'She is incautious and intrepid. She will go to several wrong places, and arrive at the right one, while I am still making up my mind to cross the road. She is my opposite in character. She is cheerful and confident and expects to be happy.' #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/04/02/l...

A brilliant film, very influential! #FilmSky

From the archive for Ethel Lina White, #BornOnThisDay in 1876, my thoughts on THE WHEEL SPINS. This wonderfully suspenseful novel was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as THE LADY VANISHES. Recommended reading, even if you're familiar with the film! #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2024/03/13/t...

So many accounts of Hilda Carline's life return, inevitably, to Stanley Spencer, and it becomes hard to see her clearly. This piece is an attempt to stay with her through a small group of paintings that made me look again. open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

I made a little Golden Hare for Easter.https://www.deborahvass.com/prints

Useful reminder about watching out for ticks. Here are the main points from the poster: Tick bites are painless, so easy to miss. Ticks are tiny - the size of a pinhead. Prevent bites by tucking trousers into socks, wear long sleeves, avoid brushing into foliage. Remove ticks promptly and carefully

She was called a late bloomer-but what if Helen Bradley had been an artist all along? I came across her work by chance and found something much more interesting. A new piece on her life and paintings. open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

Helen Bradley, who finally found success at 65, was a joy to discover. Her memories of Edwardian Lancashire are a delight. open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

'You hurry toward the figure for a closer view. It turns its head and – you are looking at yourself. Or rather a perfect mirror-image of yourself only – there is no mirror. So, you know it is your double. And that frightens you...' #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/03/17/t...

‘…she looked so cold, & grey, & stony, as if she had never loved or cared for anyone; and I don’t suppose she did care for anyone, except her mistress; &, owing to the great deafness of the latter, Mrs. Stark treated her very much as if she were a child.’ 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/03/12/g...

Here's my Barn Owl linoprint again, its details, textures and delightful inconsistencies, full of chance and happenstance, no AI here. And here are the stages that my human mind, eyes and hands went through in making it, back to the pencil drawing made from a real Barn Owl. handmadebyhaggy.etsy.com

There has been something odd going on with me and this linoprint. I finished it over a week ago but I haven't wanted to share it. It's like the fragile ghostly ethereal Owl is an equally fragile part of me and I'm scared to let it out into the dark night sky of the world. But the time has come....

'She reminded me of some tea-pot with a missing spout, a compass that had lost its hands, an old-fashioned record that had had all its grooves badly scratched. She had a tense, half- apologetic, half-defiant expression on her face...' #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/03/08/t...

1/3 I'm writing a book about Nigel Farage for Headline. Some of his pals are blanking me. Is it because after I reported on the killing of a Polish man in Essex in 2016, he said that I had caused him "more misery than any other in 25 years in politics"? Do get in touch: johnsweeney.co.uk

I wrote a book called Nature’s Acre — an Irish garden memoir about wildlife, community, and making a place where life can grow. If that sounds like your kind of book, I’d love you to read it. And if you’d share this, I’d be very grateful. 🌱 #climateaction #spéirgorm gardeningwell.ie/natures-acre

This week's post took an unexpected direction. This painting of Lucie Aldridge , by her husband John, is not the picture it seems. #womenartists open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

In this week's post the thread of research did not follow the expected path. I would love to know what you think. #womensart #textileart #GreatBardfield open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

Virginia Woolf podcast with Karina Jakubowicz. Excellent new podcast with Ann Kennedy Smith on women in 19th and 20thC Cambridge. Free on our website. www.literaturecambridge.co.uk/podcasts

1/ And they’re off! 📢 Our BTO satellite-tagged Cuckoos are on the move! 🌍 Follow their migrations via our interactive map ➡️ www.bto.org/cuckoos #Ornithology 🪶

It's insane that only 7000 people have signed this.

Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read my blog and for all of your wonderful, engaging comments. I have really enjoyed it and am so grateful to you all.🖤

The ghost of the Cambridge classical scholar Jane Harrison haunts the pages of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One's Own (1929). Here's my post on the layers of connections, for over 30 years, these two writers shared.

It might help if I added the link... open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

This week I look at the women whose work was barely noticed and how Winifred Nicholson helped to change that. #ragrugs #womenartists

Mostly dahlias, watercolour and indian ink #floral #watercolour

I’m an Ambassador for this brilliant charity, Bookbanks, giving away books with food parcels at food banks. There are two part-time jobs going for Regional Leads in London and East Anglia. Link below. Please share far and wide :)

This week I look at the story behind a single painting: Farm at Watendlath by Dora Carrington open.substack.com/pub/stillske... #landscape #womensart

'It won’t, of course, do: as an account, I mean, of what took place. I tried, I tried for so long to reconcile, to find a style that would express it, to find a system that would excuse me, to construct a new meaning, having kicked the old one out..' #BookSky jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/t...

Sketchbook drawings of snowdrops rescued from the rain.

Snowdrops on a soggy Sunday #imbolc

Here they come...

Pair of red crested pochard at Finsbury Park, London today. www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wi...

Where the blackbirds settle. Another monoprint and collage from my winter collection. www.deborahvass.com

From the archive for John O'Hara, #BornOnThisDay in 1905, thoughts on APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA, an excellent novel that charts a man’s unstoppable downfall in 1930s America. Highly recommended! #BOTD #JohnOHara #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2018/09/04/a...

A small voice in winter. This little wren is part of my new winter collection. #https://www.deborahvass.com/shop

Tears of joy! SCOTLAND HAS JUST PASSED SWIFT BRICKS INTO LAW unanimously! 4 years of asking England & Scotland sorts it in a month led by ACE ⁦‪ MARK RUSKELL MSP‬⁩ ♥️The RELIEF is unreal! Tell England to follow 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿by emailing [email protected] now!WOOP!

Tomorrow I'll be sending out a mailing list email. Sign up for * Being the first to see some new prints * An exclusive discount voucher * Exhibition recommendations eepurl.com/ixewjc

From the archive for Edith Wharton, #BornOnThisDay in 1862, my thoughts on THE REEF. An excellent novel in which a foolish American diplomat finds himself trapped in a deliciously complex love triangle (or possibly quadrangle?) with devastating results. 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/04/29/t...

New on the blog today, I've written about more of my favourite London novels. Including books by Barbara Comyns, Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark and many more! #BookSky #London 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/l...

stillsketching.substack.com/p/what-survi... This week's post on how Faith Jaques' work survived against the odds.

And so, with one faltering step, it begins - the unstoppable riot of spring

In my Substack post, I return to the work of illustrator Susan Einzig whose extraordinary drawings keep calling. stillsketching.substack.com/p/following-...

From the archive for Nina Bawden, #BornOnThisDay in 1925, my thoughts on her excellent novel, THE ICE HOUSE. A subtle, insightful story of the tangled nature of love, friendship, marriage and the deceptions we are sometimes too blinkered to see. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/09/23/t...

From the archive for Patricia Highsmith, #BornOnThisDay in 1921, thoughts on THE CRY OF THE OWL. An excellent novel that begins in traditional psychological thriller territory only to shift towards something a little more existential by the end. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/t...

I've been reading these over the weekend. Two superb new books out in the next couple of months from @yalebooks.bsky.social

“I’m a remarkable woman..always was, though none of you seemed to think so.”May Morris, English artist embroiderer, designer, feminist and socialist, dismayed by the lack of support for women artists founded the Women’s Guild of Arts, 1907 #womensart

‘This is what they’ve done to him – Gracey, Pinkrose and the rest of them. He believes that right and virtue, if persisted in, must prevail, yet he knows he’s been defeated by people for whom the whole of life is a dishonest game.’ #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/01/18/t...

Seasonal fruit graders & pickers required. Work across a wide range of crops, (Hawthorn; Sloes; Ivy; hips & apples etc) Skills at hard-weather, open-field, invertebrate work essential. Open to EU & beyond, all welcome. Team-workers preferred but misery-guts tolerated. No Time Wasters. #Fieldfares

A mosey in the garden brought happy discoveries.

😱ONLY 27 DAYS UNTIL #Catherine😱 The greatest tragic love story ever told – but this time, Catherine tells it herself. PREORDER NOW: 🔗https://shorturl.at/GcvOF @essiefox.bsky.social #bookstagram #readers #Retelling #WutheringHeightsRetelling #GothicLiterature #historicalfiction #bronte