Happy Childermass Day to all who celebrate

[me, doing nothing] … My five-year-old: ‘Daddy—imagine if our house was made of pants.’

Dr Jo (2016).

Never Say Elsevier Again

Have we already had … TEF Gold(eneye)?

Always lovely to wake up on Christmas Day to a Daily Work Flow reminder from your employer

Ending the week by writing about carpets & Vilém Flusser's idea that carpets conjoin the nest and the cave: 'The carpet is to the culture of the tent what architecture is to the culture of the house. But it has flown out of the tent across the steppe and in through an open window of our dwellings.'

Well—this looks *superb*.

Saw on @qi.com that kids ask their parents on average 150 questions per hour, and honestly I feel seen—mine certainly do this—but also that it may as well be 1,500 because after the first 50 everything blurs into a haze of inquisitorial cognitive overload.

John Carey RIP. Everyone should read his books on Dickens and Donne and the Faber Book of Reportage. Vary rarely a dull review...

Approaching the end of a teaching term and reflecting on something I've never been able to crack, which is *when* to read the texts you're teaching. I find that if I do it too early (e.g. in the summer), I forget the details of the texts by when it's time to teach them. [1/4]

The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four (2020) is now out in Japanese translation (2025), courtesy of Naoki Kondo--the President of the #Orwell Society of Japan & an Associate Professor at Nihon University, Tokyo. #BookSky www.suiseisha.net/blog/?p=21369 www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

At that point in term—in life—where I am having to write reminders to write reminders. It will not be long before I have to write reminders to write reminders to write reminders.

Six months since my book, A BRIGHT COLD DAY: THE WONDER OF GEORGE ORWELL, was published with @oneworldbooks.bsky.social, and six months until the paperback. It's a creative biography, or perhaps more accurately a study of how #Orwell wrote about living. oneworld-publications.com/work/a-brigh...

The culture outside is frightful But critique is so delightful And since we've no place to know Adorno, Adorno, Adorno

This.

Bit of ABCD-spotting in Aldeburgh. #orwell

Me, looking at a recent picture of myself: ‘God I look old.’ My eldest child: ‘But daddy—you’ve always looked old.’

Can’t have a seminar on To the Lighthouse without a drawing of a lighthouse for assistance, obvs. #woolf

Can confirm it was rather sublime. Bravo @lukekennard.bsky.social. 🎓