Your annual reminder that William Shakespeare was born in what is now Turkey, never visited England and almost certainly could not read or write in English.

This is a fabulous, frank and honest thread about what reading Prynne is like. (I'd add Luke Roberts and John Clegg, in different registers, as respectively among his great UK readers, for ground-clearing and access-granting respectively.)

...sweet joy befall thee is by rotation been and gone into some world of light exchange, toiling and spinning and probably grateful, in this song. RIP J.H. Prynne

Counterpoint: many people who write poems today are quite poor, and - even if that's not the ideal you or they really want - you can be generous enough to exchange those poems for money.

Kinda cute that Robert Todd Giffin - the offshoot-of-an-offshoot Continuing Anglican bishop who's pouring all his diocese's funds into Facebook advertising - has exhausted all his 19th-c. ritualist manuals and is now just sharing cartoons by that noted bastion of traditionalism, Dave Walker.

i just think it’s really sad that we just accept greenwich mean time and never think about greenwich kind time

“No one wants to talk about the white working class!” says the dude who just said he has a best selling book about it

One down!

That there Pusey House doesn't hire itself...

As a fun experiment The guardian could hire culture critics who like culture

One of the (less major) things I felt gently called to on retreat this week was maybe to spend a week in the north-east over the summer - and then seeing this exhibition maybe confirms it?

My sister is one of the volunteers welcoming refugees to Crowborough with packs of necessities. She reckons the volunteers easily outnumber the protestors 'And we're not bussed in every morning'.

Between this and the LRT: do you remember when they're used to be nice, heartening media coverage about religion on Good Friday?

I can't emphasise enough how dangerous this trend of converting because Christianity evokes past securities is to the Church. Faith becomes an expression not of God's love (in which we participate), but of anxieties channelled into identitarian antagonism against the people privileged by that love

*to the tune of pink pony club* Denise Levertov

each of the cream eggs represents one of the wounds of our Lord upon the cross.

The Jetsons lied to us

Happy Birthday to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and a massive thank you to her for inventing rock and roll She was born on March 20th, 1915

I wrote about James Orr, Reform UK's head of policy, and whether Britain might start to see a US-style Christian right as.ft.com/r/9fbbf6c8-9...

In this particular instance (looking at you shady tech billionaire cultist pretending to be a theologian), I completely adore the Vatican for asking the question, "Should he be burned at the stake?" Just very occasionally, that is the right question to ask, and this is one of them.

This past year, I’ve learned there’s an edge to Christ’s light—even a harshness, like the pain in your ears when you’ve been roused by a shrieking infant. @griffino.bsky.social writes a reflection for the fourth Sunday of Lent:

Or, hear me out, research libraries should have airports

My employer asks me to complete a survey on AI usage for which this is the first question (required):

When anyone who is a member of the Reform party or supports them bemoans the loss of British culture, show them this.

So the candidate who left school at 16 with no A-Levels and who's spent her whole adult life vocational, manual jobs beat the ivory tower academic turned cushy media pundit, but you can be sure we'll still get plenty more casual description of the latter as "white working class".

LLMs are cathedrals that are unaware they’re building themselves.

Nearly a year into many trans people in the UK being forced to use disabled toilets or asked to work from home pending legal advice and stuff and I haven't seen a single "Izzy's boss told her she has to use a disabled toilet, here's how she feels about it" piece in the papers.

Wishing a meaningful & reflective Mark Wahlberg 40 Day Challenge to all who observe.

Trouble! For those who minister

About to watch the final episode of the BBC Lord of the Flies adaptation. Calling it now that the big twist is gonna be that the naval captain who rescues them at the end turns out to be Ralph's dad.

This 👇

anyway the consultation shuts tomorrow, one minute to midnight UK time: www.gov.uk/government/c... Amnesty have some good guidance here. Go on: media.amnesty.org.uk/documents/Am...

*Years and Years music kicks in again* www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A reminder that the BBC have consistently platformed Goodwin as an 'impartial' commentator.

How did early readers think about the relationship between the gospels? Repost to enter a drawing to win a free book.

Sunday Bonhoeffer: "There is so much meanness, selfishness and hatred among the nations of the world but we must overcome it. Against that we know only one mean: keep your eyes open and your hearts." 'Greetings to American Students' Notes made during his time at Union Thological Seminary 30-31

i think this MLK day the thing to focus on is the strategic focus and tactical brilliance of the civil rights movement and the way it was laser focused on a set of achievable goals

Right, off to Paris for a long weekend of food and art. Here's what's in my book bag

For some context: Jonathan Myrick Daniels was from NH. Episcopal seminarian in the 1960s, he decided to join the Freedom Riders in AL. He was killed by a shopkeeper when he stepped between him and a little Black girl. Shopkeeper was aiming a shotgun at the girl, and shot him instead.

It's a big day for those fluent in the good grammar of civility looking to deploy decorum to mask agendas of cruelty

God is working today in the committed relationships of same-sex couples

oh, I'd been waiting for this!

And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, grew up to appreciate that this meme doesn't technically work because the sentence which starts with this phrase isn't (quite) the last sentence of the book.

The Book of Job is a Christmas movie

Erm.....

Really important reminder that whilst anti-asylum riots grab the headlines and dictate political responses, they are very far from the whole story

I wrote a couple of strange little paragraphs about why I liked this year's new poetry books from Dom Hale and Imogen Cassels (and, a bit surprisingly, about Shakespeare) www.spamzine.co.uk/post/spam-de...