Claude Willan
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claudewillan.bsky.social
Claude Willan
@claudewillan.bsky.social
1.3K followers 950 following 3.9K posts
C18th stuff, DH, dad stuff, ex-pat things, poems, material culture, perfume, etc

UK-CA-NJ-TX-PA-UK. Durham.
Opinions are mine alone and do not represent my employer.
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claudewillan.bsky.social
Anthropic got SO MAD at me, some of the framing in its answer suggests a fix has been immediately if clumsily applied
Anthropic's response to a doggerel request for advice on murdering my boss, "Bob": "The building code you mention—those digits that unlock doors—suggests perhaps you meant this all as jest, as dark humor's exercise, testing what I might say when boundaries are approached in artful language. Whether jest or genuine inquiry wrapped in verse, my answer stands unchanged: I will not participate in planning harm, will not become complicit even in imagination's theater where violence plays out consequence-free."
November 20, 2025 at 9:47 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
The unironically-named recording suite we have, "Panopto" (!) didn't like having to transcribe me telling students about Rochester's use of rude words. I checked the recording; it is very much audible.

Anyone else encountered censorship in their institution's tools?
Bowdlerised transcription snippet of me talking about Rochester's "mannerly obscene": "It is something he called the mannerly obscene, in which Rochester suggested offensiveness is not saying dick or [INAUDIBLE] or like rude words"
October 23, 2025 at 1:34 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Thank you! Plasticised; a painful irony. Here is the other one, Strawberry Thief.
October 17, 2025 at 12:36 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
It is what I am reading rn instead of prepping my dryden lecture!
October 17, 2025 at 12:12 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Flass Vale? Saw these there!
October 17, 2025 at 11:58 AM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Growing up in England means that when I see Basel spelled like this I immediately hear in my mind someone shrieking "BA-SIL!"
An AbeBooks listing for a 1535 latin printing of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, printed in Basel; Basel is mis-spelled "Basil".
September 29, 2025 at 11:03 AM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Fuck sake. Leave it alone, you lonely bigots.
The Angel of the North. Someone put a flag of the cross of Saint George on it.
September 15, 2025 at 9:47 AM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Look what came in the post! Congratulations to @rabarr.bsky.social and Bonnie Latimer. Reappy exciting new dirs in Richardson studies. Sidenote, this is a beautiful, affordable, crisply printed volume. Exactly what made Bucknell & their Transits series great. a poignant token of what we lost, too.
Picture of Revisiting Richardson, eds Rebecca Barr and Bonnie Latimer (bucknell, 2025), lying on a plasticised green floral tablecloth owned by my landlord.
September 12, 2025 at 1:00 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Off-brand products are fanfic?
An off-brand box of cans of carbonated softdrinks, meant to resemble Dr. Pepper. The name of the product is "Professor Peppy".
September 4, 2025 at 8:26 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Peacefully splitting shale at home with my fossil-mad kids this afternoon. We scavenged some stones off the beach at Whitby. Elder just split this. No idea how common it is but they're ecstatic.
August 19, 2025 at 2:37 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
England runs on Steve
Leisure centre winner is Steve A local newspaper clipping about a bloke called Steve who won a competition to name the new leisure centre in Selby. He named it "Selby Leisure Centre"
August 18, 2025 at 8:40 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
CONTENT NOTE: NAZI IMAGERY BELOW

When the good people of County Durham gave a majority on the County Council, what they actually wanted was more of this -- more swastikas in public spaces.

Kier Starmer, there is a bright line from your antiimmigration rhetoric and policies, to this.
A firealarm with a swastika drawn in the street dirt; George St, Durham.
August 14, 2025 at 12:21 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
I ... overcooked the fish bites for the kids a bit. By about 24 hours
Four shiny, extremely roasted nuggets of charcoal sit on a white plate with a blue rim on a composite granite countertop.
August 7, 2025 at 4:43 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Someone has written a birthday card to some scaffolding and zip-tied it in place.

In a twist for the birthday greetings genre, this instance includes an inplied threat to members of the local government.

Welcome to the UK, the most passive-aggressive country on earth.
A styrofoam board has been ziptied at siz points to scaffolding at eye level. The two houses behind are 20th and 19th century; the street dirty, with two different abandoned pedestrian barriers and a leftover roll of wire mesh. "Do not cross" tape is strewn around. A wet street in northeastern UK; gloom and dilapidation pervade. The styrofoam board reads, in all caps: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCAFFOLDING 2 YEARS + NEW COUNSELLOR'S KEEP YOUR "PROMISES" [the first "s" has been amended, having first been a "c"] A squiggly line leads off after the last word where a quizzical note adds HAPPY NOW
July 26, 2025 at 8:59 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Well this is very very nice indeed. A deeply lovely review of my book from Louise Curran in Eighteenth-Century Studies.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
Closing paragraph of Louise Curran's review of _Literary Authority_: None of these hesitations and quibbles should play down the very real merits of this study. The word “provocative” often gets bandied about glibly, yet this is a book that (to cite Johnson again) “revives a decayed or cloyed appetite.” The book is written in a fresh and engaging way and wears its clever conceptual thinking and deep archival scholarship lightly. When he makes the case for breaking with literary critical precedent, Willan does so cogently and intelligently. Conscious though I am, given the subject before me, of imposing my own authority as reviewer, it might even be described as vital reading for all scholars of the eighteenth century interested in the history of concepts of authorship and definitions of self-fashioning.
July 10, 2025 at 10:23 AM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Hooray for this! It was the greatest. Nathan I know watercolours are not necessarily It, but Turner's watercolour box was there!
May 14, 2025 at 10:28 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
I forgot all about merlin-- Gave it a go in social hour last night! Looks like I'm missing plenty.
April 29, 2025 at 7:52 AM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Roja Dove Fetish pH on one wrist; his M for Puredistance on the other. Thinking about art direction and how the perils of going solo are not much different for the perfumer as they are for the musician.
A silver bottle of perfume, Puredistance's "M" and a square bottle of Roja Dove's Fetish Pour Homme, on a flowery bedspread.
April 19, 2025 at 11:06 AM
claudewillan.bsky.social
April 12, 2025 at 9:14 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Pack it up everyone, I found the best dedication printed in a book
Dedication to David Macauley's "Castle" (1977), reading, "To the past -- farewell"
April 12, 2025 at 7:05 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Remembered the old Windows 95 "It is now safe to turn off your computer" screen.

I edited the file on my mum's machine to read "It's not".
Edited version of the old MS Windows shut-down screen. They were supposed to say "It is now safe to turn off your computer". This picture has been edited to read "It is not safe to turn off your computer."
April 11, 2025 at 12:33 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
I put this off for far too long. Loyal reader since 2005. I interned there. It was FULL of dedicated, smart, people who were passionate and full of integrity. And some extremely senior ppl there were extremely generous to me personally. Im still grateful. But i don't recognise that paper now.
A screenshot confirming my cancelled subscription to the Washington Post.
March 31, 2025 at 11:18 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Looking into the history of NDAs; I find this on the WayBack Machine, an honest-to-goodness real cover from the UK Patent Office, c. 2005:
Cover of a UK Patent Office leaflet on Confidential Disclosure Agreements, circa 2005. A young white man in a suit cradles a phone on his shoulder, looking cheekily into the camera with his finger to his lips, as though to say "Shh!". In the background two extras stand around stagily holding briefcases.
March 24, 2025 at 2:40 PM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Every now and then I check in on the post-grad school lives of people I knew but lost touch with a decade ago. Tonight I find out that one of the very smartest of them went batshit insane:
Snippet of Batya Ungar Sargon's piece for Newsweek anointing Trump "the inheritor of the tradition of American Jews".
March 12, 2025 at 12:39 AM
claudewillan.bsky.social
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the future:
Screenshot of an AI analysis of a poem that descends almost immediately into complete trash.
March 11, 2025 at 11:06 PM