Students, if you’re thinking about dropping a note to that teacher or professor about what their class/project/mentorship has meant to you, but you worry it will be cringe or cheesy, let me just tell you they will coast on the fuzzy feelings prompted by that note for months, if not years

A Farewell to sodding Arms above Sentimental Education? Nooo, I won't be sucked in.

These lists always remind me of that Divine Comedy track, The Booklovers. An academic colleague thought it was "the most stupid fucking song ever" but PhDs do make people grumpy.

I listened to an LBC caller say he supported Farage because he was 'sick of the culture of handouts'. www.bbc.com/news/article...

👀 www.cnn.com/2026/05/12/t...

I'm not saying this because I particularly think he should stand for leader but it does feel Quite Interesting that Labour actually has this other mayor who's been successfully running a much bigger city for a longer period of time but for some reason no one's waiting for him to save the party

Boris Johnson has a helluva lot to answer for. He made politics light entertainment and spawned Beth Rigby, Chris Mason, Peston, Sam Coates and others. They all see their role as adding to the drama not providing information for their viewers. Who's in. Who's out. It's friggin' tedious.

Ossip Zadkine creating the frieze to top the screen of the 3,000 seat Metropole Cinema in rue Neuve Brussels, built by Adrien Blomme for the Wielemans brewing family in 1932. Now Zara. (The long hidden frieze will allegedly reappear in the coming years).

One of my favourite modernist buildings in Brussels, from 1933 by Adrien Blomme. I would like to be immortalised like this along with my cat.

Quick, boulevard Anspach. Built 1939 as 'Aux Armes des Brasseurs' by Adrien Blomme as a tasting house and nightspot for the Wielemans-Ceuppens brewery. It would have been a far more stylish and logical location for Belgian Beer World than the Bourse.

Villa Vandevelde, Uccle. Snowy modernism with gold trim for the son of a coalmine owner. By father & son team Adrien & Yvan Blomme, 1936. The year before they landed the gig for the new Gare du Midi.

In the liberated but still wartime Brussels of February 1945, this 1937 building by Adrien & Yvan Blomme is the Ecu de France restaurant. On the 1st floor is the Queen Anne club where Al Baker is in residency, accompanied on the piano by René Gil. 'Comfort and agreeable ambiance'. 🎷🪊👐

This would make a great beer bar. Which is what it was built as, in 1934 for the Caulier brewery. By Adrien and Yvan Blomme, the architects of gare du Midi, which it faces. Sites like this could be key staging posts to lead visitors into central Brussels.

Café in the Elite building at Porte de Namur, rebuilt from 1936 by Adrien & Yvan Blomme. Demolished and rebuilt in a 'similar' style, 2020. This view is now what you see as you exit Uniqlo. Rue de Stassart visible left.

Art-deco staircase. Personal residence and studio of the Brussels architect Adrien Blomme, 1928.

102 yr-old house. Uccle, by Louis-Herman de Koninck for himself.

100 years old 🎂 (the tower is only 63)

The Wielemans brewing family ordered this 1926 art deco mansion after a holiday in Andalucía. (The architect, Adrien Blomme, also updated the Métropole hotel for them, built the cinema behind it, Aux Armes des Brasseurs and of their brewery, now the Wiels centre in Forest.) Offices for rent here.

The exclusive Salle des Bourgmestres at the top of Aux Armes des Brasseurs. This tasting-house is a very Belgian exercise in heraldic modernism from 1939 by Adrien Blomme for the Wielemans brewing family. As well as portraits of Brussels mayors, there's that men-at-arms chandelier.

Aux Armes des Brasseurs (now Quick) boulevard Anspach. Architect Adrien Blomme, 1938. 'The newest. The most beautiful. It's where you drink the Wielemans range of beers'.

Corridor of the Métropole cinema in rue Neuve Brussels. 1931, by Adrien Blomme for the Wielemans-Ceuppens brewing family, owners of the Métropole hotel behind in place de Brouckère. Walls lined in 'Flexwood' by Louwers of Schaerbeek. All gone. This is now the Zara clothing store.

I heard LBC's afternoon presenter saying the UK 'needs a titan right now' as PM and I think people need to lay off the coffee.

"We're in politics... because we want our communities to lift each other up, because we want to create opportunity, because we want to be a country that is leading in the world. That's why we do what we do." Stephen Kinnock makes a moving case for self-worth through domination 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

Panicking Labour MPs who have a texting relationship with dimwit Tory shit-stirrer Iain Dale don't deserve their seats anyway.

Le prêt de 60 millions d’euros est destiné à régler les factures des entrepreneurs et à achever les travaux d’infrastructure

Putting Britain "at the heart of Europe"? What are you talking about?

The election results in Camden are both all over the place and easy to guess in advance. www.camden.gov.uk/local-electi...

Inland Steel Building, Chicago from 1957. The architects, Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, claim it as was the first high rise in Chicago after the Great Depression.

Have a Sunday read by me. A century of style wars in Brussels architecture and the birth of the heritage movement.

Hotel heritage at place Rogier in Brussels. Left, 'art deco' Albert 1er 1927, Michel Polak. Right, 'art nouveau' Palace 1908, Antoine Pompe and Adhémar Lener.

French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens spent much time at the 1907 Palais Stoclet in Brussels (it belonged to in-laws). He placed the UNESCO-listed and inaccessible building alongside the Parthenon and Chartres Cathedral. You can read his description here. designluminy.com/robert-malle...

A vision for Brussels from 2013. Boulevard de Berlaimont looking south (cathedral towers on the right).

Have a Sunday read by me. A century of style wars in Brussels architecture and the birth of the heritage movement.

Cantersteen, Brussels in the early C20, at the foot of present-day Mont des Arts. The future site of Central station is on the left.

Google Earth 3D view still wrecked in a 500m perimeter around the palace in Brussels. What possible justification is there for this?

It's 'fry-un Barnet' not 'free-un Barnet' 👺

The Last of Us season 3 but it's the EU Quarter.

Happy Fête de l'Iris

Etterbeek house and studio of sculptor Bernard Calie. 1923 by Michel Polak, for whom Calie produced the imitation-stone decoration on Résidence Palace.

This is scary. Even that we should all know that. This website tells you what your website tells them about you when you click on their address. Try it yourself: sinceyouarrived.world/taken

Brussels hotel inflation. Cécile 1906 and Sheraton 1971.

Three Brussels towers.

Cathédrale Saints-Michel-et-Gudule and #1 Brussels photo-bomber, 'The One'.

9.30pm hot take

Iain Dale was talking this week about asylum seekers in 3/4* hotels. Stupid pays and it gets you your own show and BBC invites.

Brussels facades within a few steps of each other from the 1870s, 1900s, 1950s and 1990s. Which is which?

Vile Farage supporters in Essex laughing with him about the accents of people in Yorkshire who voted Reform. Not realising that he despises them equally.

This street in Etterbeek is packed with houses from the late 1920s and early 1930s by Vital Coppe and they're very stylish. A short gallery....

Tim Montgomerie, the loon (who is accountable thus: 'supporter of Reform') was on Newsnight yesterday and is on Any Questions tonight. The BBC's contact book is pure evil. I wonder how much it has cost the UK over 20 years of nurturing Farage's career.

1934 modernist facade in Brussels by Louis Hoebeke with original windows and coloured glass. Fell victim this week to the grey plague, ruining the contrast with the blue-stone basement. Let's remember it as it was.