Bookbanks, the brilliant charity putting books into food banks is recruiting for a North-West Regional Lead forging new partnerships with food banks and authors, publishers, booksellers and the book industry. Details in link here : static1.squarespace.com/static/6525a... www.bookbanks.co.uk

If you're curious about my writing tools, digital and analogue, I gave full answers to Daniel, who has a weirdly fascinating blog called usesthis. In it, I confess to theft. usesthis.com/interviews/r...

Morning walk

I honestly did not expect ever to appear on a sword-themed podcast, but I'm very glad the opportunity came my way. Was lovely to meet @guywindsor.bsky.social and you can listen to the conversation here. NB: disappointingly little sword content. www.podbean.com/media/share/...

Called it!

Your reminder that the UK book industry is worth over £7bn, more than four times the steel industry (£1.7bn), and six times the fishing industry (£1.1bn) so maybe English degrees do have a point after all.

Thank you all again. Bought, read, digested, regurgitated...!

Excited to see Ali Wick's name on this (yay!) and also intrigued by the other two prospective titles. This is an ingenious prize that always throws up fascinating looking books. @profilebooks.bsky.social profilebooks.com/2025/09/01/a...

I am DELIGHTED to be one of the first speakers at the first Ipswich Book Festival. Will be talking about how notebooks changed the books we read, and how authors write them. Loads of stories - Dante, Shakespeare, Woolf, Christie, Highsmith... and pics! www.ipswichbookfestival.com/events-frida...

HELLO IPSWICH!

I took up learning the piano this year - having never learned to play an instrument or even read music, though I can sing - and I just cannot tell you how good it is. 1) it is AMAZING how you get better at each piece. they start off a mess of notes & having to move your hands to where? where?

I was here today and iykyk.

Attention Early Modern Historians! This, from Angus Vine and @oxfordunipress.bsky.social is sure to be of great interest — Angus was insanely knowledgeable, helpful & quotable when I interviewed him for my own book. Have a look at it!

📕 📍Early Modern Merchants and their Books📍 ✍️Angus Vine. @ox.ac.uk Press 2025 ▶️ academic.oup.com/book/60681?s...

The mental health benefits of not knowing any history right now must be massive. Moving through your day with total equanimity. What happens next? Who knows? Maybe something good

Yay, go notebooks, yay! www.wsj.com/business/cha...

The high spot of the day: the arrival of the Jim Norton/ Marcella O'Riordan reading of Ulysses, complete on 22 CDs, one of the great interpretative works of the century, second-hand, and fuck you, Audible.

Delighted to see this in today's Bookseller. Andrew Lownie has made huge sacrifices in digging around the Royals and revealing how they discreetly diddle the rest of us. www.thebookseller.com/bestsellers/...

Anyone for tulips? 🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷

I really hope he's wrong about the scale, but we see so many bubble behaviours that some kind of dramatic 'correction' (at the least) seems inevitable.

As usual, the @FT seems to be the most clear-eyed newspaper on the AI boom/bubble. www.ft.com/content/cfab...

Absolutely fascinating take on AI - I particularly like BB's suspicion that the 'reimplementation of a psychic’s con is entirely accidental' because AI research disregards 'the value of other fields'. Which we see every day ('Historians! You're obsolete!')

So long Edinburgh and thank you @edbookfest.bsky.social for an amazing experience. Excellent to appear alongside Hattie Crisell and Dan Richards in front of such a warm and engaged audience. 🙏🙏🙏 See you again - I hope.

Pls stop what you are doing and read this entire report on Israel's murder of journalist Anas al-Sharif and five colleagues in Gaza City. "He characterized Israel’s threats as 'Silence or Death,' and he vowed not to be silent." It ends with his final message. www.dropsitenews.com/p/anas-al-sh...

Today I spent about half an hour coaching ChatGPT into doing a useful and repetitive work job (that no human could do). It got there in the end. I needed it to repeat the exercise 20 times. I did ten with it then went for lunch, after which, I shit you not, IT HAD FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING in the chat.

Hello Edinburgh! That's what I'll be saying next week! Talking creativity and writing with Hattie Crisell. Tuesday morning. Do come along! www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival...

Hello Ipswich! That's what I'll be saying on October 3rd. Come along, me and Cathy Frost, we'll be talking notebooks.... www.ipswichbookfestival.com/events-friday

My view, the most effective sanctions on Israel would be, in descending order: 1. Halting/downgrading military cooperation 2. Sanctions on banks (literally all are involved in settlements). 3. Trade sanctions 4. Cancelling the visa-free travel 5. Science and academic cooperation 1/

👇👇👇

The first scholarly review of THE NOTEBOOK, from @historyofscience.bsky.social. Their reader praises the index, as well he should. sciendo.com/article/10.2...

I've been reflecting on this and can't see a flaw in the argument.

I don't know enough Arabic to judge the conclusions (or any TBH), but this a fantastically interesting read if you're into paper history, and inspirationally hands-on. @majnouna.com

This is normal right

I had the pleasure of interviewing Miriam Margolyes earlier this week for @bigissue.com. 🎤 The full interview will be out soon, but due to the latest news on Palestine today, I thought I’d share this clip early. 👇 Miriam Margolyes: “I feel it particularly because I’m Jewish”. 💬

We don’t just keep saying this because it affects us and we love working in a bookshop, living, breathing, talking, lugging books - www.rte.ie/culture/2025...

The over-caffeinated researcher.

I have great respect for the good intentions of everyone involved, and will probably agree with 95% of their policy platform, but YourParty™ is doomed to be a bin fire that accomplishes nothing, because it is led by the UK's least effective legislator — 42 years an MP, and nish to show.

Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture, has been shortlisted for the 2025 Palestine Book Awards! www.palestinebookawards.com/news/item/an...

Remember 'the digital classroom'?

The new generation of Oasis fans inspired by the comeback will never be able to recreate the experience of the release of Be Here Now. Months and months of breathless hype followed by the catastrophic bellyflop of 80 minutes of coked out dad rock that everyone forgot by the end of its first day out.

An online reviewer dislikes the 'sarcastic tone' of The Notebook's audiobook narration, and I'm like, mate, you really wouldn't like the author if you ever met him.

So this is enough to get you arrested in the UK these days. Hats off to Jon Farley for exposing this ridiculous situation, Private Eye for the original joke. Photo: Steve Johnston

This is fascinating but misses out the importance of irrigation to huge swathes of Europe's best arable land. Wonderful to think of returning wetland but there will also be returning steppe. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The story I heard concerned a Japanese businessman who was told we were going to make our universities more businesslike. His response: why would you do that? Your universities are excellent and your businesses are rubbish. But we appointed the wrong people and pressed ahead.

Skyhistorians can you help me? Does anyone out there know of a good account (in English preferably) of the Chinese deregulation of printing in the reign of Ming Emperor Wan Li? (1570ish?) ie. why and how it was done? #earlymodern #historyofchina #skystorians

A pot of Lapsang Souchong and a surprisingly productive problem-solving hour at Café Salvage in Hove, where one particular table has proven itself particularly lucky, from a writerly point of view, many times over about six years. That's the structure of the next chapter cracked. 🙂 #amwriting

Entire towns being reduced to rubble in Gaza www.bbc.co.uk/news/resourc...

Yet more horror...