Once again the reactionary & mysteriously funded Restore Trust have been defeated in the National Trust’s memberships elections - a good breakdown of it all here. As ever, despite harrumphing culture warriors of a certain age, Britain is open to discussing our complex history

JUST RAISE TAXES. MAKE AN ARGUMENT FOR SOLIDARITY AND SHARED SACRIFICE FOR ONCE

The farming of men's anxieties is very lucrative business and one done with very little care for the actual men it targets. Mens wellbeing discussion often comes served with a huge side order of biological essentialism, often leaving out the actual wellbeing bit www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

I tend not to think life was better in the past, most of what I’ve experienced in my 46 years suggests there has been immeasurable improvement. One thing I do lament however is the invention of kids soft play areas. These I swear were not a thing in the 1980s. I dislike them intensely.

Claude Francis Barry’s paintings of WW1 are amongst the most accomplished of his works, with his images of searchlights across London being the most evocative - here (1918) he used small concentrated dots of colour to create an atmospheric haze of light.

Good to know Noel Gallagher has been too

Gentle Jesus Make It Stop 🙏

new danny brown out today and it rules – fizzy collabs with hyperpop artists and a sly wink at sobriety album tropes. i reviewed it for @thequietus.com!

Autumn is the most Enya of seasons, and it's ten years this month since I interviewed Eithne Ní Bhraonáin together with Roma and Nicky Ryan (the other 2/3 of the Enya project) about their avant-garde roots, Celtic Futurism, and 2015's wonderful Dark Sky Island LP thequietus.com/interviews/e...

Poor Larry 💔

Really happy that the Royal British Legion now have a Pride poppy. I will be wearing mine in memory of everyone I wrote about in Men At War, the members of the military who were persecuted for their sexuality, and for all those LGBTQ+ people who served but whose lives we will never know 🏳️‍🌈

Coming back to earth after another magnificent Lewes Bonfire, how they make the fireworks get louder, heavier, more creative each year is beyond me. Glorious to watch it all drifting over the full moon. Effigy was Starmer over the farmer inheritance tax – perhaps more deserving targets in 2025...

Tanita Tikaram’s Ancient Heart was such a formative record, it taught me so much about voice as texture. Was a pleasure to speak to her for this week’s tQ Baker’s Dozen: thequietus.com/interviews/b...

1. In the wake on Mamdani’s win, we’ll see a lot more far right anti-urban sentiment. Here’s a thread on its roots and evolution. The idea that the city is evil and corrupt, and the countryside innocent and pure, goes back a long way: to Theocritus in Alexandria, and to the Old Testament. 🧵

Really chuffed to see that Budgie’s memoir The Absence, which I helped write, is Rough Trade’s Book Of The Year. It was a joy to work on this & encounter Budgie’s tender fearlessness in writing about subjects most male musicians don’t go near. A lovely man. blog.roughtrade.com/gb/books-of-...

British socialists have become too used to making excuses for the flaws and shortcomings of our leaders. Look at this. This is the standard. We deserve this every bit as much as New York does.

Our CO monitor started screeching at 1am, I was 100% sure it was broken and needed a hammer. Had no idea that there is a number to ring and a nice man comes at 1am to test the CO levels & also takes the bust non-stop noisy alarm away in his van, all for free. Something in Britain works!

The excellent @worldofechomusic.bsky.social have put out one of my LPs of the year (Läuten Der Seele) & have an all-day gig at E17 Trades this weekend. Founder Stephen Pietrzykowski was satisfyingly pugnacious when talking about the bill for this tQ piece: thequietus.com/news/world-o...

I’ve been going to Lewes Bonfire since the 90s, generally there was a lovely autumnal chill in the air. I can barely remember one feeling like that in recent years and just look at the forecast for Wednesday - 14 degrees at night! It’s about burning things, not getting sweatily broiled. Ffs

Coming Soon: Tom Skinner says "a-BOSH" to Nigel

My latest working theory about the fact Starmer *simply can never look directly at the camera* is it is a hangover from his much-reported obsessive infatuation with 1980s post-punk bands such as Orange Juice

Opposing NATO expansion is a nonsensical policy. If countries want to join it, they can. Nobody's twisting their arms. Not sure what "non-militarised" security involves

ah great Primal Scream are back.

“Of course, nobody believes in ghost stations - not even British Railways in their wildest dreams of economy": further BBC Archive joy just uploaded, or rather melancholy - the last days of operation on a Norfolk branch line & the sense of loss among passengers & staff youtu.be/uke3Y43F-BQ?...

Here’s the cover for LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK, out 16 April with @sceptrebooks.bsky.social Preorder here: lnk.to/LikeaCatLove... Please share! The book doing well means I can write another (and fulfil my dream of owning a pizza oven), so it’s pretty serious 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛

I see that a) The National Trust is selling "Christmas Curd", and b) my Photoshopping skills are as sharply honed as they ever were

This is a really interesting read. The aspect of the nu-Greens that concerns me is over the NATO skepticism / defence / getting weird about Russia that blights Your Party etc.

Memory of the Second World War and genocidal Nazi crimes is now as distant to Zoomers as memory of trenches at the Somme and Verdun was to my Xennial generation born in the late 1970s and 1980s. The battle against myths of Nazism can no longer rely on lived experience of its catastrophic realities

Reading LGBT+ histories from early modern to post WWII it's striking how bi/fluid sexuality is barely acknowledged. If a man is prosecuted for homosexuality he is defined by many/most historians as "gay", even if he had children/relationships with women. Of course prejudice meant many were closeted

@harrysword.bsky.social it’s the Alsace episode of France you love isn’t it? The celebration of sausage and the mad balloonist?

On the left, the refurbished Lincoln bathroom. On the right, picture I took in Saddam Hussein's palace in Basra in 2005.

Magnificent behaviour

Dozens of trick or treaters everywhere - perhaps a legacy of my Methodist upbringing but I find it v annoying. My Reverend Dad used to tell them they were messing with dark forces. I was very proud of him for it and we never got tricked. The LORD will smite their teeth with cavities.

If you're a member of the National Trust remember to vote for council members by midnight tonight. Use the Quick Vote option. Entryist pressure group Reform Trust is trying to seize control. Stop them Voting is quick and easy if your membership card is at hand secure.cesvotes.com/V3-3-0/nt25/...

Indeed. I don't really like Halloween (you are not a zombie, you have ripped an old shirt and work at Foxtons the estate agent) but if you're going to do it, do it properly. Was quite pleased with the 'plague dktr and diseased rat' outfit me and the missus did a few years ago:

"The Unutterable stands out as one of the most original and exciting British albums of the 2000s" Thank you @fergalkinney.bsky.social for a magnificent piece of writing on my favourite LP by The Fall group #essenceofTong thequietus.com/quietus-revi...

Somebody stop this monster! Farage fusion Clarkson cheese reacharound jamboree! Come on, the rest of Blur, surely this is a sackable offence? If not, what does it say about the rest of you? Eh? Eh?

I think with the release of Different Class and He's On The Phone today 30 years ago, but also Wonderwall, it was the segue from the last gasp of the interesting bit of Britpop and the point where the singalong cagoules took over.

Currently reading a book on gay subcultures of the 18th century and encountered the magnificent term "cynical friction"* as meaning "masturbation". *Yes, please do all go ahead with your "I saw Cynical Friction first on the bill with Dumpy's Rusty Nuts in Digbeth in 1983" posts now etc.

Me on Pulp's Different Class, republished on tQ today: "psychic armour against the small minds and narrow horizons of Middle England... the Home Counties did petty violence and they did tedium, but they didn’t do sex." thequietus.com/opinion-and-...

Here's the sort of thing I like to do to de-stress of a Wednesday evening – was watching this BBC news report on an unexploded 12,000lb Tallboy bomb dropped by 617 Squadron on the cruiser Lützow in 1945 finally exploding during an attempt to defuse it... (1/2) www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-e...

A #HüskerDü playlist has been added to the AQI for Subscriber Plus readers, giving you an unbeatable introduction to the band's hits, anthems, deep cuts and fan favourite tracks Join the Quietus Subscriber Plus tier for access (to this plus many more perks) buff.ly/k3f6SEV

Minority representation on TV causes outrage From the new Private Eye, in shops now.

🌳 As a #NationalTrust member I’ve just voted for the recommended slate to keep out the bogus, right-wing entryists of “Restore Trust”. Anything this creep wants is bad for Britain and bad for our heritage. 🌳 If you’re a member, vote Recommended Slate now: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-we-are/a...

National Trust types! It's AGM time, do vote for the suggested candidates & block the right-wing, 'anti-woke', mysteriously-funded Restore Trust, who are against eg rewilding and discussing colonial history / LGBT+ heritage (last week my sister saw OOTW in an NT shop, would it be if they had power?)

Lest there be any doubt about JRR Tolkien’s attitude to ‘hard men’, here he is writing to his son Christopher in January 1945 about the moral cost of war - even what he saw as a necessary and just war.

One of my favourite bits of Damian Barr’s The Two Roberts is when the two working class artists accidentally send a letter to the “Bloomsberries” calling them “the driest c*nts imaginable” after going for lunch at Charleston.

God, I hope so. All that gushing over badly daubed furniture and floppy hats ignores the their draft dodging, racist "pranks" and appalling treatment of servants.

Elon Musk: "It is time for the English to ally with the hard men, like Tommy Robinson, and fight for their survival or they shall surely all die" 29th October 2025. 2 million views in its first hour.

X is a cesspit led by an unhinged billionaire who is desperately trying to stir up civil war in Britain. Nobody with any sense or decency should be there. No organisations, government departments, or politicians should be there. Everyone who is, is enabling this monster.