Welcome!

This blog takes you behind the scenes of the writing of an academic history book – like a ‘making of’ featurette. Its aim is to make visible the traditionally invisible process of what it’s like for a university academic in the Humanities to write a research monograph, i.e. a single-authored 100,00 word book.

I’m a History Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, and the book I’m writing has a working title of The Elusive Church: Luther, Poland and the Early Reformation. This project is supported by a British Academy Mid Career Fellowship (2012-13).

On these pages, you'll find a regular 'log' of how the book is progressing, plus information about the project. I welcome your comments and thoughts - whether you're studying or teaching history at school or university, or writing non-fiction yourself...

Thursday, 14 June 2012

Forced break

Chapter Two is in full flow, I'm poring over the anti-heresy statutes printed for Danzig in 1526, but it's now time to go on summer holiday.

This means no updates for a couple of weeks, and it also means that I have to write myself a laborious, intricate document setting out how to pick up where I left off, when I return. From past experience, I know I'll forget almost all the minutae of the book which are currently firmly and clearly in my head, so the 'after holiday' instructions to myself have to be written in a patient, spelling-out-the-obvious, slightly patronising way. "Item 1: Keep writing chapter 2...."
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