Mongolian manuscript from the 19th century, full of charts and diagrams that astrologers (generally Buddhist monks) would use to calculate the best time to do certain things, such as depart on a trip or remove a dead body from a dwelling: publicdomainreview.org/essay/a...

SalivaryGlandCancer.uk is having a fancy fundraising soirée in London next month. There will be an auction. Four of my pieces will be on offer. Stiff drinks all round please. It is invite only I'm afraid so it's too glitzy for the likes of you 😆 but 10% of ALL sales through the shop go to SGC UK 👍

Vegetarian vampires, 1962 By Spanish Surrealist painter Remedios Varo #WomensArt

“I don't give a shit what the world thinks. I was born a bitch, I was born a painter" - Frida Kahlo #WomensArt (Photo c.1939 by N. Muray)

Been a bit of week. Anyway. Before he was changed by war. Before he was changed by family. Before he became an undertaker. #fathersday

📣📣Do you write articles for magazines or journals? The deadline to add these to your ALCS account has changed to 31 October. Make sure you log in and submit your eligible articles before this date to ensure you're paid what you're owed in March 2027.

A new Scottish tartan memorializing the (mainly) female victims of the Witchcraft Act has been officially registered, created by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi, founders of the Witches of Scotland campaign #WomensArt via Smithsonian Magazine

My outrageous peonies and equally outrageous book pile. #tbr

Lough Carra, County Mayo, Ireland. This is the jetty at Kiltoon from which the ashes of writer George Moore were taken to Castle Island to be interred after his death in 1933. #BelieveInFilm @ilfordphoto.com

New t-shirt. #mementomori

Astonishing non-fiction. Miranda Kaufmann’s impressive research and narrative of the roles of 9 women in plantation slavery. These are predominantly newly recovered accounts and include the lives of those enslaved. #TheHeiresses

Witch's cat, 16th-century woodcut. Featured in Jon Crabb's essay "Woodcuts and Witches" about the witch craze of early modern Europe, and how the mass-produced woodcut helped forge the archetype of the broom-riding crone so familiar today: https://buff.ly/32N2LMt

Having a quiet weekend. Polish thriller. Thirst. Read. Thinking fiction.

Born #onthisday in Edinburgh in 1859, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Watch a rare filmed interview with him from 1927 in which he speaks about his greatest literary creation, Sherlock Holmes, and his work in spiritualism: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-interview-1927 #OTD

In the shop now: www.poorfrankraw.co.uk/shop/index.h...

I’m in 1930s London at the fictional publishing house of Barnabas Ltd, established 1810, where a not so cosy murder mystery has occurred. Imagine that.

The final stages - rubbing down, washing off, drying, and the shop photo: youtu.be/bekDAButKrg

Just passing through on a cold and windy May day. #May #churchyard

Writers: please be aware of scammers impersonating Canongate editors canongate.co.uk/news/writers...

You'll be aware that I have a YouTube channel talking about carving #lettering on stone. www.youtube.com/channel/UCNM... YT offers suggestions on what video to make next. Some of their AI images are bonkers. I don't know what's going on here but it isn't lettering:

Mesmerising.

'Benbecula' is part of Polygon’s Darkland Tales series, in which Scottish authors delve into the nation’s history. Based on the true case of 3 murders in 1857, Burnet inhabits the voice of the murderer's brother and what a voice it is. This unreliable narrator had me holding my breath.

There was the feeling of eavesdropping, of an intimate exchange with the filmmaker, his family and the abhorrent Nazis in the reading of Daniel Kehlmann’s fictional portrait of the most influential film director in Weimar Germany, G.W. Pabst. Stunning. Translated by Ross Benjamin.

Carving while listening to a bit of old school Elton John, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. Fantastic album from my youth.

'Daphne' Oil on paper by Welsh painter Sarah Evans #Womensart

I was in a bookshop today when the fire alarm went off. All of the customers, including me, remained browsing until the staff insisted we evacuate. Happy to report no fire occurred, books safe, people safe but longing to return to buy one get the second half price. www.tumblr.com/alvaod/69831...

All done. My first ever British vote in this the year I became a citizen. #vote

Great jacket.

Guessing: A father’s favourite car in memoriam.

'Rooks' by Jackie Morris, contemporary artist, author and illustrator based in a little cottage near the sea in Wales #Womensart

Käthe Kollwitz, Working Woman (with Earring), 1910 etching #WomensArt #MayDay, also known as Labour Day is a celebration of the working classes #InternationalWorkersDay

The Queen of #May, 1900, (detail) by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh of the Glasgow School, who pushed the boundaries of Art Nouveau #WomensArt #May1st #FridayFeeling

Just a quick video on carving letters upside down. I mean. Why would you?... youtube.com/shorts/zYstc...

“If you descend the spiral steps that lead below the water level of London’s ‘dark river’ Thames and into the underbelly of Tate Britain, you will find a vault brimming with magical objects,” Victoria Jenkins states in her book 'Visions of the Occult'.

Bumping this up again. Please do repost if you feel so inclined. Preparations are very much afoot, and it promises to be an absolutely brilliant day at St Albans in June: www.stalbanscathedral.org/event/ann-ra...

www.wsj.com/arts-culture... I cannot count the times a book has not put me to sleep, but thrilled me to stay awake.

THE WITCH is a slim, unsettling dreamsape of a novel packed with the detrioration of a family brilliantly depicted by a trio of witches with varying degrees of talent and sharply drawn supporting characters.

“I drew them all one evening, I was quite alone, Willie was away. I could not stop,” she wrote. Striking drawings, sketches included in this. www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/04...

‘Backrooms’ and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/backrooms-an... #Backrooms #Gothic #Internet #Liminal #VideoGames via @mitpress.bsky.social Yikes.

NEW ESSAY – Roger Luckhurst exhumes the history of body snatching and burial Reform in 19th-century Britain — publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-gr...

I am so enjoying Jane Rogoyska’s 'Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War’. I admire the energetic flow of her writing and the scope and magnitude of the pre-war, war, and after war periods as we move through the doors of the Lutecia grand luxe hotel. Moving, atmospheric and sobering. Fabulous.

Total Eclipse of the Sun, 1882. Chromolithograph after a pastel drawing by astronomer, artist, and amateur entomologist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot. Learn more about his life and see a collection of his stunning astronomical art here: https://buff.ly/2ENtY5g #eclipse #solareclipse

An unpredictable, tense and beautifully written thriller. ‘A Proper Mother’ by Isobel Shirlaw is a tautly drawn narrative of motherhood and marriage with an ending I didn’t see coming.

Threatening charcoal sky over today’s diary of the broken.

Wholly deserving of this nomination and many more.

Thank you @alcs.co.uk for being the champion of authors. Your work is always appreciated. UK authors join, register your published works and start collecting!

Pioneering French photographer Felix Nadar died #onthisday in 1910. @AllisonCMeier explores his determined efforts to document the beauty and terror of this realm of the dead: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/photographing-the-dark-nadars-descent-into-the-paris-catacombs #otd

Nothing short of astonishing, powerful and courageous. Giséle Pelicot and Virginia Roberts Giuffre have lent their voices to history to record the unimaginable. Manon Garcia's insights are brilliant, translated by Maya B. Kronic. None are easy reading, and are at times harrowing, but indispensable.