Origin of Universe Finally Explained

Sorry that should read origin of the University...as explained at yesterday's well attended Lab in Siobhan Begley's beautifully elegant, and eloquent, lecture.
The University of Leicester, founded in 1921, had its origins in the coming together of four great associations - the Literary and Philosophical Society, founded in the 1830s to reunite the town's middle classes after years of sectarian strife; the Leicester Ladies' Reading Society, founded in 1869 because women members were not allowed in the Lit & Phil; Rev David Vaughan's Working Men's College, founded in 1862 on Christian Socialist principles (and still a key part of the University as the Institute for Lifelong Learning); and The National Council of Women, founded in 1897 to coordinate charitable projects in the town.
So, two men's associations and two women's associations created your University - nothing to do with AHRC or ESRC or HEFCE or any of that bureaucratic crew, and everything to do with what was local, practical, and visionary. Thankyou Siobhan.
As well, Tim Davies returned to his old stamping ground to explain his work on (what he managed to say between mouthfuls of cake as) 'Self help Self health'. Very soon we were right up against the internal organs of the Victorian bourgeoisie and the pills potions and powders and balms that were sold to stop them hurting so much - or should that be 'splurting' so much?
So, as the sun set over the Lab and we scaled the heights of Leicester's ambition to build a new Universe in its midst (a la Begley), so we remembered the swollen gums, inflated stomachs and crushed kidneys of those who made it so. Thankyou Tim for such a timely reminder of the material basis of History. And over to you Tristram...

Manchester, Engels and the Making of Marxism

I know you are all excited about our forthcoming Lecture. There will be the usual cake + history + pub, but the event also brings this year's New History Lab sessions to a close. Don't be too despondent: below you can read the blurb from Tristram, which is bound to cheer you up. Remember we start an hour earlier (cake 3:30pm, start by 4pm).

"Friedrich Engels, co-author of The Communist Manifesto and life long ideological ally of Karl Marx, lived in Manchester from 1842-44 and 1850-1870. Each period of residency proved instrumental in the development of Marxism. The first gave Engels an understanding of materialism, the proletariat and the function of private property - all of which came to be expressed in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). His longer stay in 'Cottonopolis' - as a merchant in the cotton industry - not only brought to light the troubling contradictions of Engels's bourgeois existence, but through Manchester's public culture of science helped turn his thinking in a markedly scientistic direction. This proved the essential and under-appreciated intellectual preamble for Engels's far more scientific interpretation of Marxism in the 1870s and 1880s (Anti-Dühring; Dialectics of Nature) and much of what constituted official, 20^th century Marxism.

Dr. Tristram Hunt, historian of the Victorian city and biographer of Friedrich Engels at Queen Mary, University of London, will explore the changing role of Manchester in the development of Marxism on Friday 13^th March…"

New Cake Lab: part 2

Banana Bread.

The lovely Sandra was keen to have the recipe to this. Based on one by Michael Barry from the BBC website a long time ago.

Primary source materials
8oz self-raising flour
4oz marg
4oz sugar
1lb bananas (weigh with skins on, then peel and mash)
2 eggs
6oz sultanas

Methodology
1. Heat oven to 180°C.
2. Mix all the ingredients except the sultanas together.
3. Mix thoroughly and add sultanas. Transfer to loaf tin, and bake for around 90mins. It's ready when a knife comes out clean.

In 60 minutes the heavy tinted doors...

...of the New History Lab will swing open and the white coated ones will be at it again beating back the bounds of knowledge from the flame of learning in the temple of doom. Bunsens will be lit in readiness to the test tubes will be held up to the light just to show Professor King that we know what we know we know even though we're not scientists. Today, Siobhan Begley and Tim Davies will report on their PhD researches. Tim does drugs. Siobhan does gangs. So there should be lots to talk about - especially if specimens are offered.
So see you soon, Friday 27 February, usual place (1 Salisbury Rd), usual stuff (430 for tea and cake followed by trip to pub), and just a little bit of lab work squeezed between the lemon sponge. That'll do nicely.

Methodism in the northern coalfield.

Obviously your first duty is to the lab, but if you are at a loose end next Friday (6/3), then pop along to the CUH seminar at 2:30pm to hear our very own Rob Colls tell you all about Methodism in the northern coalfield. For those who went on our first peregrination to Stoke to see pottery museums and the birth place of primitive Methodism, this is bound to be of interest.

Free Online Books Every Student of Humanity Should Read

An American blog has compiled a list of 100 free online books that "every humanities student should read". You may not agree with the choices but it's a useful list of links in one place.

Old cake lab

Here's an old one that I might try one day:

Uxbridge Cakes

Take a pound of fine flour, seven pounds of currants, half a nutmeg, and four pounds of butter, mix your currants well in the flour, butter, and seasoning, and knead it with so much good new yeast as will make it into a pretty high paste; after it is kneaded well together let it stand an hour to rise, and put about half a pound of paste into a cake.

(From: Richard Briggs, The English art of cookery (London, 1794), p. 455.)

Discoveries

The next lab is this Friday. Rather than giving you the usual epithet or quotation, I'm just going to say that regular labber Siobhan Begley and former student Tim Davies will be giving their papers, both of which are about things they discovered about Leicester during their PhDs: one on the founding of the University, the other on marketing drugs in the city. I think the speakers and their subject matter will be enough to sell it to you.

As usual, tea and cake from 4:30pm!

See you then,
Malcolm