Jesus Wept: On Umberto Eco and John Donne

Is weeping more Christ-like than laughing? Dr Lucy Allen is a medievalist working on the literature and culture of late-medieval England, and as a teaching associate of the English Faculty at the University of Cambridge. In this post, re-published with kind permission from … Continue reading

Crying in the archive: The story of Diana Bromley

Sara Hiorns is a doctoral researcher at Queen Mary University of London. She was awarded an AHRC studentship in 2013 for the project, ‘The diplomatic service family at home and abroad since 1945’ which is joint supervised by the Foreign and Commonwealth … Continue reading

History in British Tears

Dr Thomas Dixon is the Director of the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London. Here, on the occasion of the publication of his new book, he reflects on his experience of researching and writing … Continue reading

Excrementitious humours: Crying and not crying in Titus Andronicus

Dr Thomas Dixon is the Director of the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London. Here he writes about the representations of tears and weeping in Shakespeare’s first tragedy. I have been researching the … Continue reading

Episcopal emotions: Weeping in the life of the medieval bishop

Dr Katherine Harvey is as Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London. Here, in a blog post adapted from her paper at the recent SSHM 2012 Conference hosted at the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions, she … Continue reading

The history of the stiff upper lip. Part 2.

Tonight sees the broadcast of the second episode of Ian Hislop’s Stiff Upper Lip – An Emotional History of Britain on BBC Two. As I explained in an earlier post, I have had a minor supporting role in this series as … Continue reading

The history of the stiff upper lip. Part 1.

This evening sees the broadcast of the first episode of a new BBC Two television series:Ian Hislop’s Stiff Upper Lip – An Emotional History of Britain, produced by Deborah Lee for Wingspan Productions. All being well, I think I will pop up … Continue reading