I have a secret: a lovely secret. My book has been shortlisted for a major prize. I can’t say which. Soon, all will be revealed! It’s an odd time to have good news, with the world burning, but I wanted you to share my delight. Thx to all my friends & those who helped get the book/word out. ❤️

A 7% decline in English birds in just 5 years is astonishing The web of life is unravelling fast

Explained exactly this yesterday. In the same studio

There is no obvious limit to how far Trump is prepared to go. He wants everything. He wants everyone to swear undying loyalty to him. He is prepared to do anything to get it. “Anything” might currently seem unimaginable to us. It's time we started imagining it. 4/4

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V grateful to @thevicsoc.bsky.social for sponsoring my conversation with Jojo Silva about Victorian Female Detectives at Chiswick Book Festival this Saturday 13th September. Please do come along at 12.30 pm and stay for a drink & a chat. W4 was crawling with 19th-c sleuths...🕵️

Sara Lodge @victoriandetective.bsky.social analyzes how Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett's detective stories, published as a series in local papers, interrogate capitalism from a feminist and socialist viewpoint. Read more in VPR 57.4: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl... @rs4vp.org

Do come along to Chiswick Book Festival! All proceeds to charity, so you can bookishly do good & get lit simultaneously. Lots of fabulous writers will be there including Petroc Trelawny, William Dalrymple, & Kathy Lette. And me! I will be there talking about Victorian female detectives.

A very kind recommendation.

Fabulous & dark & twisty things at the Royal Academy exhibition of Victor Hugo’s artistic experiments. A huge atomic mushroom atop an apocalyptic landscape. Roiling seas. Inky castles caught in moonlight. Octopi. Writing & drawing are like speech & song: twins always tugging at each others’ hair.

Leaving Ireland with very happy memories of my visit to Connemara and especially Inishbofin with @clairerockfinch.bsky.social I can’t believe the sunshine & sparkling water we’ve enjoyed while making a radio programme about Rosa Mulholland. I even swam in a loch this morning!

Gorgeous views in Connemara where I’m doing research and making a radio documentary about neglected Irish Victorian writer Rosa Mulholland. She was a major figure at the beginning of the Irish revival, a feminist, Catholic, scourge of bad landlordism & spinner of supernatural tales.

Had a lovely time this evening chatting about lady detectives with @victoriandetective.bsky.social in Dublin. A welcome break from essay grading.

Fortune published my piece on the @e3g.bsky.social report showing 97% of execs support a transition to renewables. This maps onto the fact that we underestimate how much appetite there is for climate action globally, with 89% of people favouring stronger climate action. @coveringclimatenow.org

My book’s been shortlisted for a prize! I’m honoured & delighted to be in this distinguished company & to get to go to lovely Bristol & meet crime writers & readers for a weekend of virtual murder & mayhem. Many thanks to all concerned.

A gobsmacking story. Water companies let toxic waste disposers, for cash, dump their loads into sewage farms. The sewage sludge is then spread, untested, on farmland, potentially poisoning vast areas, entire ecosystems and the people (you and me) eating the food. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

CFP: Undercover Agents: Women, Crime, and Detection in the Global Nineteenth Century (Abstract Deadline: 4/30/25) bit.ly/42cD2Mh

Delighted to be one of the keynote soeakers here along with Sara and Lucy, whose work i admite so much. navsa.org/2025/03/18/c...

"The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detectives" by @victoriandetective.bsky.social contrasts the adventurous fictional female detectives of #VictorianLiterature with their real historical counterparts in GB & USA opac.sub.uni-goettin...#VictorianLiterature #WomensDay #InternationalWomensDay #VictorianStudies

It must be Spring. Met an urban fox on the school run today. This one has a des res den on the banks of the District Line.

Great to be back in Edinburgh & take a daunder up Arthur’s Seat before giving a talk about Victorian female detectives at the Royal Scots Club.

Tonight's event @victoriandetective.bsky.social's lecture. Fantastic! Had the book since October, and it's a great read.

Enjoyed talking to the Canadian Sherlock Holmes Society on Saturday about Victorian female detectives. Conan Doyle ended up finishing Grant Allen’s Hilda Wade in 1900, as Allen lay dying, so he wrote a fem tec himself too.

The evening is perfect, my sisters. The loch lies silent, the air is still. The sun’s last rays linger over the water and there is a faint smirr, almost a smudge of summer rain. Sisters, I smell supper… —Edwin Morgan, “Midge” published in THE MAP & THE CLOCK, @faberbooks.bsky.social 2016

🧵"So this is how liberty dies..." Trump’s first 3 weeks have been a relentless flood of actions. It's incredibly hard to keep up. I’ve gone through 69 actions & mapped out the pattern - showing how they fall within 5 broad domains consistent with authoritarian states 1/9

Recovering from Flu. I am officially in the Fug of Blah - that monotone landscape full of administrative hangovers & bleakness at the global Omnishambles. Went to BL exhibition on Mediaeval Women. Inhaled the scarlet, lapis & intricate flowers of an illuminated MS. Liquid gold like bling Tippex.

The gorgeous residential Gladstone’s Library Writer in Residence programme provides space and resources for up to four writers whose work engages with liberal values in the broadest sense. Writers at all stages of their career can apply. Please share :) www.gladstoneslibrary.org/events/write...

London’s Chinatown today, where we celebrated the Year of the Snake. 🐍 Bright winter sunshine & blue skies. Everything hazy, soft & pale, including me. But glad to be emerging from the grey phase of the winter toward Spring.

I love the way low sun illuminates the palm house at Kew Gardens. I’d never seen the lake iced over until the weekend. It made me think of Frost Fairs on the Thames. Kids were wildly excited to try to break the ice. Which turns out to be, unironically, a really good way to make new friends.

Absolutely cracking #bookpost today: Sara Lodge’s groundbreaking history of women detectives in the Victorian era. Can’t wait to get started on this. Thanks a million, @victoriandetective.bsky.social!

The tree is up. Only exam marking & wrapping up a pile of awkwardly shaped long-postponed tasks stand between me & collapsing into the Xmas pudding. What’s your fav Xmas food? Mine was my mum’s tiny mince pies, w mincemeat of dates & currants muddled in brandy. Cocktail mince pies: naughty & nice.

Found you here at the Sun Bookshop in the western suburbs of Melbourne, Oz. So good! @victoriandetective.bsky.social

It’s St Andrews Day tomorrow & Fisher & Donaldson’s — the baker at the heart of St Andrews — has saltire shortbread for the patriotically minded. Or you could just go for a ginger Rudolf. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Here's the first in the series Scotland's Wonderful Wildlife at @thescotsmanpaper.bsky.social Another animal that I have yet to see in the wild Beautiful words from @victoriandetective.bsky.social on otters and hope 🦑 www.scotsman.com/news/opinion...

I’ve been in the Scottish Highlands for a few days, researching a new project and having a birthday treat. Snow! Sublime views. These are pictures from the train window, coming back to Glasgow. So beautiful, I couldn’t read.

Here are some thoughts about an extremely informative book by @victoriandetective.bsky.social - doyouwriteunderyourownname.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-...

Here I am on the blue planet. Looking for fellow writers, artists, eco-worriers in my circle (& those I don’t know yet) who made it out alive when the Twittership combusted. I’ve never felt as supported by a creative community as I did before the Xplosion. Let’s regroup hug & continue the party.