REVEALED: how Britain is shielding big oil’s Iran war windfall: open.substack.com/pub/abolishw... - by me

I interviewed the brilliant @stuhennigan.bsky.social about his debut #keshed @ortacpress.bsky.social. We chatted about his process, the complexities of writing class & addiction, blistering sentences, T.Harrison, Dylan Thomas, Pat Barker, punk poets & more. All thanks @minorliteratures.bsky.social.

Time to read Ernaux's 'I Remain in Darkness'. I spent three hours repeating answers about basic family relationships and I made the classic mistake of disagreeing about my mother's account of a serious recent event.

Fully-funded AHRC PhD scholarship at Swansea: the history of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Wales, 1945-1994. www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate...

The plinth of Barbara Hepworth's Winged Figure, 1963, is of high interest. It indicates to the viewer that the figure has notional feet, one forward of the other, almost taking a step, as in Ancient Egyptian sculpture. No wings without feet. #sculpture #plinths #C20

A huge North Sea wind farm lands in North Norfolk. Meanwhile, renewables just saved the UK £1bn in gas imports in March. So why does Reform UK think Net Zero is a problem? eastangliabylines.co.uk/energy/world...

‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon | Lebanon | The Guardian www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Raed Issa; 'art and collective work can be acts of resistance, memory and testimony to the annihilation of stone, tree and human life that we are living through'. TJ Demos interviews the Gaza-based Eltiqa group (by text message) www.thirdtext.org/thinkinggaza...

Poets. Quoting Cavafy at each other. 'They were bored with educating the girls for this evening.' Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means, 1963 #MurielSpark

Volunteer surveys are helping us understand how Queendown Warren's rare chalk grassland supports precious bumblebee species. This Citizen Science Month, we're celebrating volunteers like Clare. 🐝 Read more: kwtg.uk/beevolunteer

Chalkland ecology. I went to look for Hairy violet, Viola hirta, at Coney Banks, Chatham. Abundant in area of open grassland that is mown once each autumn; patches of Dog Violet here too. Early Dog Violet by more shaded paths. I did not find Sweet Violet. Early for #WildflowerHour #Violaceae #Kent

Every single article covering Israel should start by mentioning that they dubbed yesterday's operations in Lebanon "eternal darkness." You know that so much has already been normalised when this isn't even a cause for outrage. 303 people, at least, were murdered yesterday by Israel.

Why President Trump’s threat of genocide matters He may avoid immediate constitutional and legal sanctions, but this threat should not be forgotten New by me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

Model Lodging House, Glasgow pre-1899, Napier St/Govan Rd. Glasgow was ahead of London in providing municipal lodging houses, some for women workers. The design of this one is striking. Anyone know if purpose-built blocks from this period survive? #ArchitecturalHistory #Glasgow #SocialHousing

“François Ozon’s The Stranger is a faithful adaptation of Albert Camus’s 1942 novella, yet with a subtle revisionist slant” Jonathan Romney reviews. In cinemas this week. www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so...

From Roger Scruton cafes to paying Matt Goodwin $10k a month, Viktor Orban has built a network of populist right think tanks, journalists and activists Today Democracy for Sale delves into Orban’s allies on the British right Well worth a read democracyforsale.substack.com/p/orbans-brits

if you work in a UK uni, drop everything and read this (not news to many of us, but sobering to have the dots joined up; the stories are outrageous and heartbreaking)

I first started learning about solitary bees on my patch a few years ago when I met some Andrena scotica, cold, dozy, emerging. Saw them again two days ago -- we were watering the children's planters on the estate. They have moved their nesting sites. This is a male. #bees

Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 1955, is a blast: a kind of lyric critique, with elements of satire. A bridge (of sorts) could be built between it and Theses on the Philosophy of History, 1940, within traditions of dissident Marxism. Césaire was a student in Paris in the 30s . . . /

Paul Rogers (2 April) www.opendemocracy.net/en/trumps-wa...

March reading: Dorothy Richardson, The Tunnel and Interim, 1919 Henry Fielding, The History of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild, the Great, 1743 Amy Levy, Reuben Sachs, 1888 Poetry: David Wright, Moral Stories, 1954; Basil Bunting, Briggflatts, 1966 #reading #books #booksky

a word for libraries Susan Howe, from ‘Personal Narrative’ #librarieschangelives

Rogue Herries, 1930, read as a curious Lake District tourist. High Walpole moved there as an adult & adopted the place thoroughly. It's historical romance, with some motifs from Hardy. Francis Herries has a touch of Michael Henchard, but HW lacks Hardy's deeper social & historical grasp /

Ben Gvir popped champagne on the Knesset floor to celebrate a death penalty law that only applies to Palestinians. In this analysis, I trace it back to the British Mandate and the ways colonial power still learns from and restores its own history: mondoweiss.net/2026/04/the-...

The record "was high due to high wind and solar generation, with both technologies generating 10 times the amount they did in 2015." www.energylivenews.com/2026/04/03/r...

The Jackdaw gasfield is to go ahead, it seems, though Ed Miliband is implacably opposed to developing the Rosebank oil. Let's see how that 'implacably' now fares. It is a collective failure of the leadership, the cabinet, the parliamentary party that this decision has been taken. /

look forward to reading this -- happy times in Berlin with Alex and Thibaut (absent friends) sketching out a Stereolab book that was to be based on a plan of one writer per album.

Local energy planning using ground source heat could reduce fossil-fuel dependence and reshape Britain’s power system | Charlotte Mbali

Interesting. Medway making moves to buy 569 homes . . . and we learn that council housing stock is 'around 3,000' in the whole area. I wonder what the figure was at its height. Also: Gun Wharf (designed by Arup, built for Lloyds Insurance, listed, now the council offices) has RAAC. #Housing

On Tuesday April 21, I'll be hosting an in-person (non-recorded) one-day symposium on "Culture and the 21st-Century Agrarian Question" at Durham University. Details in the images, booking link below. All welcome!

Rehana Zaman's major touring exhibition opened at @sitegallery.bsky.social Sheffield, I haven't got to see it there yet. It is one of the shows I am most looking forward to seeing. There's an extensive tour, so there will be other opportunities around UK (and beyond). Here in convo with Hyphen.

The US strong-armed Panama in canceling a Hutchison terminal operation concession on the Canal. Panamanian clients of the US obliged, and now Panama Canal is another chokepoint being beset with troubles. www.porttechnology.org/panama-canal...

Under a high-emissions future. the climate effect alone will drive rural heatwave exposure to roughly 70 million person-days, compared to just 5 million person-days for urban populations. climateandcapitalism.com/2026/03/29/t...

Now identified (see thread) Hare's-Tail Cottongrass, in Sedge family. #WildflowerHour.

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage, Chrysosplenium oppositifolium, in Saxifrage family, Borrowdale, Cumbria. A stream-side plant, and one of the only plants beginning to flower here. In the past, at about this point in the Spring, Wood Sorrel and violets have been flowering. #WildflowerHour #Botany

Marxsky: I’m thinking about different approaches to modes of production. Specifically I’m wondering what connects Balibar (in Reading Capital & some later texts) to the approaches from the global South (Amin, Banaji) that tried to decenter Europe in the prehistory and early history of capitalism.

An ode to Mo Salah.

"The Ghana declaration sets a precedent. It seeks to redefine the moral language of the international order. Elevating it as the gravest crime underscores slavery’s scale and duration." - Kwasi Konadu theconversation.com/the-transatl...

Can anyone help me out with this grass -- or not a grass? High altitude (near top of Eagle Crag, #Cumbria), acid, waterlogged soil. This was the largest tussock (in an area without sheep), individual flowers were also seen emerging through grazed areas. #WildflowerID #botany #WildflowerHour

Mumbai’s dabbawallahs are losing orders as migrant workers leave the city. India’s more insulated class buys up electric cookers. Biofuel producers want India to make more ethanol. Experts say we should be saving grain for when fertiliser shortages hit home. www.carbonbrief.org/cropped-25-m...

Base Brown

This is, I think, a link to a number of free eprints of my WHR Viewpoint discussing my 4 decades as a bookseller, an occupation that has brought with it the opportunity to research and write. If you're interested, feel free... www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NJZYM...

#RehanaZaman being gorgeous

Well it is solstice. This was yesterday, finishing off my leaflet round. Lime trees still taking a midfield position.

Rightwing narrative fuelling false belief UK public oppose net zero, study finds www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The war on Iran ‘has produced a striking strategic paradox. While the American-Zionist axis relies on brute technological force and indiscriminate fire, it remains blind to the historical and sociopolitical realities of the region … The central objectives of the aggression remain out of reach.’

Registration for the Weird Modernisms conference opens in ONE week. In the meantime, if you're looking for info about conference registration, hotel costs, and travel to Loughborough you can find it here: www.moderniststudies.org/conference/M... Check back in one week to register/ book your hotel!

I last visited Beruit in April 2017. This poster was hanging on the wall of the Social Sciences Dept of Saint Joseph University, downtown - about 3 blocks away from today's bombing. "Make Political Science Not War" might not be the catchiest of slogans, mais quand même.

'Many residents will refuse to leave – either because they have nowhere to go, or because they fear, with good reason, that they will never see their homes again if they do.' Ben Reiff. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The first-ever Land Use Framework for England has been published. I think it is the most far-sighted plan for England's land since the Second World War. Here's my thoughts on what it does (& doesn't) do: 1/ www.gov.uk/government/p...