I don’t know quite how they’ve managed it (possibly so much first-person testimony?) but the first episode of Titanic Sinks Tonight is terrifying.

I don't care about the wuthering heights movie one way or the other but I'm gripping my phone everyday waiting for the charli xcx album that comes with it. I don't know what the hell she put in this song but I'm obsessed with it youtu.be/Xgp7wlBfASA

Still thinking about Stephen’s jumpsuit

If it takes making daft Discworld memes to keep me going today... then so be it

I was thinking about that 1980s James Bond movie where everybody's trying to get their hands on a Fabergé egg for some reason And then I realized: It's an Egg McGuffin.

My wife worked with someone who used to say "All guns and blazing". We have adopted it as the default phrase now. "He ran in there all guns and blazing!"

I unironically love this, I can’t lie. Belgian whistles for all.

It was 30 years ago today that BBC Two transmitted the opening episode of Our Friends in the North - one of the greatest television dramas the BBC has ever made. For the anniversary, I've been down to Caversham to take a look through the show's files and explore some of the tales they tell...

Sisters of Mercy for a Thursday morning on 6 Music? Yes please

“I have a teenage son. I can smell a mild untruth like it’s Lynx Africa.”

I fell down a rabbit hole of pictures of Bill Paxton in Titanic and GOOD LORD. I have seen this film so many times - and so many others of his which I’ve adored him in, but I repeat: GOOD LORD

let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.

babybel implies the existence of scarybel, sportybel, gingerbel and poshbel

Timeline cleanser 💕 Good Boi, Indy!

I went to see Blue Moon this afternoon, on the tiniest screen at the cinema (which I had all to myself) and it was lovely and it was melancholy, and Ethan Hawke was great and the script was fantastic - and I was halfway home before I realised a version of Sondheim has a cameo youtu.be/qo7gRHip0lI

support human artists because holy shit

Oh, god. Hamnet. And then my shuffle decided to play On the Nature of Daylight through my headphones as I was walking home and it almost broke me right there and then.

Jon is fantastic to work with: he was my editor for my first two novels and he’s both v v smart and exceptionally lovely

Just finished this after having my eyes pretty much glued to it all day and can confirm: really, really good.

I don’t know if it’s the weather, my age or the wider world, but I have never got as emotional watching the second LOTR film as I have this time around (except for the arrival of the elves & Rohirrim, and Theoden’s elegy because it’s a perfect encapsulation of Old English and always makes me cry)

I think about this quote from the Luddite movement all the time

I’m reading Hattie Williams’ Bitter Sweet and my god it’s stressful. Fantastic and stunningly-written but so *incredibly* stressful. I can’t bring myself to put it down, but also have to keep stopping because I realised I’m grinding my teeth

This is really interesting: based on this interview with the costume designer, Jacqueline Durran, Wuthering Heights is, essentially, Gone With the Wind-meets-Cleopatra in terms of the intent and style www.vogue.com/article/an-e...

EVERYONE DO THIS SURVEY MAKE DISCORD PANIC AND REGRET AND REVERSE COURSE DROWN THEM IN YOUR HATRED FOR GENAI

Six minutes into Heated Rivalry:

Here is a video of a frozen creek that had begun to thaw, and the water was flowing beneath the thin ice on top. I took this because it was soothing and wonderfully bloopy and I wanted to listen to it for hours. You are all welcome to enjoy it, too. Let your brain settle here and rest for a moment.

Discord wants to know how you feel about AI. Go tell them: discord.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

The one true king youtu.be/OZscv36UUHo

If you let them, the horrors will devour you whole. Making space to live and smile is an act of resistance. So is helping others to do the same. If you’re an artist in this time, remember that what you’re doing is part of the emotional support infrastructure. They want you silent. 1/2

it's one thing to be insulted, another thing ENTIRELY to be insulted with such bad grammar

Taking notes at work and genuinely couldn't figure out how to spell the word "Marquee" (for a tent) because I've read far too many historical romances. #books

*chuckles* I'm in danger. #Traitors #TheTraitors

The most horrifying series of words. If you're promoting yourself on X, having a little scroll, doing whatever you're doing, you're complicit in and financially supporting child pornography and a young woman's DIGITAL CORPSE DESECRATION. Are you enjoying the bot attention and Likes THAT much?

Cheerily adding all the exciting new books to my library list (sowing) while equally cheerily - and wilfully - ignoring the fact they will probably all come in at exactly the same time and bury me (reaping)

We interrupt your regularly scheduled doomscrolling for this "the more you know" timeline cleanse. #DoomscrollingBreak

I can’t decide whether Branwell Brontë would be the best or the absolute worst kind of poster. Possibly both, often simultaneously.

The sheer delight of seeing the look on the Kid’s face when he (thinking himself edgy) played Gravel Pit through the kitchen speaker… and we, his agèd parents, KNEW ALL THE WORDS

One of only three known flags to have survived the Battle of Trafalgar, made and maintained by the sailors themselves, has been put under an export ban until March in the hope of finding a way to stop it permanently leaving the country. www.museumsassociation.org/museums-jour...

As it’s going to drive me nuts if I don’t say it, for the record there are broadly three Arthurian traditions: Celtic (Welsh), Heroic / Insular (Anglo-Saxon) and Romance / Continental. What we recognise as “Arthurian legend” is - again, broadly - a descendant of the Romance or Continental tradition.

The Kid turns 18 this week, so if anybody needs me I’ll be sitting alone in a room and staring wistfully into the middle distance while ABBA’s “Slipping Through My Fingers” plays on a loop

finally, someone has tried to make a revisionist Robin Hood with a famous Australian actor

1963: The Big Freeze on BBC Four is fascinating. "When electricity failed, everyone turned to gas." Brits could transmute at will, back then, when we were a proper country.

She is herself a haunted building, and that will save her.

I know it’s the nature of modern fandom and I’m old, but good grief I’m finding the trend of people simultaneously babygirling and massively objectifying men in the public eye who are in their 30s and 40s a bit depressing. There was a line somewhere and wow has it been crossed

I love a good rock star story, and this was the perfect start to the year’s reading. Twisty and clever, and left me wanting to look up whether Nereus Forbes ever hung out with Bowie & Bolan. www.penguin.co.uk/books/462626...

I think it's a shame kids aren't exposed to boring old black and white films on TV at Christmas any more. If you're younger than me (an ancient man of the hills) BBC iPlayer currently has Bringing Up Baby, Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, The Third Man & Suspicion. All bangers!

2026 is making an early start to a “Hold my beer, 2025.” play, and I don’t like it.

I have put away all the Christmas decorations and I hate it. Everywhere looks just a little bit sad now.

Somewhere in France, Amal Clooney starts sharpening her pencils