Nice company for Agnes Owens in her centenary year…

7️⃣ False consensus breeds populism. A large German study found that people who overestimated support for their own views scored higher on populism. If you think your minority view is the majority, you'll feel betrayed by a government that doesn't act on it — and seek populist explanations. 9/10

A new (more polite) Arkell v Pressdram just dropped

Going to Rome today to hopefully lay down some slaps!

@lighthousebks.bsky.social always have shrewd staff choices…

It’s the end of May. I had to read a lot of books I’d read before for work this month but these are the pick of the books I read for the first time. All are bangers.

Agnes Varda frames a car transporter in her Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse

Zero Mostel eyes.

Classic.

Armstrong’s first novel was smashing - especially his reading of it as an audiobook. I hope he also got into the studio for Raveheart.

“Until the second half of the 19th Century, puffins were so plentiful they “darkened the skies”. But then, a succession of ships ran aground. The accidents sparked a campaign for the lighthouse, which started operating in 1886. But by then a handful of rats had already swum ashore from the wrecks.”

“When I read, I want to be in relation with a human being.” —Zadie Smith

New on the blog today, I've written about A WORKING MOTHER by Agnes Owens. A prickly, slightly surreal portrait of the frustrations of marriage, work & motherhood, oscillating between barbed humour & dismal tragedy, all narrated by a woman on the edge. 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/05/24/a...

Today’s the centenary of Agnes Owens, queen of deadpan gothic: a truly great, less heralded, post-war writer @danigaravelli.bsky.social @john-self.bsky.social @jacquiwine.bsky.social observer.co.uk/culture/book... www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/2... jacquiwine.wordpress.com/tag/agnes-ow...

“Whatever the problem, we must elude the sense of being trapped - even if all one can say to oneself is 'if not now, later' ... If nothing charms us or sustains us (and we are getting food and fresh air) it is for us to say, ‘If not now, later,’ and not mope.” - Marianne Moore

Every schoolchild now knows of the gift the Choctaw Nation gave to the Irish during the Famine but it wasn't always so. Losing a language can mean losing folk memory. jrnl.ie/7048199

It's the centenary of the wonderful Agnes Owens' birth today, so here's the longread I wrote on her life/work. It has interviews with her son; her 1st publisher, @peterkravitz.bsky.social; @sorchadallas.bsky.social; some of those who wrote introductions to the new edition & @damianbarr.bsky.social.

a hero of our time

Hard to believe this once graced the Ormeau Road. Frank Lloyd Wright meets The Táin.

some v class Belfast graffiti I can get behind

Do you remember that period when female characters were allowed to exist independently but they had to fall over within moments of meeting them? The early Bridget Jones period? Even CJ from the West Wing had to trip in her introductory scene. Weird weird competence-fearing days.

This Sunday in Glasgow…

What a find. This essay by Doris Lessing in the September 1971 edition of Vogue: “All writers' early efforts are very similar. But some writers go on writing, others fall out: we live in a society where we all think in terms of success and failure.”

The world’s largest sand battery got through Finland’s harshest winter in years. 2,000 tonnes of sand, heated to 500-600°C by cheap power, feeding district heating in Pornainen. And it worked. Result from one install: oil down 100%, emissions down 70%. Industrial process heat is the real prize.

The best way to begin June…

“they bear a strange resemblance to some hand stencils of Sulawesi, 600 km to the south-east across the Makassar Strait. We interpreted the Sulawesi hand stencils as “animal hands” because they were transformed by reducing the fingertip width and / or the number of fingers.” Luc-Henri Fage

This is one to order from your local bookshop. Among Charlotte Mandell’s many translations are the second volume In Search of Lost Time last year for OUP, as well as Zone by Mathias Énard, which I think was the first translation published by Fitzcarraldo.

Chastening reporting from Sanket Jain: “In June 2023, he planted sugarcane… In October 2024, he sowed sorghum… Now, he’s trying beets.”

First watch: joining the chorus of praise for this 1949 gothic-tinged melodrama, an adaptation of a play based on Henry James' Washington Square. Olivia de Havilland plays a naive young woman who stands to inherit a fortune, but is thought by her own father to lack the charm to attract suitors. 1/5

We’re in a weekend of lists. When in doubt I consult the back page of Classics Illustrated. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo - besides being the inspiration for The Joker in Batman - is a book about right now.

Missing a dear pal who would have loved this week’s bacchanalian shenanigans. As ever, Norman says it best.

In other news, here in Edinburgh the colossal annual book sale at St George’s Church on George Street has its final day today. Here is how things are distributed over the pews…

Lighthouse Books here in Edinburgh is one of the best places for a reading - intimate and welcoming- so well worth checking this out on May 20th…

Once a month, I go to my local bookshop in Edinburgh & look through as many of the new novels as I can. This month Trip by Amie Barrodale stood out way beyond any others. It’s been a long time coming, as it’s been a decade since her first book (of stories). A rowdy, fun, wise mother/son novel.

“…her female protagonists are neither blameless victims nor resilient matriarchs defying the odds.”

Dire warning to the folk of Liskeard #Cornwall #Churches

An allegory by Sciascia: There once was a lizard that, having had his tail chopped off, escaped by hiding himself in some rocks while his tail was still convulsing in the grass. “Kill that evil thing right now,” the farmer told his son. “His tail is cursing us.” tuckmagazine.com/2018/08/30/t...

New Mexico skies, nothing like it.

Talking of heaps and piles. This from the kitchen at my work yesterday. (Check the notice)

Meanwhile, here is my piece on Joanna Pocock's GREYHOUND. readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2026/02/27/g...

I loved Joanna Pocock's GREYHOUND, so very much looking forward to this.

The real deal…

I'm Lead Judge of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, awarded at University of Edinburgh since 1919 and due to be announced this month. But the university is currently withholding 100% of my pay for participating in a marking and assessment boycott. So, at present, there will be no prize.

“The value of an operative who could re-enter the plant, with a face that looked like it belonged there, was greater than any unit cutting through a fence from outside. Why send a unit when you already had a ghost?” Remarkable story, brilliantly written…

Guilty as charged.

‘And, now that the IMF have forced Mexico to devalue the peso, big US companies – such as Xerox & Sheraton – can build factories & hotels here at rock-bottom prices, but sell to hard-currency customers. Inflation…UnemploymentTaxes…Prices go up. But wages go down.’ Mexico Set by Len Deighton quoted⬇️

I’ve written about the late, great Len Deighton www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...