Cannot recommend this enough www.nyrb.com/products/the...

It's the Feast of the Ascension! This time last year, I wrote about the flagrant silliness of paintings of disappearing feet in paintings for @apollo-magazine.com, and why their silliness (believe this non-sense if you can!) is the point. apollo-magazine.com/ascension-fe...

Labour-run Barnet has voted for exquisite agony: no overall control with LAB 31; CON 31; GREEN 1. Almost proud. lbbcommunicationsexternal.cmail19.com/t/d-e-gkrhud...

‘I was enjoying my precarious freedom by studying the history of art – what was there better to do while this respite lasted?’ (Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary)

An awful day. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Rewatching The Bureau and the work canteen is absolutely the most appealing element of being a French spy.

A nice surprise to hear Clare Short on the World Service.

Ministers being sent out on the media round for matters Mandelsonian. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5YW...

‘In lieu of flowers, the family and Zipporah Films kindly request that you support your local PBS affiliate or independent bookstore in Frederick Wiseman’s memory’ zipporahfilms.com

We don’t need to grant online attention to every egregiously racist utterance in 2026

Would absolutely listen to test match commentary by the groundsmen.

‘Palestine 36’ has an astonishingly graceful disclaimer at the end of the credits. Also, good to see Orde Wingate played as a psychopath, though the long hair was unnecessary.

The people with the wheelie suitcases have left. London is mine.

The tone of The Odyssey trailer suggests that Matt Damon won’t be spending much time chez Calypso or with the Phaeacians. But that’s okay; I felt very relaxed about Briseis (Rose Byrne) killing Agamemnon during the sack of Troy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzw2...

“In story after story, epicene young men, difficult children, or wild beasts set out to shake up the stifling complacency around them” @hekale.bsky.social on Saki’s fierce, funny, & wicked fiction Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916) – Saki – b. 18 Dec 🎂🧵 💙📚 1/8 www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/4360...

This is very good, via @marta-zboralska.bsky.social (and I say that as the daughter of someone who was learning the King’s English in the 1930s.) open.substack.com/pub/marcusol...

"Art history gives you tools to interpret the visual world and makes you more of a critical viewer of political messages, advertising and a barrage of social media images. It’s dangerous if you can’t examine these things critically". apollo-magazine.com/art-history-...

Outstanding www.semafor.com/article/10/2...

The number of children homeless in England is the highest since records began. england.shelter.org.uk/media/press_...

This is really important on housing in London (and the FT has also reported on the government thinking about letting developers off the 35% affordable housing requirement) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Incroyable.

Where do objects come from? No, where do they *really* come from? I spoke to Hew Locke for the October issue of @apollo-magazine.com about small boats, decorating statues and why Empire needs new clothes. apollo-magazine.com/hew-locke-pa...

In which Isaac Chotiner interviews a bowl of jelly and the bowl of jelly has a small realisation at the end. www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Glad to be in this month's Apollo, writing about Evan Walters's The Communist (c.1932): colour, ideas, Wales. Also mentioned: chapels, gospels and preachers (including the Manic Street variety), & being sceptical of rhetoric, like the little chap at the front. apollo-magazine.com/evan-walters...

I’ve written something about Tom Lehrer for @apollo-magazine.com as a very small token of appreciation for his marvellous songs apollo-magazine.com/tom-lehrer-s...

We absolutely loved Tom Lehrer in our house.

I am the only one with clarity of purpose! For @apollo-magazine.com , I provide the "Andor" take that really matters: a look at Luthen Rael's antiques business apollo-magazine.com/andor-luthen...

From now on, all explanations of rank-choice voting must be in Bengali (heavy Hindi inflections optional) and through the medium of Bengali sweets.

A former head of MI6 says that what the new head of MI6 will be really good at is 'understanding how we operate in the nexus between man and machine’.

A lovely way of putting it

Sly Stone and Frederick Forsyth. The 20th Century was eclectic.

I’ve judged all dealings with writers by Edmund White, who couldn’t have been more charming to a green assistant, or more professional with everyone. The Farewell Symphony is a great novel. RIP a brilliant ‘public-library intellectual’ (as he described himself more than once).

For @apollo-magazine.com I wrote about Beatrice Minger's new film about Eileen Gray's E1027, and the strange paradox of Gray's reputation, which must be continually rediscovered www.apollo-magazine.com/eileen-gray-...

For the FT, I spoke to the painter Rachel Jones before the opening of her exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery www.ft.com/content/8f8b...

‘We have a bonus scheme to protect our most precious resource, which is the senior management team’ – the chair of Thames Water www.ft.com/content/1f6d...

You can already hear the effects of the cuts to the World Service because it has to repeat so much material - but its news is still better than anything else the BBC puts out.

In her new book, ‘Frieze Frame’, @aestallings.bsky.social collects the responses of poets and artists to the Parthenon marbles since the early 19th century. She talks to @hekale.bsky.social about why they now deserve a new lease of cultural life www.apollo-magazine.com/ae-stallings...

Contents page as time capsule granta.com/products/gra...

Gogglebox, but for the CCP.

In the best of Caspar David Friedrich’s art, Lauren Kane finds ‘an essential minimalism that is often overwhelmed by the soaring pines, snowy cemeteries and gleaming crosses that have earned him a reputation as a heavy-handed, sentimental maximalist’ www.apollo-magazine.com/caspar-david...

I spoke to Owen Hatherley about his excellent new book, ‘The Alienation Effect’, about the Central European émigrés who fled to Britain and brought modernism with them www.apollo-magazine.com/alienation-e...

‘pickled British iconoclast’

A tale of two Schiffs… two Schiffs very unlike in dignity, via the New York Times

‘In this moment of our politics, I find myself seeking out certain images of cruelty in art’ – Tessa Hadley is drawn to Giovanni Bellini’s depiction of the murder of Saint Peter Martyr

’[DEFRA] is understood to have made representations to Downing Street that beavers could be part of Labour’s growth mission, as the rodents work for free to build infrastructure and restore nature’ – via @chrisbrooke.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘The editor is one of the great inventions of civilisation’ – Jill Lepore on the radio just now