Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair... Amazing piece about NEOM, The Line, and where fantasy meets reality in Saudi Arabia. Chapeau @financialtimes.com

A rail worker credited with saving multiple lives during a mass stabbing on a train has been named as Samir Zitouni. The 48-year-old's actions on the Doncaster to London King's Cross service on Saturday evening were described as "nothing short of heroic".

So fun to write this short tribute to a classic @newyorker.com story: Up and then Down, by Nick Paumgarten. www.newyorker.com/magazine/tak... But don't read that read the original. It's about eight thousand words long and it will make your day better. www.newyorker.com/magazine/200...

Honoured.

No More Kings, by @willoyd.bsky.social -- an essay very much worth your time. www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

Thank you to the Sunday Long Read... Kinahan and many other delicious treats in this week's buffet.

Heaney, by @fotoole.bsky.social : observer.co.uk/culture/book...

Ed Luce watching democracy die in the United States of America

Robin Lane Fox's rules for life, printed in the latest fabulous issue of @thefence.bsky.social

I wrote about Daniel Kinahan and his family for @newyorker.com. The story features boxers, assassins, Hezbollah, a billion-dollar cocaine empire, the Open University, and a debonair gangster in a prison in Rome who is singing like a canary... www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Astonishing journalism and storytelling: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Thrilled that Bookbanks is expanding with the help of @thetimes.com . I love being a volunteer in Manchester, and see first hand the good it does. www.thetimes.com/article/de95...

Curtice says that because of vote distribution, even with the Tories polling fractionally above the Lib Dems, if this was translated into an election, the Lib Dems would end up being the much bigger party in parliament.

Protest group coming down Rustaveli. Now it's quite some numbers. And they keep coming. #Tbilisi #Georgia

News organisation explainer: What do we know about the new Archbishop of Canterbury? Sarah Mullally [1] is the new [citation needed] (What you actually want to read is Tim Wyatt on her handling of various chaotic things: www.the-fence.com/in-the-shado...)

Can confirm: sensational book.

“Stop crying,” Rick Rescorla told his wife, on September 11, 2001. “I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I’ve never been happier. You made my life.” #NewYorkerArchive

At Old Trafford for the Test today. Reminded of the time in COVID when I came and watched the Test on my own, then attempted to explain the sport to Americans... www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

Lovely response, not least the people emailing me with their family's WW1 stories. The other cool thing is that I'm now in conversations about how to provide an exhibition space for these images in the UK, on which I hope to have more soon. Would love for more people to see these powerful photos.

As a journalist and emerging public historian, I spent much of the past week reading through transcripts of oral histories made and collected by residents of Kerr County, Texas – where flash floods killed more than 100 people this month. There’s one recording that stood out to me. 🧵

I love Test cricket.

“The soldiers laugh, frown, flirt. They bounce local children on their knees, they pet dogs, they wear silly costumes, they sit on horses. In some photos, the men have dirt on their boots and faces. It’s as if they’d left a trench only a minute before the shoot.” www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

I'm not sure if people share stories here (or read the ones that are shared) but fwiw, I've got a new story out in @newyorker.com today that means a great deal to me. It's about a writer I love, and an amazing cache of long-lost photographs from WW1: www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

If you woke up this morning longing to read an essay about MrBeast that quotes Walter Benjamin, you're in luck. @mrkocnnll.bsky.social on the Junklord of Misrule is depressing, hilarious, bang-on: www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ju...

Oh no, not the ai industry

Massively chuffed by this

Thrilled for Moises. Richly deserved!

The London Centric team needed an affordable workplace solution today, somewhere that wouldn’t have issues with us sitting on laptops all day but also had lots of desks and on-hand supplies of coffee, food and strong WiFi. Anyway, welcome to WFCC (work from county cricket).

Great/depressing piece by @rachelmonroe.bsky.social about the plight of Outside magazine (for whom I wrote a couple of things years ago, and used to love). www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

He would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark.

I loved this piece, about the mad empire of Samuel Smith pubs. www.theguardian.com/news/2024/de...

With so many outlets scaling back or shutting down or making $15 million apology payments to the President of the United States, it's encouraging to see a new magazine - an actual paper MAGAZINE - as brash and beautiful and funny as The Fence. Subscribe! (Also my quote below is 100% true.)

The legacy of a playground murder in Manchester. manchestermill.co.uk/p/murder-in-...

Superb piece @reuters.com on the last days and hours of Assad. Macbeth wrote the kicker. www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Captagon was the dark heart of Assad's economy. If you want to know more (and it's a pretty wild and weird story) I spent a few months digging into it for @newyorker.com www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Great to see Lindsey Hilsum and @channel4news.bsky.social reporting on the Assad captagon factory... The question is what happens now...

⚡️Syrian rebels have found a large drug and Captagon warehouse in Syria, run and traded by Bashar's brother, Maher Assad.

Moving and beautifully written. So many people in this country are only a small portion of bad luck away from losing their home. www.esquire.com/news-politic...

I finished watching Say Nothing last night. I approached the series with trepidation, since I love the book immoderately. I need not have worried. If you haven't watched it yet, find the time.

Some Assad/London flotsam: a member of the Assad family owned Witanhurst for 8 years. Also: Asma's Dad still has a cardiology practice on Harley Street.

Assad and family are in Moscow and Russia “based on humanitarian considerations provided them with asylum” is.gd/5DYS1j

V interesting analysis by Jason Burke www.theguardian.com/world/2024/d...

HTS has issued a statement to the Jordanian government pledging to end the captagon trafficking trade from Syria into Jordan...

Syrians just opened up Assad’s presidential garage. This is what the Ba’ath Party’s Arab Socialism looks like.

As the rebel groups in Syria make their boldest and most successful military move in years, a look at how Bashar al-Assad propped up his regime by exploiting the Middle East’s love of an amphetamine called captagon.

“All across Syria, families wept as they were reunited with children, siblings, spouses and parents who vanished years ago into the impregnable gulag of the Assad dynasty's five-decade reign.” www.reuters.com/world/middle...

A few weeks since my piece on Assad's drug empire... Amazing to see the empire tottering...

Ooh.