1824: Recievd a letter from Hessey & wrote one took a walk in the fields gatherd a bunch of wild flowers that lingerd in shelterd places as loath to dye - the ragwort still shines in its yellow clusters & the little heath-bell or harvest-bell quakes to the wind under the quick banks & warm furze...

Pleased to say @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social have commissioned a new live online course from me for summer 2026 onward! Medieval Chivalry for 10 weeks! Chat with me weekly! lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk/courses/medi... Please share.

My story ‘Small Bad Things’ which came third in @themothmagazine.bsky.social short story prize is published in @irishtimes.com today 🎉 There is a small paywall - (£1 for first month) 👇

🚨NEW: The Israeli government banned journalists on their PR aid flight from filming Gaza from above. They told journalists the air drops would be cancelled if they broadcast any footage of the destruction below. A rogue state trying to hide its genocide. Israel won’t ever come back from all this.

Credit to the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen. Defying the Israeli ban on filming Gaza from above, Bowen instead describes the carnage & genocide he can see: “I can tell you that communities in the north of Gaza that I knew well…with tens of thousands of people…are flat. There’s nothing left of them.”

This week Penguin publishes the paperback of my acclaimed memoir ‘Home Is Where We Start: Growing Up In the Fallout Of The Utopian Dream’: the story of my utopian commune childhood & a book about the many meanings of home. Extracts were published in The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

What is a townland? Here’s a breakdown of the land divisions you will come across in Irish genealogical records, and why you need to know them #genealogy #Irishgenealogy #familyhistory

GAZA TODAY. "A one-and-a-half-year-old child in Gaza facing life-threatening malnutrition as the humanitarian situation worsens due to ongoing Israeli attacks and blockade." #Israel #genocide #starvation Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Salt Path headlines have dwindled - has there been any published analysis of sales figures which post-date the scandal? Presumably sales rocketed...

Good to know 👇

De noche, los gatos son pardos, la comida sabe distinta, y el amor puede florecer a pesar de que no lo alimente la luz.

"Much #digitisation is being performed by private companies operated for profit. In the future, do we want the only copies of rare and important #books and #periodicals to be controlled by businesses rather than public #libraries that are free for all?" theconversation.com/valuing-our-...

As Bookbanks new Ambassador I’d like to spread the word about this brilliant charity giving books with food at food banks. Please share and support if you’re able :) www.bookbanks.co.uk

Just finished "Ripeness", the latest by Sarah Moss. It's a novel about many things; the depictions of female friendship in late middle-age will stay with me in particular.

Lapsed Irish speakers will relate to this: Andrew McNeillie citing Welsh poet Robert Minhinnock saying that his remaining Welsh language ability "was like wool caught in a strand of barbed wire with the sheep long gone over the mountain."

Interesting to see the phrase "Glaschu mòr nan stìoball", "Great Glasgow of the steeples", in late-1820s texts by both Dr Norman MacLeod and Ailean Dall. I guess that's what first struck the eyes of Gaels arriving in the city: all those rival denominations, racing each other to heaven...

Mid-summer blackberry ripening in London.

When we walk in green spaces our eyes scan the landscape-move side to side-an ancient behaviour our ancestors used to check for danger & food.This eye movement literally rewires our brains giving us more resilience to trauma & is the basis of EMDR therapy.Go for a walk among plants today if you can🌿

This is fascinating: www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/I... Someone “worked on a book with ChatGPT” for weeks and then sought help on Reddit when they couldn’t download the file. Redditors helped them realized ChatGPT had just been roleplaying/lying and there was no file/book…

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

‘The Plath-Hughes mythology presents a problem if the first glimpse you had of Plath’s life was the one she lived while making her poems. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 life, those mornings, is never to be pitied.’ @tricialockwood.bsky.social on Sylvia Plath: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Woman on the verge of investing in an adult-sized paddling pool #London #hot

'Telegraphy', a novel, will be out in the UK in January 2026 from CB Editions. That cover – that I love – is courtesy of Charles at the press. If you would like to review the novel/talk about it/question it/ask me about all its earlier names, let me know.

The Telegraph today carries a news story about someone paying £7.4 million for a handbag (Hello, Lady Bracknell!). And an opinion piece describing a wealth tax as a ‘moral abomination’. What a time to be alive.

I do hope, as AI execs sell generative AI into the education system, that in the future they'll be taken for everything they have and more, because this is like selling cigarettes to children, and it will harm them in terms of cognition and thinking. Companies have no right to experiment on kids.

Post from the great Padraig Kenny over on IG

Reviewing a gigantic, and to her mind flagrantly over-reviewed novel, Francine Prose once wrote: “Does nobody care how books are written any more?” This marvellous episode cares - and then some - about how Elizabeth Taylor’s quietly astonishing novel Angel is written and why it is such a wonder.

Publishers and agents often ask writers to supply “comparative titles” when they submit. Is this a good thing? (Spoiler alert! I'm not sure...) open.substack.com/pub/samj/p/c...

There’s a good joke somewhere about The Salt Path, slippery slopes and Penguin sending the grifters out to fix it, but it eludes me.

This Salt Path malarkey is just shocking, eh?

My Unbound expose is now live. thecritic.co.uk/issues/july-...

What to read this Disability Pride Month, featuring @pennyauthor.bsky.social, @tinywriterlaura.bsky.social, @lucyrosecreates.bsky.social, @newlands.bsky.social, @chrisbridgeswriter.bsky.social and more. Drop your recommendations below! vikkipatisauthor.com/2025/07/03/w...

My kingdom for a properly air conditioned London bus !!! #TFL

ON TOP of the ethical reasons to not use AI, it's also 1) bad at what it does 2) literally makes you stupider 3) has HUGE environmental costs: every search is equivalent to pouring out an entire bottle of water. It's not worth it to generate a cutesy emoji or have it write an error-riddled draft.

We spoke to Wendy Erskine about her new novel The Benefactors and the conversation was a fascinating as you might expect: www.buzzsprout.com/1728150/epis... Absolutely cracking book. (Also features enraged news section about publishers 8th Note and Unbound, both departing under a cloud)

Lovely #BookSky folks with knowledge of the Irish uni and arts funding scene, what streams/opportunities are there for creative writers connected to universities to seek funding for their work? Names of funders and programmes would be *super* helpful. Ta lovelies.

Tús maith leath na hoibre! A good start is half the job! Tús - beginning, start bunadh - origin bunús - origin, genisis dúiseacht - awakening éirí - rise foinse - source fréamhacha - roots seoladh - launch síol - seed tionscnamh-inception tosach-start tosú-beginning ❤️#Gaeilge

Happy Summer solstice from Finland, photo taken at midnight 🌞

idk man, I actually enjoy writing. It makes me feel alive and engaged and I feel lucky that I get to spend so much time doing it. Having written is great, but brainstorming and researching and thinking through things is the real point. You couldn't pay me any amount to give that up to a machine.

I have fled through land and sea, blank land and sea, because my house is besieged by murderers And I was wrecked in the ocean, crushed and swept, Spilling salt angry tears on the salt waves… —Edwin Muir, “The refugees born for a land unknown” Collected Poems, 1921–1958 20 June is #WorldRefugeeDay

Unknown woman, as fresh as if she'd been painted yesterday: the pin (the pin!), the folds, but mostly the eyes. Rogier van der Weyden, 1440. Today is his day.

Ciara's work is just beautiful. Her selkie drawings are one of my favourite things in my home. Check out her work !

"Walking Meditation", from me to you on this Saturday in June. 🙏🏻

A GoFundMe has been set up by a Ballymena woman for assisting some of the people affected by the pogrom in Ballymena. Fuck knows Stormont won't look out for them gofund.me/309db4ae

ChatGPT is down but The Museum of English Rural Life still stands, proving once again that Silicon Valley cannot compete with the history of rural England and its people.

Please do listen to @jomcmillan.bsky.social chat about her novel. The Accidental Immigrants @orwellprize.bsky.social @thebookseller.com @theguardian.com @thetimes.com @prospectmagazine.co.uk

The Accidental Immigrants: A story of what happens when there’s talk of ‘an island of strangers’... This book was only possible with the support and courage and imagination of the lovely people at Bluemoose. Thank you Kevin, Lin and Hetha! @ofmooseandmen.bsky.social @orwellprize.bsky.social

Our Lady of the Wayside - Connemara.