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On My UK Adventure

It’s hard to tell on a blog, since we can time pieces to go up whenever we choose, but I have actually been in the UK for business this past week. So, instead of your regularly scheduled “Medical Mondays” (which will resume next week) I thought I would tell you a little about my trip.

I journeyed across the ocean for an exciting reason, the OUPblog is going international! We have been planning this change for some time but in order to put all the final pieces together I traveled to Oxford, England to meet Kirsty McHugh our new UK blog representative. We couldn’t have chosen better, Kirsty is far wittier than me and quite enthusiastic about sharing Oxford UK news on the blog. Check out her first post!

Oxford, in case you have never been, is a beautiful university town and the OUP offices are a bit like Hogwarts (sometimes you have to take stairs up to go down.) My favorite part about Oxford UK was the archive tour Martin Maw took us on (more on that in future posts.)

I also had occasion to meet some of the best bloggers in the UK. My first meeting was with Richard Charkin, venerable author of the Charkin blog. I won’t say too much, since wine was involved, but if you aren’t reading his blog you should be!

I also met with Mark Thwaite of Ready Steady Blog. Mark and I isolated the other people at the table by geeking-it-up. We couldn’t stop sharing our blogging enthusiasm and I hope that we will be able to convince him to write some guest blogs for us in the future.

My favorite office was that of Peter Stothard of the TLS.  There were books on the shelves, books on the floor, books on the couch – exactly how a good office should look! Check out his blog here.

My final meeting was with Michael Allen of Grumpy Old Bookman. Michael isn’t nearly as Grumpy as he wants you to believe and our conversation led to some good ideas about how we can improve the OUPblog.

My UK trip isn’t quite over but the work part is. I’m going to spend the next four days bumming around London catching up on some museums and perfecting my British accent. Don’t worry though; the OUPblog will continue to have new content in my absence.

Recent Comments

  1. Anonymous

    May I suggest you get your own personal blog, rather than routinely posting about yourself at the OUP blog?

  2. Rebecca

    Good suggestion Anonymous. The truth is that the OUP blog is my blog. With so many books published by OUP it is my job (and what a wonderful job it is) to tie them all together on this site. Sometimes the most obvious way is share my experiences with them. I hope you will indulge me.

  3. Tony

    Perfecting your British accent, Rebecca? Even if you mean English accent this is a bit vague; I mean, there are hundreds to choose from. You can listen to a few examples at the English Accents and Dialect section of the Collect Britain website. There’s a link to one of them at
    http://omf.blogspot.com/2004/09/thoull-hae-to-corn-thy-sheep.html

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