Same shit, different church! we have added a second violet hour show as the first one sold out immediately. Thur 27 November - St Matthias Church, Stoke Newington tickets go on sale on Friday at midday UK time link.dice.fm/I94a007793e0. wegottickets.com/event/677968/

Hello everyone, I wrote about the extraordinary lives of Lee Miller ahead of a major retrospective of her photography at Tate Britain – which opens tomorrow. And it's looking beautiful in the i Paper today! Read online here: inews.co.uk/culture/arts...

Oasis stadium jaunt ends (for now), it has been odd seeing how massively they’re loved, and also odd that it is seen as churlish to critique it. For me, they inescapably represent the worst of the 90s, the banterous homophobia, the conservatism. It made life miserable & I struggle to get over that.

As today is International Translation Day, I thought I'd share this piece I wrote about one of my favourite writers, Natalia Ginzburg, a few years back. As @alexanderchee.bsky.social says in it: “How do we write about evil, especially when everything feels so wretched?” A writer that speaks to now:

Reading about Rolling Thunder era Dylan & particularly tickled by his 4am phone call to Allen Ginsberg before they hit the road. “What’re you writing? Sing it to me on the telephone…” The original When Harry Met Sally split screen scene.

It, and us – the writers! – please support our work:

She's not on here but my pal Terri White has made this powerful and moving documentary about child poverty full of heart and muscle. Please watch it, we should all watch it – vital viewing: www.theguardian.com/society/vide...

Rehearsal time for us. Tickets on sale Friday wegottickets.com/event/677217/

My favourite – this beautiful record is finally being reissued, order below!

The Royal Society for Blind Children (RSBC) urgent appealing to children’s authors, writers and publishers to donate stories to its new bedtime stories app. The charity relies on stories in the public domain but are running out of books. Anyone willing to donate should contact [email protected].

8 days left to watch this extraordinary archival testimony from the likes of Quentin Bell, Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf & Angelica Garnett. It really is a time capsule to another realm:

Ed Gillett here eloquently summing up my own feelings about Oasis, the nineties, “nostalgia” – and how uncomfortable it’s made me feel this summer it also made me miss my pal Neil Kulkarni a lot, so wonderful to see his words featured here:

A love letter not just to a bygone era of Hollywood but journalism, too. This is such a great archival profile of Robert Redford from 1998. I love that line – “he’s not quite there even when he’s there”. It speaks to the shadows in him, I think:

MUTE, PAUSE, STOP, STIFLE:

I genuinely squealed with delight opening my post today. And this is why! Out with @princetonupress.bsky.social next month, what a beauty:

Not a hugely original observation but I’m listening to Joni Mitchell now and I still marvel at the way she shapes her words to rhyme around melodies. That line in Ladies of the Canyon – empty halls and bevelled mirrors (mirrr-aws). Always thrills me!

My heart. This one hurts. Farewell Robert Redford. A beautiful man, a soulful actor, and the finest Gatsby we ever had.

You can support the campaign to rescue the BBC Written Archives Centre from recent short-sighted policy decisions here tinyurl.com/bbcwaccampaign

I’ve been in the TATE archive all day watching back-to-back tv arts documentaries & late night segments from the 1980s/90s (channel 4 & BBC) & it’s pretty eye-opening to see how far we’ve veered from the cerebral programming of yore.

Love her, love Hacks:

Racist rhetoric has dire consequences. Raping a young woman in a ‘racially aggravated attack’ speaks volumes about the far right’s “claims” to care about women & girls’ safety. Those fronting up far right politics know it’s just a pretence for their own hateful agenda. news.sky.com/story/sikh-w...

Still scary as hell, but this is worth remembering. And if there's a big anti-fash march next month as there absolutely fucking needs to be, we'll smash their numbers again. @standuptoracismuk.bsky.social

Playing Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones and god that lyric – she burned like a bride – always gets me.

Growing up, my mum would talk of her walks home from school as a newly arrived 9-year-old from Poland. The other “British” kids would walk a step behind her & scrape the backs of her heels until they bled. Thinking of bloodied heels today watching these hateful racist scenes in my home city.

The people marching in London today are very obviously the ideological descendants of the Mosleyite BUF fascists of the 1930s. The mainstream news and media are too timid to point it out, but that's what they are - and we normalise it at our peril.

What a fascinating period piece - Estonian early music ensemble Hortus Musicus perform the original version of Arvo Pärt's Fratres on Finnish television in 1979. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cruM...

In a country that seems to be unravelling in real time, what a light in the dark the TATE archive is. I am always so moved coming here! Boxes and boxes of carefully gathered papers, cassettes & all sorts of ephemera. Free to access. Open to all. Thoughtfully stewarded. The best of us, really.

As someone who has spent a lot of time on specialist bowel wards, I can't tell you how inspiring Tracey Emin has been over the last few years as I come to terms with the radical changes in my body. I suspect that this Tate exhibition will be personally transformative for many – including myself:

Happy Birthday @thequietus.com! – a place that gives me so much joy. At a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to make a living doing what I do, I am grateful to contribute to a title that favours thoughtful commentary over the usual slop. Arts journalism is in crisis, please support it:

Can't overstate how Google's AI Overview is hitting arts criticism. Until recently, you found a bunch of top reviews for a new exhibition, play or film via search. Now you get an AI overview. Traffic is falling away. observer.com/2025/08/arts...

Reading Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man for the first time and, my goodness, what an opening paragraph:

Mariam Dagga, a journalist killed yesterday by the IDF left behind two sets of instructions: that her colleagues not cry at her funeral, and asked her 11-year-old son to make her proud. Murdering journalists. Bombing hospitals. Causing a manmade famine. Slaughtering children. This horror has to end.

Seven years ago today we lost Pat Long: a beautiful human and a wonderful writer. He never got to enjoy the fruits of his labour, his book on The History of the NME, something that still saddens me. Sharing his wonderful intro here for anyone who might like to read it:

Londoners! At a loose end tonight? Join us at this special screening and Q&A at the ICA. I cannot recommend it enough – Mother Vera is a real work of art. Don't miss out!

Wonderful to be reunited. We’re playing a show in Manchester along with Pete Greenwood this coming Thursday at The Carlton Club. A few tix left - link below www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Man... ❤️ 📽️ @katlister.bsky.social

Wow, I was not expecting this. My dad wrote several Play for Todays in the early 1980s, including one called The Cause in 1981 – about unionism and the Spanish Civil War. I watched it recently & thought – where would this be commissioned now? I look forward to seeing what they do

I excitedly googled this new biography after finishing the below (do read, it’s a wonderful piece) and apparently us Brits have to wait until March 2026 for the pleasure of buying a copy. Mon dieu, a year-long wait is a little painful.

Wow Sally Rooney. Fair play. ‘I feel obliged to state once more that… I too support Palestine Action. … If the British state considers this "terrorism", then perhaps it should investigate the shady organisations that continue to promote my work and fund my activities, such as WH Smith and the BBC.’

Happy birthday, Tina Modotti. As a working class woman - and an immigrant, too - her gaze radically captured the female experience. If you aren't familiar with her work, do check it out. Her photography is beautiful, pertinent and profound. Here’s a piece I wrote a few years ago:

I am sat here at my laptop trying to write but these brave journalists are all I can think about: Anas al-Sharif Mohammed Qreiqeh Ibrahim Zaher Moamen Aliwa Mohammed Noufal The entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City, gone. Say their names.

The irony of being called Kat yet being allergic to cats is something that I like to mark and celebrate on International Cat Day.

I'm delighted to be joining directors Cécile Embleton & Alys Tomlinson for a preview of this beautiful film later this month. It is a visually stunning piece, raising subtle questions of faith & recovery & what constitutes both when you have retreated from the world. Link below – please join us!

Stephen Colbert is going SCORCHED EARTH right now. To RFK Jr: “Fuck you, you roid-addled nepo carnie! Fuck you, you roadkill-munching Luddite human slim jim!”

The employee asked the girl and her mother if they needed help shopping. That’s it. That’s all. The misinformation, the insinuations (because the facts are inconveniently benign) are EXACTLY what was done to lesbians in the 80s. This is the product of hate and fear, not reality.

Roll up, Bobcats. I’ll be joining Travis Elborough on October 25 at the Betsey Trotwood for a Bob Dylan Record Club afternoon in the fine company of his 1978 album Street Legal, an album I hold very dear. Tickets are a bargain £5! I will be bringing my Dylan encyclopaedia! This is not a drill!

Oh Terry Reid. Your voice did something to me. xx

"One of the reasons the epidemic of violence against women is so unacknowledged is because cases like these are talked about individually, and often treated as though they are shocking aberrations rather than part of a pervasive pattern that operates at all levels of society."

Not exactly the relaxing Sunday AM read I was looking for but illuminating nonetheless on the global Goliath:

People of Manchester! This will be wonderful, get your tickets below:

“Is there a better way for us to be headed? Are we going to be able to shift things into something more humane, more sustainable and a bit more equal? That’s the big question.” I wrote this piece exactly 4 years ago today & it’s startling to see how much further we’ve drifted from all this in 2025