Cheers👍🏼Great photo, Roy

If you see this, post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it.

Anyone up for a Folk Funk Friday? Here's a great cassette I bought from 'Jazzman' Gerald's stall in Camden Market around 30 years ago. It's recreated here Spotify ▶️ open.spotify.com/playlist/2gz... YouTube ▶️ youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Congratulations to Alan Hollinghurst, the @newwritingnorth.bsky.social team, the #CohenPrize and all concerned — plus *really* great speeches all round. Glad to have been there👏🙏✊

Saturday ice update - #Arctic sea ice extent is currently the 4th lowest on record (JAXA data) • about 520,000 km² below the 2010s mean • about 1,440,000 km² below the 2000s mean • about 2,170,000 km² below the 1990s mean • about 2,410,000 km² below the 1980s mean More zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-i...

Highly recommend this ambient soundtrack if your dog is upset by fireworks. It’s like Brian Eno for canines and really helped our previous hound who had a week-long panic attack each year around Bonfire Night. m.youtube.com/watch?v=iY9m...

RIP and thank you David Bellos👏👏👏👏✊

RIP to David Bellos, a great translator, teacher, scholar and popularizer. Here's a charming little essay about what he learned from his landmark translation of Georges Perec's 'Life: A User's Manual'. online.wsj.com/article/SB10...

Morning, all, from the banks of the Thames in SW London — have a good one ;) PS zoom in for bonus swan flypast🦢🦢🦢🦢🫡

Twilight’s last gleamings, Stratford-style

Meanwhile…

Today, The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin opens at AA Gallery in London! Curated by Sarah Shin and Harriet Jennings, the exhibition presents a selection of Ursula's maps, including some that have never been exhibited before.

Thames at Hammersmith, London, just after low tide this morning

For reasons, it would be v. helpful to have information from a broad range of academic and non-academic (incl. GLAM) users of the BBC Written Archives OTHER THAN historians, briefly on: 1) What you've used it for and 2) How the proposed changes would impact on your research. Reposts welcomed.

This is such bollocks.

Today is Bookshop Day, a day to celebrate ALL bookshops on our high streets. Bookshops are an integral part of an author's livelihood, and we celebrate all the talented booksellers who share their guidance and expertise. Visit your local bookshop today and show them your support. #bookshopday

Does anyone have a copy of The Art of Joy (the English translation of L'arte della gioia) by Goliarda Sapienza? I’m looking for a quote for a translation I’m working on. Thanks!

Fundraiser for @resonancefm.bsky.social Friday 17/10/25 @cafeotodalston.bsky.social two-night festival curated on Friday by Resonance Extra’s Kinn featuring Rocheman, Kinn, Mohammed Rowe, Delia Detritus, Christos Stylianides, Cornelia Isaksson, Beatrice Vorster, Yasmin Vardi, Glint Music + more.

👋Hello to new followers! BTW if you’d like to get book news from me and hear about gigs like this at #thefrenchhouse Soho, and receive invites to my book launches? It’s easy, and now might be a good time… ;) Plus you can unsubscribe any time👉🏼 stats.sender.net/forms/eE2pka... (Photo Peter Clark 👏👏👏)

🧵 In 2025, book censorship in the United States is rampant and common. Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country. Read our new report "The Normalization of Book Banning" at: pen.org/report/the-n...

Restrictions on books in public schools have become “rampant and common,” according to a new report by the free speech organization PEN America, so frequent in some states that they are now considered “routine and expected part of school operations"... Read free: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/b...

It's Wednesday afternoon, and so NEARLY the weekend – and A Personal Anthology! This week's guest editor, picking and introducing a dozen favourite short stories, is translator, critic and writer @anna-aslanyan.bsky.social. Hitting inboxes Friday. Sign up here if you aren't already. RT if you are!

(Misty) morning, all ;) — the Thames at Barnes Bridge RN

The two of suns — Thames Tarot #London

Indie director Barbara Marques has been kidnapped by ICE. She is legally married to a U.S. citizen & was at a green card mtg when she was abducted and prevented from seeing her lawyer. Her husband Tucker May does not know where she is. Please spread the word so he can find her /1

Leeds Street Scene, 1974, painting by Stuart Walton. #NorthernArt

Spotted on an Oxford pinboard a few days ago: an A4 rabbit hole into the world of artist Suzanne Treister (with a nod to @greatdismal.bsky.social there?) ahead of retrospective ‘Prophetic Dreaming’ at @modernartoxford.bsky.social opens 4 October to 12 April 26! modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/suz...

Delighted that my short story ‘Plain Speaking’ written to mark the 110th anniversary of the birth of Brian O’Nolan aka Flann O’Brien is now collected in a new textbook for grammar school students in Germany: ‘Great Britain in Nine Short Stories’ from @cornelsenverlag.bsky.social See: bit.ly/4nKSKq6

Thames in SW London at sunset (with ‘tin fish’) today

Equinoctial skies above the river in SW London, at 19:19 BST precisely. It’s now autumn in the northern hemisphere — OFFICIAL!

“Barthelme! Barthelme! They’ve all read their Barthelme!”

Magical Thames around 6:30 pm today

Looking forward to being in conversation with the brilliant artist Liliane Lijn for EA Festival at the Minories, Colchester, Tuesday 30 September. Come and join us! Info and bookings here: www.eafestival.com/lilianelijn (Also I'm teaching @universityofessex.bsky.social this year – very exciting!)

The following is a statement from the WGA on ABC’s decision to pull ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’

The union representing the musicians from Jimmy Kimmel’s band releases a statement calling the FCC’s pressure on Disney “state censorship.”

Looking downstream from Waterloo Bridge RN

The Way We Were* RIP Robert Redford (*i.e. holding criminal presidents and wholesale political corruption to account…)

Such sad, sad news. This was my local bookshop, and we'd often chat about books (obvs), reviews, and often whatever music he was playing (invariably good); he'd ask about the Writing programme, too. These places are so important, and the people who make them, too. Such a terrible loss.

Buy A Book and Salute @booksellercrow.bsky.social #ripJonathanMain

I’m not a poet, but I’ve been invited to read in West London *tonight* Sat 30 August, alongside poets from the IPLA Collective at The Bouda Gallery, 132 Palace Gardens Terrace, London, W8 4RT. Starts 7pm. FREE no booking. Come along!

I spoke to the @royalliteraryfund.bsky.social about location and the writer – specifically about how for me the River Thames in London is a constant source of inspiration and renewal (as if you couldn't guess...). Listen here (it's the 2nd of the two audio clips) www.rlf.org.uk/writer/tony-...

If you love independent bookshops then please support Bookseller Crow - Jon, a brilliant bookseller, is seriously ill

Thames in SW London at 5pm today

ANNOUNCEMENT

Publishers are noting a shift in industry mindset around short stories as readers embrace shorter works, with a number feeling like “something is slowly shifting” and that “there’s a real excitement around stories again” 👇 #BookSky

Drawing towards the end of The Fountain in the Forest by Tony White Brilliantly constructed, very clever police procedural looping across time, place and memory. The surprises and turns keep coming.

Looks like the whole AI thing is beginning to crumble like the biscuit-thin edifice of fraud it always was, so here's the letter I wrote to the IT when they published a softer-than-softball interview with an Irish AI CEO: