Benjamin Sharkey

DPhil History @UniofOxford @magdalenoxford. Syriac Christianity, Central Asia, Islamic history, Mongol Empire, Global History. Scholar @NizamiOxford.

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

How does the campaigning for queen of Naboo work? It’s one thing to have a teenage monarch in a hereditary monarchy, but how does it work in a two-year elected monarchy? Do their parents run their campaigns? Or is it like youth parliament?

[Everything Price Sufferer (but especially eggs) @agraybee]

Give me your best Star Wars nitpicks. No reasonable criticisms or analysis, I'm talking real pedantic here.

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@bennetthaselton @agraybee And how does everyone understand what they’re saying?

[Alexandre Blaineau @AlBlaineau]

Le carnet de voyage de Delacroix

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@BillTheKid1603 These guys

[Medieval Updates @MedievalUpdates]

OPEN ACCESS🏆
Samuel Cardwell, The Idea of Evangelisation: ‘Mission’, Theology and Scripture from the Early Church to the Age of Bede (The British Academy, June 2026)
https://t.co/1zTZpHRNas
https://t.co/PUaSIW2ucT
#medievaltwitter #medievalstudies #medievalchristianization

[Vicente Fox Mulder @WASPmexicano]

Not as wild but it’s always fascinating to me that the 20th century had a vice president whose first language wasn’t English but Kansa

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@QuiGonJenna But… who on earth was Snoke…

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@Kerrcarr01 And he’d be absolutely right

[Pastor Rich Lusk @Vicar1973]

Melchizedek is the Tom Bombadil of the Bible.

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@fadule_ But Memento is the best one

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

The culmination of the Constantinian experiment in Christianising imperial rule: the martyr emperor.

[Charles A. Coulombe @RCCoulombe]

It being the feast of SS. Constantine and Helen, I’ll repost this icon.

[Levi Canuleio @LeviCanuleio]

Eggers should do a Greek Tragedy, not a Homeric Epic

E.g. Medea or The Bacchae

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@DrMichaelBonner I assume because it didn’t contain such obviously useful knowledge as works of medicine, astrology and logic did

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@DrMichaelBonner This gorytos from a Scythian royal tomb is often interpreted as depicting scenes from the life of Achilles. It was probably made by Greeks in Crimea, but commissioned for a Scythian king

[Joseph @aestheticist_]

ok, but if you reincarnated genghis khan in the 1950s and asked him who he wanted to play him in the movie he definitely would have said john wayne

[MRJB 🇬🇧🇨🇦 @DrMichaelBonner]

Theophilus of Edessa (d. 785) is said to have translated some of the Iliad into Syriac. Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873), the greatest Christian translator of the Abbasid era, knew the Iliad by heart and apparently declaimed bits of it often. Passages of Homer in the Aristotelian texts were obviously brought into Arabic more than once. But the Homeric poems were never wholly translated into Arabic (nor incidentally were the other Greek poets, tragedians, or historians). Nevertheless, the Third Voyage of Sindbad, from the Thousand and One Nights, is very similar to Odyssey IX.

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@ross_baglin Love the strong opinions! Waugh is entrancing!

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

I stand by my opinion that Wind in the Willows or Three Men in a Boat is the greatest English novel.

It’s also crazy there’s no mention of Dorian Gray or Evelyn Waugh. Oh and Ivan Ilyich is Tolstoy’s best work.

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@erikmbaker Do they…

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@dcsandbrook @bookclubpodhq But how on earth could they come up with a list without consulting Britain’s favourite literary critic?

[Benjamin Sharkey @SharkeyBenjamin]

@BergonziBen I’m certainly intrigued to tackle it!