And so I turn the final page of In Search of Lost Time. A wonderful experience (ignoring volume two, which almost ruined it for me) and highly rewarding. Ciao Marcel, à la prochaine.

Almost finished volume four of In Search of Lost Time, which is not so much a speed read as an indication of how easily I got absorbed in the story. Why did I not read this before?

Trying to pick myself up after quite a lot of bad news in recent weeks. I thought I might run away from here, but perhaps I shall stay and post about books and things instead. To that end, I'm finishing off my read through of À La Recherche and then it's time to tackle Musil's Man Without Qualities.

Finished reading Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers (1980) last night — I found it extremely funny, a rich take on twentieth century history, Roman Catholicism, homosexuality, and literature from Jim Joyce to Willie Maugham. Heavy but brilliant.

Ace!

Enjoying this very much, especially the Doc dressing up like a character from The Prisoner.

Watched the first two episodes of the Doctor Who/Sea Devils spin off this evening, on catch up, and... well, it was okay, but only okay. Some of the dialogue was clunky, the pacing rushed, and why, oh why, did UNIT have to be introduced and reintroduced over and over.

A very clever choice, this one. www.bbc.com/mediacentre/...

The paper covers some of the material in A Little Gay History of Wales, material in subsequent articles on the theme, especially about North Wales, and some new medieval material I'm trying out for the first time. More to do on that front and the potential for a new book, I think.

Off to Oxford in the morning to give a paper at my old college, Oriel. I still have to pinch myself, sometimes, that this sort of thing still happens. After the many bad experiences in academia, at Swansea, and in recent times when I fell off the radar, I shall enjoy going up to the old place.

Meet your heroes. One of the most inspiring events I have ever been fortunate to attend.

Off to the city to meet Mary Robinson, Ireland's former president, which I think is one of those privileged moments that comes along in life.

Giving my first talk of the winter season this afternoon: the local history of pantomime. Two hundred years of popular theatre, which will be quite the rush in forty minutes!

Absolute genius announcement on the railway. Things are stuck because of a “broken down tree blocking the railway”, yes I did a double take too. A BROKEN DOWN TREE!

Off to Cardiff this evening to join a panel on the Queer Irish Diaspora and links with Welsh LGBTQ+ history. It should be both edifying and entertaining, and a lovely opportunity to see the Out in the World exhibition once again. And y'know it means such a lot to be asked. Really does.

Having a Bookish afternoon — brilliant words from the doc, @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social

“...and made him admit that the Lee was a much finer river than the Liffey.”

Handy piece this from a friend in the north. Caerphilly's sociology, especially in its current form, lends itself to a plague on all your houses squeeze. But let's be honest, turnout will be atrocious and oh so many stay-at-homes, who will be the absent majority, will be embarrassed Labour voters.

Autumn has truly arrived.

Reading/partly re-reading a swathe of post-war Latin American literature at the moment: Amado, Asturias, Carpentier, Roa Bastos, Vargos Llosa, Garcia Marquez, Sabato, Fuentes. So many great ideas among them, especially vis-a-vis history and memory. None an easy read but all utterly rewarding.

And of course Gould's favourite novel for a very long time was Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, which is *extremely* German.

My favourite variation is most definitely "socker football" (from c.1892).

THE LOST SOLDIERS, Andrey Kurkov’s latest Kyiv mystery, has a UK cover! My wonderful editor is making his way through the translation now. Today he sent me a nice note, highlighting a passage he particularly admired.

Ah, but then again he *really* did not help his future case with what he said in the Magic Lantern.

This is fun, thanks Dion. One or two things vis-a-vis Fireman Sam, though. In the original it is explicitly set in the South Wales Valleys and is full of tropes relating to that, whereas later on this setting was switched out and made "rural". I'd also make less of the differences in the 80s lyrics>

It's @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social's fault but the theme is now stuck in my head.

De gegevens van duizenden WIC-opvarenden zijn nu online te doorzoeken #wicopvarenden wic-opvarenden.dekok.xyz/browse

That exciting moment when you're having a mooch around for some reading materials and discover a must-have coming out next year. So here's the UK cover – from the listing – of The Lost Soldiers, the third part of the Kyiv Mysteries by Andrey Kurkov (translated into English by @bdralyuk.bsky.social).

Part of the collected works...

The thing is if you're a run of the mill anti-nationalist social democrat, you're gonna rub up against a lot of artists (i.e. writers). But to disagree strongly would take a more conservative figure, so there's Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, of course, Mailer, or Naipaul. But actually: Ingmar Bergman.

Alan Bennett once noted the proximity of the theme to Last of the Summer Wine and the (edited) metre of Thie Be The Verse: They fuck — up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some — just for you. youtu.be/4cz_Fq8sMSA

Dmitri Shostakovich died OTD fifty years ago. He is one of my favourites with a catalogue of work that seems to capture all sorts of moods, up and down. I shall post a few chosen highlights later on, but to start with an insight into his style, honed in the silent cinema: youtu.be/azFHiEh1jhk?...

I've long wanted to write something Braudelian, so this summer I am attempting to do just that with the history of Merthyr Tydfil. A lot of what we know is either over-egged, hyper focused on stuff that doesn't matter, or else cribbed from the same group of C.19th antiquarians. A fun corrective.

I was in a certain well-known charity bookshop "chain" the other day and they were discussing whether Joseph Conrad was to be shelved in literature or mere fiction. They settled on the first but only after looking up when he died.

Furthest I've been: North - Reykjavik 🇮🇸 East - Budapest 🇭🇺 South - Philadelphia 🇺🇲 West - Philadelphia 🇺🇲 Now I sound like William Morris!

And in one minute of score, coming in the first minutes of the film, the incomparable Jerry Goldsmith caught every aspect of that comment: youtu.be/9Tny2IK6fwM?...

Let's be more precise: formed at a meeting of six people heavily influenced by right-wing French Catholic thought, esp. Barrès and Mauras; people who cheered Franco, bombed an RAF base a few years before the Second World War, and said nothing about the Holocaust. So much lamentably unsaid here.

One of the very best historical facts is that the guy on the left, John Hughes of Merthyr Tydfil, engineer and industrialist, gave his name to the place where the guy on the right, yah you know who it is, started out as an industrial worker.

Gotta love the block button.

I just don't see it. There's no reason to be complacent but if Facebook died tomorrow, R—m would die a month from now. It's a whole political mess cooked up on that one platform and that's been true ever since it ceased functioning as a student marketplace and went geriatric.

For some reason Heinrich Böll isn't so easily accessible in libraries or in bookshops these days, so it was a happy occurrence to find a pristine copy of The Silent Angel in the reserve stock stacks.

Finished Doctorow's Book of Daniel this evening. Those four pages towards the end detailing the electrocution of the Isaacsons/Rosenbergs are extraordinary.

I don't really have niche historical opinions to service a thread generated by likes, so there's that. But I do think: a) nationalism is very, very bad. b) the Soviet Union, with some tweaks, some very large tweaks, probably could have worked. c) the post-war communist regimes were always doomed.

Reading my first E. L. Doctorow novel – a chance my hand borrowing from the library. Now, The Book of Daniel is a retelling of the Rosenberg story, to be sure, but happily, oh so happily, it reads like a companion to Paul Auster's 4321. So much going on. Wonderful stuff.

Finished Cancer Ward this evening. It's not a bad book, as I said before, on the surface anyway, and has some memorable passages. That said I don't think Solzhenitsyn carries over into our world, any more than does Mikhail Sholokhov or any number of those kinds of figures. Too much has changed.

Indeed, the oldest surviving blue plaque in the UK - and thus the world - is devoted to...

Daryl Leeworthy's exploration of Pontypridd and the history, places, and people that make it special, Ponty Is It?, can be found in store with us or online via: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/pont...

The 1950s redivivus.

For instance: Gwyn A. Williams' claim that the Red Flag was first raised in revolutionary fervour in Merthyr Tydfil in 1831. It's now taken as absolute fact—he made it up (one of many things he invented). Almost fifty years on, it is stick like old chewing gum to the historical record.

About half-way through Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward and it is much more enjoyable than I figured. Hmm, no, I take that back, it's more enjoyable on the basis of the surface plot: the patients in the hospital. The politics of the subtext are still jarring and set to get worse.