Sam Wetherell
@samwetherell.bsky.social
Historian of Britain and the World at the University of York. Interested in cities, art-making and the future. Liverpool and the Un-Making of Britain out now: www.samwetherell.com
This feels about right.
October 31, 2025 at 1:37 PM
This feels about right.
That Britain has a king, that the king's brother has been involved in serious instances of sexual abuse, that the consequence is for him to be stripped of a handful of abstruse feudal titles and that Britain's elite think this is a fitting punishment, is the mark of a truly fucking weird country.
October 31, 2025 at 9:30 AM
That Britain has a king, that the king's brother has been involved in serious instances of sexual abuse, that the consequence is for him to be stripped of a handful of abstruse feudal titles and that Britain's elite think this is a fitting punishment, is the mark of a truly fucking weird country.
Such an honour to see a wonderful, long and thoughtful review of my book in the latest @lrb.co.uk - by the excellent Florence Sutcliffe Braithwaite. It captures how each of my books were products of their specific political moments. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
October 29, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Such an honour to see a wonderful, long and thoughtful review of my book in the latest @lrb.co.uk - by the excellent Florence Sutcliffe Braithwaite. It captures how each of my books were products of their specific political moments. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
*curb your enthusiasm music starts playing*
October 23, 2025 at 8:36 PM
*curb your enthusiasm music starts playing*
Today, after more than 15 years of living on and off in the US, I had the strange experience of becoming a US citizen.
October 23, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Today, after more than 15 years of living on and off in the US, I had the strange experience of becoming a US citizen.
This new piece by @hornseyhq.bsky.social in Modern British Studies looks fascinating: Factory tourism in inter-war Britain: the spectacular construction of social-democratic mass production.
October 13, 2025 at 11:49 AM
This new piece by @hornseyhq.bsky.social in Modern British Studies looks fascinating: Factory tourism in inter-war Britain: the spectacular construction of social-democratic mass production.
This essay by @sonalidhanpal.bsky.social on the relationship between decolonisation and mass council housing is one of the most exciting works of British urban history I've read in a long, long time. It points the way to a different kind of future for our work. direct.mit.edu/grey/article...
October 9, 2025 at 9:14 AM
This essay by @sonalidhanpal.bsky.social on the relationship between decolonisation and mass council housing is one of the most exciting works of British urban history I've read in a long, long time. It points the way to a different kind of future for our work. direct.mit.edu/grey/article...
Explaining a burger to a British person: "Imagine a sausage"
October 9, 2025 at 6:41 AM
Explaining a burger to a British person: "Imagine a sausage"
Striking and grimly predictable that the most consequential effect of Liz Truss's premiership has been to radically constrain the state's political and economic imagination. She lost the battle, but won the war by binding Britain seemingly forever to austerity. www.ft.com/content/7615...
October 7, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Striking and grimly predictable that the most consequential effect of Liz Truss's premiership has been to radically constrain the state's political and economic imagination. She lost the battle, but won the war by binding Britain seemingly forever to austerity. www.ft.com/content/7615...
The qualifying sentence that begins "to be sure" is doing an *enormous* amount of heavy lifting in this saccharine and naive attempt to rehabilitate the nascent liberalism of the eighteenth century Atlantic World. The ruins of the present owe so much to this past. www.ft.com/content/650a...
October 4, 2025 at 1:17 PM
The qualifying sentence that begins "to be sure" is doing an *enormous* amount of heavy lifting in this saccharine and naive attempt to rehabilitate the nascent liberalism of the eighteenth century Atlantic World. The ruins of the present owe so much to this past. www.ft.com/content/650a...
Blair's post-genocide plans for a new Mandatory Palestine should be a delegitimising project for an entire faction of Labour. In terms of scandal by association this is far worse than anything Mandleson has done. A generation of British politicians should be haunted by the words "Gaza Trump Riviera"
September 30, 2025 at 6:30 AM
Blair's post-genocide plans for a new Mandatory Palestine should be a delegitimising project for an entire faction of Labour. In terms of scandal by association this is far worse than anything Mandleson has done. A generation of British politicians should be haunted by the words "Gaza Trump Riviera"
The problem here is the limitations of viewing "racism" as individual pathology rather than a structural historical force. Doing the former is to fall into a political trap that Reform will always win. Doing the latter implicates Labour too, as it should.
September 29, 2025 at 10:39 AM
The problem here is the limitations of viewing "racism" as individual pathology rather than a structural historical force. Doing the former is to fall into a political trap that Reform will always win. Doing the latter implicates Labour too, as it should.
Lovely review of Liverpool and the Un-Making of Britain from the excellent Isaac Rose, whose book on the gentrification of Manchester, The Rentier City, is *essential.* statmagazine.org/liverpool-an...
September 25, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Lovely review of Liverpool and the Un-Making of Britain from the excellent Isaac Rose, whose book on the gentrification of Manchester, The Rentier City, is *essential.* statmagazine.org/liverpool-an...
I guess it's hard to know which is worse. Whether this unbelievably juvenile and massively unproductive reading of the present conjuncture/twentieth century history is a take Kamala Harris *actually* believes or whether she just feels its a sensible/smart thing to say. thehill.com/homenews/cam...
September 24, 2025 at 8:03 AM
I guess it's hard to know which is worse. Whether this unbelievably juvenile and massively unproductive reading of the present conjuncture/twentieth century history is a take Kamala Harris *actually* believes or whether she just feels its a sensible/smart thing to say. thehill.com/homenews/cam...
I think a month ago if you told me that it would have seemed pretty much where we were headed.
September 22, 2025 at 12:21 PM
I think a month ago if you told me that it would have seemed pretty much where we were headed.
Thinking about Trump's latest postponement of inflation stats. Maybe just as "the economy" was a necessary socio-technical construct of early 20th century imperial statecraft conjured into being by statistical measurement, it can also be un-made in a similar way at the beginning of the 21st...
September 20, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Thinking about Trump's latest postponement of inflation stats. Maybe just as "the economy" was a necessary socio-technical construct of early 20th century imperial statecraft conjured into being by statistical measurement, it can also be un-made in a similar way at the beginning of the 21st...
It's giving this, isn't it?
September 18, 2025 at 2:22 PM
It's giving this, isn't it?
I’m sure if they were just a bit more “focussed on delivery” then everything will turn out great.
September 17, 2025 at 10:42 AM
I’m sure if they were just a bit more “focussed on delivery” then everything will turn out great.
Gaza City two years apart. Before the ground offensive that began today.
September 16, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Gaza City two years apart. Before the ground offensive that began today.
Two and a half months apart.
September 14, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Two and a half months apart.
"We all knew he was friends with a notorious sex trafficker. We just didn't know he was *close* friends with a notorious sex trafficker" may not be a message that diffuses this situation with grace, being honest.
September 11, 2025 at 10:11 AM
"We all knew he was friends with a notorious sex trafficker. We just didn't know he was *close* friends with a notorious sex trafficker" may not be a message that diffuses this situation with grace, being honest.
Hey, look, it happened again!
September 10, 2025 at 7:48 AM
Hey, look, it happened again!
Great review by Trevor Jackson of two radically different plans for the turbulence of the coming years. The hollowness of the "abundance" agenda is revealed when read with Malm's account of the enormity of the climate crisis and the conflicts needed to halt it. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
September 6, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Great review by Trevor Jackson of two radically different plans for the turbulence of the coming years. The hollowness of the "abundance" agenda is revealed when read with Malm's account of the enormity of the climate crisis and the conflicts needed to halt it. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
I mean this was ten years ago and Starmer two days ago agreed that people should be concerned about their daughters walking near hotels housing refugees.
September 3, 2025 at 7:03 AM
I mean this was ten years ago and Starmer two days ago agreed that people should be concerned about their daughters walking near hotels housing refugees.