
top tier opening anecdote - from @andrewhartman.bsky.social's much anticipated own magnum opus, Karl Marx in America: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Sometimes you buy an old book for teaching & this happens: inscribed by Alain Locke (to who?) in recognition of work 'pour l'Afrique', with letters from Senghor & Souru-Migan Apithy about the 1945 French Constituent Assembly. The practice of diaspora. I want to teach a whole course about this book!
March 15, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Sometimes you buy an old book for teaching & this happens: inscribed by Alain Locke (to who?) in recognition of work 'pour l'Afrique', with letters from Senghor & Souru-Migan Apithy about the 1945 French Constituent Assembly. The practice of diaspora. I want to teach a whole course about this book!
Merry Christmas Man - 1936 (?) Christmas card by Langston Hughes
December 23, 2024 at 3:57 PM
Merry Christmas Man - 1936 (?) Christmas card by Langston Hughes
no there there: Gertrude Stein/ Alice B. Toklas’s (empty) jewellery case
December 17, 2024 at 8:23 PM
no there there: Gertrude Stein/ Alice B. Toklas’s (empty) jewellery case
For armistice and ceasefire, some of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas scrapbooks. Have been thinking a lot recently about her ‘thinking peace into existence’: ‘there is another way of fighting for freedom without arms; we can fight with the mind’.
November 11, 2023 at 11:23 AM
For armistice and ceasefire, some of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas scrapbooks. Have been thinking a lot recently about her ‘thinking peace into existence’: ‘there is another way of fighting for freedom without arms; we can fight with the mind’.