There are many good things in this life; getting a strike at bowling at a staff-student social is up there.

My 100% record of "only ever learning what some financial term is when it's about to make me poorer" continues. Just once I'd love someone to say "Notice that extra £600 in your bank account this morning? You've got Abraxic Fiscal Leverage to thank!".

Credit where credit's due: this is quite good, actually. (I would still have gone with Ripley's advice in "Aliens", but I am told I quote that line too often. It's the only way to be sure.)

It's insane how stupid this is. Zionism, literally, historically, is a product of European antisemitism. That's just a stark, basic fact.

I'm really, really, really tired I have not known economic growth in my adult life and just when I got a tiny bit of optimism some mad bastard starts a war.

'The press framed him as the anti-Fleming, the working-class Bond, but this undersells the breadth of his achievements. To call Deighton a spy novelist is like calling Graham Greene a Catholic one: technically defensible, but it misses most of the picture.'

OK, I’ll make an exception for Umberto Bossi.

I’ve always rather liked this somewhat contextless alcohol-producing(?) cow in the gents’ in this pub.

This is ^really* good on Deighton.

Every human who can cook is a useful human. Any human who can teach others to cook is a more useful human.

Quality journalism from FT. This time, obituary for Len Deighton. Ends with: “Deighton maintained that two things destroy writers: alcohol and praise. He took care to avoid both. He is survived by his wife and two sons.” RIP

If people could stop dying this year, that would be nice. I’ve had enough funerals in 2026.

When SMT at your uni says AI should be thought about seriously

Dear Mary, ◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️ I yearn for you tragically. R.O. Shipman, Chaplain, US Army

This week I have written about rugby and Pindar. Apologies to any readers who aren’t interested in either . . . if it’s any consolation, I’m planning to do something about sonnets next week.

Thank you for this excuse to post my personal favorite book box labelling job.

A tribute to Len Deighton. If you haven't read his novels, learn what you've missed. substack.com/@theideaslab...

I keep my side of the social contract. I try to bring students together with evolving scholarship and hard historical evidence, and I try to get them to think about meanings and significance. To learn. Meanwhile, the govt actively encourages those students to let a machine write their essays.

"Look, folks, the Nazis are a big party now. They have lots of support. You're just going to have to take a hard look at all those Jews you employ. It's just the way it is."

Nice that both brothers got something named after them.

His Maj just lobbing a missile into the jollof wars www.instagram.com/reel/DWCo0ZT...

My student who years ago wrote an - otherwise perfectly decent - exam answer on Whistler’s depiction of the London frog remains unbeaten, I feel.

Registration for the Weird Modernisms conference opens in ONE week. In the meantime, if you're looking for info about conference registration, hotel costs, and travel to Loughborough you can find it here: www.moderniststudies.org/conference/M... Check back in one week to register/ book your hotel!

Hey MSA Members! Travel grant applications for the BAMS/ MSA conference are now open. All are welcome to apply but priority is given to advanced grad students, contingent faculty, and those without institutional funding. You can find the application on our website: www.moderniststudies.org

long story but i just founded an AI education platform. if you want to join the board or contribute to the blog, hit me up. just submitted a conference talk on "surveillance as care" to ELO. wish me luck!!!! puregenius.education

Carl Giles was a fascinating man. A few months after this he was with the Coldstream Guards when they liberated Bergen-Belsen. The German camp commander got excited and kept banging on about how much of a fan of Giles war cartoons he was. Kept asking for a signed drawing. /1

One of the things Deighton gets right as a storyteller - more than any writer approaching it, barring those who were there - is that these were all unbelievably young men playing adult games

RIP Len Deighton. He was responsible for getting this dyslexic idiot reading in his mid 20s & has never stopped. Thanks Len for some cracking yarns

There are a whole generation of kids who grew up on Len Deighton and from him learnt five-sense writing, using a city as a character and the joys of economy. He will be missed for teaching all of that and for being a working class kid who showed us we too just might be able to be writers.

RIP Len Deighton. I must admit I've never read anything by him but did have cause to look him up recently when I saw that he illustrated the #penguin cover for 'Under the Net' by Iris Murdoch. As with all my drawings never perfect but enjoyable to do 😊✏️ #books #booklover #BookSky 📚💙 #art

@airminded.org did you know about this?! I didn’t!

Lastly, just wanted to share one of my favourite maddest books #LenDeighton's dystopian passion project "Airship Wreck" . A detailed fully illustrated record of hundreds of Airship accidents, its basically a #Steampunk version of Ballard's "Crash" #booksky

God Bless #LenDeighton I've been a fan of all his work for a long time I mean we all love Harry Palmer, and his cookbook taught me how to make mayo in a dingy flatshare in Clapham. Here's some thoughts on a couple of his books...

Deighton knows his south asian cuisine

Today’s the day.

RIP Len Deighton, the greatest 20th c author of spy fiction and a brilliant chronicler of the absurdities, historical complexities, and political violence of espionage. He was a wonderful, thoughtful stylist as well.

Wine of the country.

‘Mr. Deighton took a sardonic view of his sudden achievement as a brand-name writer. “All you need is a profound inferiority complex, no training as a writer and growing up a victim of the English class system,” he told Publishers Weekly in 1993.’ www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/b...

The great Len Deighton has died. IMHO the best writer of the spy genre. Better and more readable than LeCarre. In tribute to him I will do another reading of his Bernard Samson series.

So farewell then Len Deighton Obviously some of his books have dated. Nobody is going to believe in a Christian fundamentalist billionaire building a computer system to overthrow the government and replace it with a fascist oligarchy.

#RIP Len Deighton 📷 Brian Duffy, 1966 "There are moments in a writer’s life when other ways of earning a living become remarkably attractive."

the audible, acidic despair in this quote made me laugh out loud

What you do after the RCA: ‘Following his discharge, he studied at St Martin’s School of Art on an ex-service grant. In 1952 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. After graduating he ‘impulsively’ applied for a job as a flight attendant with British Overseas Airways’

My father is one of those working-class kids; it’s hugely true and I think underappreciated.

Working class kids who got the chance to go to art school after WW2 often have fascinating career trajectories. Deighton, with his gourmet/illustrator/fiction writer/popular historian combo not the least.

#RIP Len Deighton who had the best ever author bio on the back of The Ipcress File's first edition dustjacket:

John Le Carre published eleven novels after Len Deighton published his last one! Deighton‘s willingness to actually retire at 67 feels unusual amongst novelists but somehow also fitting- his heroes are notable for their grounded sense of proportion.

In the battle between Le Carre and Deighton, we had a trump card: "But Le Carre never wrote a cookbook." The nine-book Bernard Samson sequence is one of the highlights of popular 20th-century fiction, regardless of genre, but there are so many other crackers. RIP Len