Sally Barnden
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sally-barnden.bsky.social
Sally Barnden
@sally-barnden.bsky.social
310 followers 530 following 60 posts
Early modern drama enthusiast. Lecturer in Literature and Visual Culture at Swansea University. Aspiring climber and successful cat person.
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Reposted by Sally Barnden
writeups.org
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You know a country by its values. By what a country values. And it turns out thatwhat a country values can change overtime. Sometimes, though, there's a sort of cognitive delay between the country you think you are in, and the country you've actually become. For example, you can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word - but if you then chronically underfund your cultural institutions, and treat your cultural workers with contempt, many people will suspect you of being full of it. And as the decades pass - and fewer and fewer Shakespeares and Austens and Orwells emerge from your little island - even more people will begin to suspect that in truth you do not value culture at all, and are in fact running a giant heritage museum in which the only cultural workers you respect are the dead ones.
November 12, 2025 at 8:55 AM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
Beautiful! Can’t wait to read it. Congratulations ❤️
October 31, 2025 at 10:45 PM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
the photos from this production are so fabulous
August 12, 2025 at 1:27 PM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
Brilliant, thanks so much Harry!
August 8, 2025 at 9:55 PM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
thanks Edel! this sounds persuasive!
August 8, 2025 at 1:35 PM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
thanks Hester!
August 8, 2025 at 1:34 PM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
someone should investigate why Massinger's 'A New Way to Pay Old Debts' had such appeal for C18/19 audiences!
July 31, 2025 at 2:28 PM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
writing about this very belated revival for a Marlowe collection -- I'm interested in the Maltese angle, bc in 1818 Malta had fairly recently come under British rule
July 31, 2025 at 2:20 PM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
you're a star!
July 31, 2025 at 2:17 PM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
I think I’ve only done character entries where they appear in more than one play (Falstaff) or if they’re also discussed as a historical figure (Henries, various)
July 29, 2025 at 10:03 AM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
thinking unhelpfully of various unnamed men in paintings—can we have Moroni’s “The Tailor”? No name, but a profession at least!
July 26, 2025 at 9:10 PM
sally-barnden.bsky.social
I saw your post and suddenly remembered walking past it in Windsor Castle!
July 23, 2025 at 4:20 PM