Can we all agree that this is the worst way for the BBC to be listing #WorldCup fixtures? Surely it should be organised chronologically by start time, not alphabetically by Group!

The latest allegations from the UK, albeit from an always shady character. But, undoubtedly, this is the line that shocked me: “It only became illegal to pay for sex with a 16 or 17 year old in 2003.” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

For those that don’t know, I watch a lot of baseball (misspent youth, insomnia). It’s All-Star voting season for the next month, so there’ll be a weekly update on my ballot. Here’s the first version #AllStarBallot

@alondra.bsky.social on growing moves to develop a civic grammar for AI rights: “A practice travels rapidly across unconnected sites when it has been abstracted into a portable model that actors can adopt without direct contact with the original.” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Can’t be many more shows that are better than The Americans. That final episode - and the garage scene - is outstanding. Also the delivery of this line by Aderholt in the penultimate episode: "Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are *not* Russian spies.”

So if Labour lose the Makerfield byelection to Reform, whose fault is that?

A fascinating deep dive into how satire, paranoia, and political extremism collided to help shape modern American conspiracy culture. Smart, unsettling, and remarkably relevant to the present moment. davidhigham.co.uk/books-dh/gho...

The war in Gaza has spawned a new acronym: SPERS, or Siege Pollution Exposure Respiratory Syndrome. This describes the lung damage caused by the convergence of toxic exposure, malnutrition and systematic destruction of healthcare infrastructure. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

This is a unique book. Rich and poetic, just like Blake. philiphoare.co.uk/william-blak...

Saw some cute lambs in South Cambs today.

Sorry, Sony, but this isn’t news until the robot is standing on two legs, with two human jointed arms, and only has two cameras in its head. Apples and AI oranges. www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Melania has made a statement about Epstein on the same night that I read Deborah Friedell’s recent @lrb.co.uk piece on meeting Trump, #FreeMelania, and ‘locker room talk.’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

A dragons’s lair in a Suffolk stumpery.

A glimpse of the Easter Saturday sky at Milton, through a pollarded tree.

Out in the Fens today.

This really is an *outstanding* book. I love art history and I love Vermeer, but I learned so much from Graham-Dixon‘s excavation of the milieu of the painter and his paintings. Highly recommended! www.penguin.co.uk/books/188145...

Now 323 days since I submitted a manuscript to a certain journal. Still no peer-review comments.

“Some of us may no longer be Habermassians, but we learned from, with and against him what it means to keep faith with critique.” www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

“One of the reasons I’m struggling to finish writing a book on Thucydides and contemporary politics is that Stuff Keeps Happening – my original plan, back in 2019, didn’t even have a chapter on the plague.” www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

Finished Alexandria by Islam Issa and came away impressed by how it brings the city’s long story to life. Blending myth, scholarship, and cultural history, Issa traces Alexandria from its pre-Homeric roots and foundation by Alexander the Great to its modern rebirth. dauntbooks.co.uk/shop/books/a...

Wunderbare Gegenplakatierungen, eben zugesandt bekommen:

Can we arrest the lot of them please?

Upping my entrance game.

“You’re not regretting the exit of the grown-ups from the room, are you? Remember who they were. Remember what they did. Look at the civilian-to-combatant death ratio for the Battle of Mosul. (A good battle.) … We are nothing, and they have the drones: that sums it up.” www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I like Andy Burnham - former Fitzwilliam alum, met him a couple of times - but to get him into parliament again, you’d have to win the by-election and then find a mayoral candidate at short notice. Both loaded with risk at the current juncture. Better to serve a term then start a new one.

New in Area: 'Witnessing health and place: Sebastião Salgado and the photographic legacy of polio eradication' by @wstaylor87.bsky.social This paper situates the photographic work of Salgado on polio vaccination within debates on humanitarian visual culture. doi.org/10.1111/area...

This week I signed a book contract for an edited collection on public health geographies. The focus will be on writing about public health from the academic, social, geographical and epistemic margins. quaint-bottle-ea0.notion.site/New-Book-Con...

This photograph from Anglesey Abbey’s winter garden this morning is going to be the cover of my first theory book.

New, by me, on the ethical and political dimensions of global health photography, situating Sebastião Salgado's polio eradication work within debates on representation, witnessing and power in humanitarian visual culture. rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Lumumba’s independence speech still shakes history. This blog revisits its words, context, and afterlives—through Ludo de Witte’s meticulous work—showing why Lumumba’s defiance of colonial mythmaking remains foundational. He was assassinated on January 17, 1961. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/...

Shame that my kids and in-laws have come back deflated after a negative time at Edinburgh panto. Families with younger children leaving because it was far too loud, for starters, and also very blue in places. Barely a story to speak of seemingly.

I've just devoured Anthony Sattin's Nomads, a rightly celebrated account of nomadic lives and culture across human history and into our present. I've found myself telling people I meet about the stories contained within, undoubtedly a mark of a good read! www.johnmurraypress.co.uk/titles/antho...

“Several [small modular nuclear reactors] have been promised, but the problem is that they do not yet exist, except on paper or on a computer. No factory has been built to make their components, no prototype has been built, no licensing process has taken place.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A dazzling, immersive biography of George Villiers: court intrigue, power, beauty, ambition, and a spectacular fall from grace. If you’re into Stuart politics, gender fluidity in early modern England, or gripping historical narratives, this is a must-read. www.4thestate.co.uk/products/the...

@totallyshow.bsky.social FIFA are going to award a "peace prize" at the 2026 World Cup Draw. Presumably doing what the Nobel Committee wouldnt do and giving it to Donald Trump. After awarding World Cups to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, presumably Gianni wanted to do something *less* controversial?

"It is protected by an energy shield which is generated from the nearby forest towns of Oxford". www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Every rankings e-mail I receive (THE, QS etc.) ends up in my institutional e-mail quarantine. Think of all of that labour around soliciting e-mail addresses and a lot it ends in invites being filed as spam…

Excellent piece on the worrying decision to ‘sunset’ UNAIDS in 2026. The rise of injectables has given the tech fix brigade a victory, but it was also the advocacy, social and demographic work of highly stigmatised communities that marked out UNAIDS. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Exploring Earth Photo 2025 competition shortlist and the dazzling dahlias at Anglesey Abbey this morning.

Enjoying the faulty train signal outside Bishops Stortford that is only showing red/stop this morning.

“Britain has been infected by a mind virus that sees no value in place,” says chair of GB News. They’ll be on about scale next. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Can’t recommend this book enough (having had it recommended to me by an Australian undergraduate student). The chapter on the ghostly afterlife of the Golden Ridge Station hair sample collected by Alfred Haddon in 1923 is worth the price of admission alone. www.dukeupress.edu/haunting-bio...

Time spent with this excellent book has been one of the benefits of the return to long commutes this semester. The focus is on the murder of Emmett Till, but with a focus on the long history and geography of the Delta landscape that made that horror possible. www.penguin.co.uk/books/467703...

I’m not sure what I think about this book. It’s an accessible overview of planet hunting, but for all the possibilities of life elsewhere never really gets to addressing the fundamental shock that alien life on *one* exoplanet would be to our entire sense of being. www.penguin.co.uk/books/460729...

Nice trip to Audley End today with the kids. Last time I was there, I got engaged.

Future geographer has a birthday party today, and I provided some consultancy on the design of the cake.

So @totallyshow.bsky.social, Almaty is closer to Tokyo (5329 km) than it is to Newcastle (5539 km). Roll on the Champions League draw!

This is a great and accessible book on indigenous histories, particularly the experiences of those who chose or (more likely) were compelled to come to Europe’s “savage” shores of inequality, violence and intolerance. www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/carol...

Alea iacta est

Some of the fiercest fighting in World War I was in Serbia, Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. I enjoyed Nick Lloyd’s different perspective on that conflict and learned a lot. www.penguin.co.uk/books/443194...