Absolutely thrilled to be Shortlisted for @rjaward.bsky.social! And in brilliant company. Lovely to have that white horse sticker on #GhostsoftheFarm. My farming women & their workers & families of all those decades ago, would be so proud! (As would younger me.) @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social

NEW: Mandelson just sent a memo to UK newspapers via the press watchdog demanding they stop publishing his links to Epstein. He cited clauses in the Editors code, designed to protect grieving families. The memo was NOT to be published. The National just said ‘fuck that’ & published it in full 👏

Bezos isn't destroying the Washington Post because it isn't profitable. He's destroying the Washington Post because he's calculated that a robust free press threatens the ability of his class to warp society around their interests

I'm doing a creative writing workshop at Lancaster Litfest on Sat 21st March on 'Writing Historical Fiction' (4-6pm). Apply by 28th Feb: litfest.org/workshops26/ ✒️😍

Delighted to be reading at Lancaster Litfest on Sunday 22nd March 2-3pm, in conversation with @alexwragge.bsky.social about all things historical fiction!

From the archive for Russell Hoban, #BornOnThisDay in 1925, my thoughts on TURTLE DIARY. A wry, piercingly perceptive exploration of different facets of loneliness & the fear of stepping outside one’s comfort zone in the maelstrom of middle age. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/04/20/t...

This whole thing where billionaires snap up media properties so they can run them into the ground to make it harder for people to call them and their cronies to account is extremely obvious and very tiresome. It also limits our access to largr information about culture and the world, also by design.

A publisher who lays off a reporter whose pen is freezing because she's covering a frigid war zone while dodging missiles is not an editor you want to work for, in a more perfect world

This is a tremendous story:

"Riddley Walkers ben to show Riddley Walkers on the go Dont go Riddley Walkers track Drop Johns ryding on his back Stil I wunt have no other track." Happy birthday Russell Hoban.

Spent a few hours with @ravoon.bsky.social's fab 'Dirt Rich' last night. He lightly and lovingly provides an anatomy of what we might pretentiously call England Profound. It put me in mind of JL Carr's 'A Month in the Country', a very good thing. Oh and funny too, like so:

We are delighted to host a second course led by @susannacrossman.bsky.social Through generative exercises, exploring texts from authors like Rebecca Solnit, Joan Didion, Noreen Massud, and Georges Perec we’ll be writing place and time, deciding where we’re standing and making this world alive.

Custard Gertrude Stein, from ‘Tender Buttons’

Forgot to put this up - my amazing birthday book haul from January. So many treasures here! 📚😍

"Thoughtful, empathetic and languorous, and always beautiful to look at" ★★★★ for THE SHEPHERD AND THE BEAR in Time Out www.timeout.com/movies/the-s...

My monthly Substack newsletter is now live, with a nod to @davidallengreen.bsky.social as it's Candlemas today, and together with with @tambourine.bsky.social we share a rather special Candlemas story! open.substack.com/pub/victoria...

Find out here! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... (it is very interesting)

Today is Candlemas If you have not cleared all your Christmas decorations by today, a demon hiding behind them will cause dire mischief in your house for the rest of the year. See my popular post on this: emptycity.substack.com/p/twelfth-ni...

This kept me sane today, inbetween the full eight hours of work I did. A humane, touching reminder that to live is to ultimately fail, so why not go a bit easier on yourself eh?

The CFP for the Gender & Medieval Studies conference 2026 is now LIVE! The theme is Gender & Creativity. The conf will be held in Oxford, 8-10 Sept, abstracts due to me by 13 April. Full details on the GMS website (artwork by @hellomizk.bsky.social) medievalgender.co.uk/2026-oxford/

Looking back on this and remembering my classes, my brilliant tutors, the sheer amount of time dedicated to reading and thinking and discussing, I think education is the greatest thing ever. Future generations will look back in horror at how we monetised, managerialised and AI-fucked the HE sector.

5 classes you took in uni: 1. Art & Letters 1900-1930 (best course EVER, changed my life) 2. Nineteenth century sexualities (Eng Lit, yes - obviously I went to Sussex 😂) 3. Ethics (Philosophy) 4. Kant (a whole semester on Kant! I used to be smarter 🤓) 5. Representations of the Body in Art

5 female fronted bands you've seen live... The Delgados Jane Weaver I Break Horses Molly Nilsson Elastica ( I am surprised /appalled how hard I found this. And will regret not getting tix for Bikini Kill in Brighton in early 2000s until the day I die)

X is hiring a creative writing specialist at $40 an hour to make Grok better at writing and a true LOL at the qualifications

Oh. My heart. Catherine O’Hara, the icon, has passed.

less said the better, John Ashbery

Please join us and help make history at the Gorton and Denton by-election! 💚. We have a brilliant candidate, Hannah Spencer, we have momentum and we have a vital message - that the politics of hope *can* win over the politics of hate. We can win this! @mcrgreenparty.bsky.social @greenparty.org.uk

Absolutely delighted with this review of my memoir, The Ghost Lake, in @yorkshirebylines.co.uk . Thanks to John Barron for taking the time with it.

Lightning book recommendation round! What was the last really good book you read? What was the vibe of it? Mine was Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment. Clergymen, spinsters, libraries, repressed sexuality, and a very sharp eye observing it all.

Good grief. Do people who don't go to uni not benefit from doctors, librarians, researchers, lawyers, architects, artists, writers, archivists, historians, designers, programmers, etc etc etc...? What is this weird unjoined up world she imagines?

Don't 'miss 'Storm-Cloud – The Look of the Sky' exhibition @ Millennium Gallery Sheffield; on until 29.11. 2026. Inspired by Ruskin’s early thinking on climate & industrial pollution. Brings together historic artworks, young curators, contemporary film & climate research. #JohnRuskin #ClimateChange

We urgently need a parliamentary debate on Palantir. Please sign this & share with your network. Via @the-citizens.bsky.social & @change.org. www.change.org/p/hold-a-par...

New on the blog today, my thoughts on IN FARTHEST SEAS by Lalla Romano (tr. Brian Robert Moore). I loved this profound, intimate and deeply moving elegy to Cenzo Monti, Romano’s husband of fifty years. Fans of Annie Ernaux might appreciate this. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/i...

I'm in the wrong job. It's not entirely clear to my friends and family what I do either, but I definitely don't earn this much 😭

'Mountains, Connemara,' shows Paul Henry at the height of his powers in the early-mid 1930s, a time when his domestic circumstances, which always reflected directly on his work, had become settled after the breakdown of his marriage; as his mood brightened, so did his work.

Christ almighty, that last line.

🎉📘📣Out today: NIGHTFARING: IN SEARCH OF THE DISAPPEARING DARKNESS. Travel memoir, science & history, this book is my years-long deep dive into the night & darkness, journeying around the world, from England to Japan & the Himalaya. 📷: Bettymaya Foott www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Nightf...

This painting by the artist Adriaen Coorte, made in 1699, shows a simple bunch of dramatically lit asparagus, on a stone shelf. Still life paintings of food, often called Vanitas, were a common theme in Dutch art in the 17th century and alluded to moral themes such as the brevity of life.

The best name I’ve ever come across for the triangular checkout divider at supermarkets is the colloquial Swiss word Kassentoblerone, or “cash register Toblerone.”

Shame on ‘Labour’. Teaching workers how to make themselves dispensable. Lining the pockets of oligarchs. And that’s not even mentioning the environmental cost or plagiarism. Reprehensible on every level

I've never looked at Chat GPT. I love my life.

Calling all young writers – Write on Art is now open for entries 📣 Take part in the national writing programme by Art UK and @paulmelloncentr.bsky.social for young people (13–19 years old) Find out more and apply 👉 artuk.org/learn/write-...

The Observer Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism is looking for the best new voices in cultural criticism. Entries close on 28 February 2026, so get scribbling! First prize is £3000 and publication in @theobserveruk.bsky.social Find out how to enter: www.anthonyburgess.org/observeranth...

Wudja look at this!! Very proud to be published by The Lilliput Press, and am in love with my book's beautiful cover ❤️‍🔥

So excited for the @backlisted.bsky.social episode on Iris Murdoch! I was OBSESSED with her when I was a grad student, and for years I refused to read the one last novel of hers on my list because I didn’t want to live in a world where there was no more Iris for me to read!! 🥹

Hello, I have a new book out in the spring with Picador and I would love it if you could help me spread the word. IF WE TOLERATE THIS draws on years of work, to help readers understand why British politics is hurtling rightwards and what to do about it. Pre-orders: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/if-w...

"Starmer’s government has repeatedly sought to invent a conflict between prosperity and environmental protection....So when the security services say that environmental protection is in fact essential to prosperity, their report must be suppressed" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The 8th John Ruskin Prize Exhibition opens 29.1 – 21.2.2026 at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London E14 0JW. 91 artworks by 82 creatives across disciplines, shortlisted from nearly 4,000 entries. Theme: Patience in Looking, Truth in Making. www.ruskinprize.co.uk/the-8th-john... #JohnRuskin #ContemporaryArt