It gets a nice write-up in the Radio Times!

Rather surprised to see a picture of myself on the TV listing! I’m not presenting it — just one of several talking heads.

I’m on TV tonight! Check out the first episode of Britain’s Railway Empire at 8pm on Channel 4.

It’s a new, two part series about the history of the railways, starting with the Victorian Era. It’s not just a story about tech and engineering, but covers the social and cultural impact too.

In fact, you can stream all three episodes on NOW right away!

I'm on the TV! 'Jack the Ripper: Written in Blood' is a new docudrama about the journalists who reported on the killings and helped to mythologise the figure of the Ripper. I'm one of the talking-head historians. Part one premiers tonight at 9pm on Sky History & NOW TV. #WritteninBlood

A few years earlier, in 1888, they ran a similar competition ranking/predicting the popularity of Dickens’ works. Pickwick a clear winner again.

In 1892, Answers magazine asked its readers to rank the most popular characters from the work of Charles Dickens. Pickwick & Weller joint top!

I was expecting to do my duty as a historian and stick the boot in to Ridley Scott again, but perhaps this a reasonable guess at what an Acta Diurna written on papyrus would have looked like? I'd be interested to hear what expert historians of Ancient Rome make of this.

The Acta Diurna was initially carved in stone and posted in public places, but later examples were apparently written out on papyrus. Sadly, none of these have survived.

Here's a still of the scene from Gladiator II featuring the coffee shop and the alleged 'newspaper'. Alas, we don't get a very good look at it - I was bracing myself for a massive headline about an upcoming fight at the Colleseum, but the prop is used more subtly.

Ridley Scott has a track record of getting newspapers wrong. These props in Napoleon are eye-wateringly bad, featuring tabloidesque headlines and images at a time when British newspapers didn't even feature *news* on their front pages. But hey, at least it was an era that had newspapers.

Apparently there's a scene in Gladiator II where a Roman nobleman sits in a coffee shop reading a newspaper!