From the BFI melodrama list linked below, I’ve just watched Victims of Sin (Mexico 1950) - sizzlingly sexy, then shocking, beautiful b&w, and a song about dancing that I don’t think was about dancing at all. (“Ay, José, do that again. Ay, José, that’s not the way! Ay, José, now the other way!”)

- late night snack - pani puri (spiced potato & chickpea filling); found a handy little dispenser for the mint puri.

“Pray thee, why dost thou wrap thy poison'd pills / In gold and sugar?” - tonight in REP we read John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, as performed by the King’s Men in 1613.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

Academic choices:

Today's Sunday dozen. The BBC and André Bazin, Penda's Fen and Blossoms Shanghai, Hilma af Klint and Echo Delay Reverb, pity and fear, Gertrude Stein and Iris Murdoch. And Joan Baez. With a detail of a painting I wanted to steal from the Courtauld. www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/the-sunday-d...

The OED historical thesaurus entry for “impotence” seems quite keen to … shift responsibility?

Reform's former Leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, a 10.5 year jail term for taking bribes from the Kremlin. Cosied up to authoritarian powers & traded principles for payoffs. Reform's leadership laughably claimed they barely knew Gill. Will all this be on tomorrow's front pages?

Ben Stokes! Five-fer!! #Ashes 🏏

This does feel like a major crossing of the Rubicon – the world's best-funded and in many ways most powerful public health agency is now actively pushing disinformation. I know there's a *lot* going on to care about at the moment, but this one really is significant, and matters well beyond the US.

*** The Reader is supposed to be on the Stage, facing the Audience. - the classic theatrical nightmare, via the paratexts of “The Devil’s Elixir” (1829)

Scotland ⚽️ !! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

A Government of cowards. Rather than tackle inequality - they've gone for pensioners, disabled people and now it's people fleeing war and persecution. They can't get away with this. Join.greenparty.org.uk

Floodwaters of Storm Claudia work their way down the Severn, breaking its banks in Worcester now.

✍ Introducing ✍ Sharpie, a letterform recognition game for beginner #EarlyModern #palaeography gjhilton.github.io/Sharpie/ AKA What I Did Over Reading Week. #skystorians I’d be so grateful if you had time to share or take a look and tell me what sucks and needs fixing. Love g 🗃️

Meanwhile, in local news … (Police described the wanted man as “unexpectedly short.”)

Maybe Keir should demand the heads of major US news networks any time they imply Britain is on the brink of civil war or that we live under sharia law. Or does it not work both ways?

Fortinbras: no words... EXEUNT. FINIS. THE END. www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/slo... And so it ends... Branagh carried off, and in his coffin in the 1996 film; Andrew Scott in a publicity image for the Almeida production in 2017.

Louis Jourdan in ‘Count Dracula’ (BBC 1977) - available to stream in the UK on @talkingpicturestv.bsky.social until 8th November ⬆️🔉🔊⬆️

Our #Playmakers project has reached the stage where I can sit in a café, drumming out pentameters on the table with my fingers & searching the OED for the non-anachronistic mot juste. #AmWriting #CunningFlorentines #VeryFirstDraft

if you want to know what happened to Teen Vogue yesterday, my work wife @allegrak.bsky.social — who ran our politics section for 6 years until this past June — said it all in this. can't even pull out a favorite part til I sign my separation letter lol, just read the whole thing.

From the documentary Our Mister Shakespeare (1944) - a travelogue of Stratford Upon Avon & the surrounding area, including this and one other scene from #Shakespeare - unclear who the actors are playing Hamlet & Ophelia. Does anyone recognise them?

The Magisterium’s Musical Exorcism Unit attempting the capture & removal of an irregular rodent daemon from the pipes of what has come to be known as the Cathedral’s Marvelous Mechanical Mouse Organ.

Stars and Statues Made Human, Olympian Knights, Princes of Virginia! This Wednesday in REP we read three masques for the Lady Elizabeth’s Wedding in 1613. - written by Chapman & Beaumont, designs by Inigo Jones, music by Johnson, Coprario & Confesse No Farthingales May Be Worn

[unclear how they came to ingest the poison; perhaps via pigeons that the parents caught & fed to them.] www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/2559223...

Bottom of the ninth it is then ….

- arrived in the post today, Tower of London (1938) with Basil Rathbone as Richard III; having recently streamed the 1962 remake where Vincent Price was the King (in the earlier version he’d played the Duke of Clarence); Olivier’s Shakespearean Richard III was filmed in 1955.

- from Worcester’s Bridge of Lights festival last night

🏏 - brilliant run chase by India! 🇮🇳 #CWC2025

“Had I plantation of this isle, my lord … And were the king on’t, what would I do?” - Tonight in REP we will have an AGM at 7pm, followed by a reading of The Tempest to mark its 1612/13 revival by The Kings’ Men.

June Lockhart in SHE-WOLF OF LONDON (1946) #RIP

Youth in European dress. Iran, 18th century or later, @ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social

Tonight we read The Maid's Tragedy by Beaumont and Fletcher (marking its revival by The King’s Men in 1612/13) - no difficulties finding a text, as we will be reading from group leader Martin Wiggins’ own edition of the play.

Just voted in @nationaltrust.org.uk AGM

Dante descends into the seventh circle of Hell …

British.

Somewhere a scholar of Early Modern drama is mourning the lost income of no longer being paid to “help” Boris with his Shakespeare book.

We hope Princess Elizabeth & Frederick V turned up on time for the King’s Men 1613 revival of Othello, performed in celebration of their wedding (we know; not a great wedding play!) If they wanted to attend REP’s reading of the play they’d need to be there at 7pm not 7.30 (it’s a long play).

For every character providing exposition at the beginning of the play (an ‘Expo Lord’) there must be another requesting such exposition (‘Expo Req Lord’?) and here, in Beggars’ Bush, is a fantastically open (“tell me everything that’s happened in the last five years”) example.

Love and Death 💔

BREAKING #antifa NEWS: "The England flags have been removed and replaced with other signs" www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midland...

“And they made statues of Elon The First, and put them in the museums where the old rulers had been; and they told us that with his outstretched arm he was pointing to the stars …”

“As many as 23 million chickens, a quarter of the UK's poultry production, are raised in the river's catchment area.” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The Green surge continues ... We’ve just passed 90,000 members! 💚 People everywhere are joining the movement for real change. Want hope to be normal again? Join the Green Party today ↩️

Misericords of Malvern Priory: - man eating seafood; man-eating seamonster; witch with familiar; cobblers to the gentry.

“Chatterton, 1765” by Henrietta Ward (1832-1924) - as seen at M Shed, Bristol

Let’s make hope normal again. @zackpolanski.bsky.social youtu.be/qxt4HCjd7VA

- just another #MondayMorning ⬆️🔉🔈⬆️

GOD: "Do not mistreat foreigners living in your country, but treat them just as you treat your own citizens. Love foreigners as you love yourselves, because you were foreigners one time in Egypt. I am the Lord your God." --- Leviticus 19: 33-34