And another one. It would be nice — albeit a triumph of hope over experience — to think we had vocal allies right about now.

Reports of a third attempted arson attack on Jewish targets in North London this week. It's getting really scary and more people need to start taking it seriously.

It’s like he’s in the room with you… revelatory, astonishing and beautiful!

Optimal workplace configuration achieved this afternoon

I liked to climb high towers — To conjure up a bit of sorrow to make new verse.

Happy 83rd birthday to Congo Ashanti Roy! youtu.be/TkmDH-uw8fs?...

We have some fascinating archives @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social: contemporary literature (including poetry), film, visual arts, history, rare books. We also have Visiting Fellowships for writers to use them for research. Deadline to apply is 17th April: please share! www.uea.ac.uk/research/res...

White House correspondents: “Maybe we should wear the pocket squares… tonight?”

If your commitment to the Palestinian cause extends to somehow taking issue with the government for banning a man who repeatedly said "I am a Nazi", released a song last year called "Heil Hitler", and sold swastika merchandise...maybe it's time to rethink your life choices.

Looking forward to chairing this celebration of the great critic, poet & biographer Ian Hamilton in Soho in two weeks’ time, where I’ll interview his son Matthew & the poet Hugo Williams. Advance tickets have sold out but some will be available on the door. Come along! wegottickets.com/event/692987

Here’s Joe Orton at his best: charming and funny in discussing his conviction and imprisonment for defacing library books, on Eamonn Andrews’ talk show in April 1967. As he wrote in his diary, “I had a dreamy look about me — barbiturates.” youtu.be/rWmVsEEHIPc?...

Just finished… oof. Acidulous, scalpel-sharp, funny, charming but ultimately repellent. At first I felt haunted by knowledge of how it would end but, after Orton spends spring 1967 in Tangier living out his fantasies of sex with children, his murder finally prompted a feeling of indifference.

The cat with the sharpest claws in the world is ’helping’ with my convalescence

🧵1/12 I'm picking out a dozen deep dubs from the 1970s today in a 'House of Reggae plays the dub masters at Bluesky station'. Starting off with the don of all dub versions. This was so good, Island made it the A side... youtu.be/A_Fyp0I_WjA?... #reggae #reggaesky #vinylsky #vinyl #musicsky #dub

The headline is misleading — this article is instructive and encouraging for anyone (like me) who’s writing memoir for the first time and is concerned to avoid accusations of self-indulgence.

My mum would have been 79 today. Here she is in the mid-1970s in her and Dad’s flat in the Cranbrook Estate, off Roman Road, London E2. Sometimes I still feel her gaze, and it usually gives me a kick up the backside when I need one. I miss her very much.

It feels extremely bad that in the absence of actual Jews people will just be antisemitic to non-Jews to demean them, it’s a reminder that the Jew is not a person but an abstraction

In some ways Joseph Roth is the perfect writer to read in these times… in other ways, not so much.

if you don’t like the process of writing then don’t be a fucking writer, it’s not that complicated

I've written about how - despite the awful spectacle of convicted terrorists being released from Israeli jails as a result of Hamas demands in return for freeing captives, the death penalty cannot be Israel's answer. www.jewishnews.co.uk/knessets-dea...

I wrote on AI trashing literary life, and spoke to Alex Preston about the NYT book review scandal

After a week of being housebound following an operation, my first tentative outing — a drive up to the cliffs at Trimingham. Great swells drifting across the brown and silver sea, distant rain, a ship by the horizon, crashing waves just audible from the shore far below. Just what I’ve been needing.

Seem to be speed running this www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/8cc400b...

The Green Party has a problem and it's only going to get worse and after Corbyn's Labour I'm so very bored of how predictable this will all be.

After four months of watching Norwich City under Philippe Clement, I should have realised that England were never likely to show the quality, commitment and tactical awareness I’ve become accustomed to.

Completely infuriating… but I can’t help find it funny that if you play this clip on silent and watch his lips, you can work out exactly what his accent is.

Calling all young UK writers aged 11-14. Great prizes, and a chance to have your writing published. www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

In hospital recovering from an operation this morning that should draw a line under 18 months of worry. #NowPlaying this old favourite, which is hitting the spot perfectly and brings back happy memories of seeing Benny Golson in London in 2019. So glad I saw him play live! youtu.be/KVvRZWhFF4w?...

Frosty, misty dawn in North Norfolk

“the president cannot have failed, he must have been deceived by Jews” is going to be the narrative MAGA settles on to excuse this disaster and it’s going to be very, very bad

Remembering Fred Neil on his birthday. Here's the only known footage of him playing live 🐬🐬▶️ youtu.be/nOeZq5UV01A

I’m very moved by this poem by Graeme Richardson from his new Carcanet collection Dirt Rich

1/4 This is beyond terrifying, my heart breaks for Jewish students today I was president of the Black and Minority Ethnic Campaign at Cambridge University, and I saw firsthand some of the hostility Jewish students were having to go through as part of my job (down the availability of kosher food)

I love it when a blurb reads like a prepared hostage statement. “My captors are… treating me… well”

For the past three years I’ve always thought of this beautiful song on Mother’s Day. (I’m lucky enough still to have a real good father.) youtu.be/iUB_o2tJdMs?...

Characteristically sharp analysis from Daniel Sugarman and I fear he’s correct about what is to come.

This is the most irresistibly smile-inducing thing I’ve seen in a long while youtu.be/HJrUceBbVxY?...

This is the most irresistibly smile-inducing thing I’ve seen in a long while youtu.be/HJrUceBbVxY?...

So pleasing to see this moment after all the hard work by @paullaity.bsky.social and @meropemills.bsky.social in memory of their daughter, Martha. Links below to two of their incredibly moving articles in the aftermath of her death.

Absolutely enthralling piece. "When you cover capital crime cases, you notice the ways in which stupidity and evil become indistinguishable..." www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

This was great fun to do. My Writer’s Bookshelf, spanning from Sherwood Anderson to Sue Townsend, via Joseph Roth, the Usborne Guide to the Supernatural World, Peanuts, Toni Morrison and many others… Many thanks to @mathewlyons.bsky.social for asking me!

This was great fun to do. My Writer’s Bookshelf, spanning from Sherwood Anderson to Sue Townsend, via Joseph Roth, the Usborne Guide to the Supernatural World, Peanuts, Toni Morrison and many others… Many thanks to @mathewlyons.bsky.social for asking me!

Chuffed to pick these up this afternoon and get change from a fiver! The Another Planet record shop in Cromer is always good for a bargain.

The third para here is also evidence of this.

I almost posted “Israel is a US client state entirely propped up by American military funding without which it would cease to exist while also being the all powerful mastermind pulling all the strings in the US government which it controls completely” but I realized some of you really believe that

If through some inexplicable lack of curiosity you have never seen the 20-minute video tape of the Cramps playing live to the inmates of the Napa State Mental Hospital, and you need something to restore your faith in humanity, press play on this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jnk...

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar launched the Oct. 7 attack on Israel to transform the Middle East. It did, on a scale comparable to the carving up of the Ottoman Empire a century ago — but not remotely in the ways Sinwar had in mind The great Steve Hendrix reports from Jerusalem wapo.st/3N6j0yl

There’s a relish in maximising death and terror here that would befit a comic book villain. But no, this is the US Secretary of Defense.

velvet underground researchers have apparently confirmed that this audio from a random youtube user is genuinely the long-lost july '67 performance from upbeat, a cleveland teen tv show, doing the unreleased "guess i'm falling in love" complete with screaming girls. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU2U...