The masterpiece of David Mitchells’s ‘Thousand Autumns…’ is the description of a technique of lithotomy performed in Nagasaki in 1799, and its Greek and Arab precedents: “The doctor lengthens the bloody incision with his scalpel: Gerritszoon shrieks….The stone is as big as an acorn...

“The renewed Israeli assault on Lebanon was launched after Hezbollah – the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group – fired rockets into northern Israel in response to the killing of the former Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in joint US-Israeli airstrikes.” The Guardian 31.3.26

The book censoring Manchester secondary school academy has been named:

In 1846, after the British victory over the Sikhs at the battle of Sobraon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning said prophetically, "Some of these days our ‘great Indian Empire’ will stand up on its own legs, & make use of our own rope to scourge us to a distance.” substack.com/@wdowen/p-19...

Nobody wants to use Locker No.13. Proof if needed that the Age of Reason passed members of the London Library by.

I'd just like to say: Spurs 0 - Nottingham Forest 3

Emboldened ultra-rightist headmaster at work in Manchester. The 200+ school library books banned were selected using AI to catalogue them. Librarian intimidated. LA response inadequate. When will we learn which school? What will be the political response to Index on Censorship's excellent reporting?

Jay Rayner slices up Gordon Ramsay in the FT (free link) giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

A note on the massive structural impact of a 20% squeeze on oil supply over the longer term - if this war goes on much longer - thats not yet priced into any market, and its impact on the poorest countries hbr.org/2026/03/the-...

Al-Aqsa mosque closed for Eid by the Israeli occupiers: “a grave violation of the existing historical and legal status quo in the Islamic and Christian holy places … a provocation to the feelings of Muslims throughout the world .. a violation of freedom of worship & the sanctity of holy places”.

A useful, well-informed and balanced article on the current state, options (for both sides) and possible outcomes of the American-Israeli war on Iran. substack.com/home/post/p-...

'Iran Is Not Gaza': Arundhati Roy's scathing speech on the US-Israeli illegal war on Iran and its people. zeteo.com/p/iran-is-no...

A case of ‘where the rule becomes the objective’. Cf BBC R4 Sideways this morning on hypernormalisation and the absurdities of bureaucracies.

BBC reporting (R4 Today) “the people of Iran are suffering this bombardment in enforced silence”. This is 2 minutes after reporting the police ban on the pro-Palestine Al Quds day march in London ‘which may express support for the malign regime in Iran.’ Shall we suffer in silence?

10 worthwhile minutes with Michael Rosen

Congratulations to the Migration Museum

In case you missed this being swept under the carpet www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Is it though? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

FT hasn’t caught up: its not a split in the left wing vote; its a growing popular realisation that Labour is not a left wing vote. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

TALKING IN SHOUTY APHORISMS IS … (complete as you feel applicable)

Anyone who has read the preface to Paul Holden’s ‘Fraud’ (on the tactics of MacSweeney and Labour Together) won’t be surprised by the strange coyness of the last two paragraphs of this shocking @theguardian.com story www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

If anyone has time on their hands, take a look at this: a visualisation of the Epstein network (people and corporate/state/media entities) with relevant documentation and events. Mind boggling. Helps to pick an individual (try Tony Blair) and a single topic/tag. epsteinvisualizer.com?utm_source=c...

Hero www.ft.com/content/c30d...

I have asked the BBC to scrutinise + correct the factually inaccurate claims made by Mr Nigel Farage about why net migration fell in 'Political Thinking with Nick Robinson' Here is the link if you want to do something like this. www.bbc.co.uk/contact/comp...

Amitav Ghosh in 2016 identified: "...an ever-growing divergence between a public sphere of political performance and the realm of actual governance: the latter is now controlled by largely invisible establishments that are guided by imperatives of their own...

The fact Wes Streeting was warned by his own officials that the toxicity of Palantir made the contract less likely to succeed raises, yet again, the question why Government granted it the contract in the first place?

'In a subsequent appearance before the Commons, Media, Culture and Sport Committee, [Robbie] Gibb called [Chris] Mason “the unsung hero of covering politics” and said he was “absolutely first rate”. Sign here ...

An interesting take on great and middling power alignments and strategies. It ignores huge questions such as tech billionairism and corporate oil interests (as if they have no influence in Europe) but puts former empires and their capabilities in a new perspective. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Guardian sub misses open goal for biblical flood reference www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Climate change impacts cultural memory: "Perched on the edge of the mudflow, the Biblioteca Marsiano, a public library, hangs over the void. Its basement holds more than 4,000 rare and historically valuable books.... www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

👉 NEW VIDEO -- Kneecap manager Daniel Lambert's explosive speech on the Israel lobby, music industry and BBC, at the @declassifieduk.org summit. Watch here 👇 www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OJB...

“David Lammy … has sought to distance himself from the scandal; friends of his told the Sunday Telegraph that he had not been in favour of the [Mandleson] appointment. That is at odds with an FT report in September 2024, which described how Lammy had swung his support behind the former cabinet sec,

The Observer on the nightmare facing Labour's neo liberals: "Some senior party figures worry that Labour will learn the wrong lessons from the Mandelson affair. They are concerned that instead of seeing his egregious behaviour as the actions of a deeply flawed individual ...

Lillywhite @thetimes.com has had to pull those inverted commas out of the draw again -- it's just not sure whether depicting the Obamas as monkeys is racism or 'racism'.

Whoops!

By replacing the words 'No10' or 'Downing Street' with the words 'Morgan MacSweeney', this story becomes more credible www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I bought 'The Observer' today because I was missing newspapers. It weighs a kilogram or so and has 158 pages in 4 (I think) sections, perhaps 8 pages of which interest me. What a waste! I felt like a spendthrift, a wastrel. Whatever happened to the idea of editing? - a reductive process. Never again

Two photographs of the telegraph office in Governor's House Madras in 1918. They illustrate a world in which the Governor's autonomy had evaporated and external grip was asserted by London. Telegraphy & telephony had transformed the levers of imperial government. eaho.substack.com/p/a-peek-ins...

Thinking of the BBC's promotion of Farage on Question Time and its camouflage of Matthew Goodwin as an independent 'Author and Academic', the mind inevitably turns to the malign influence of Robbie Gibb. Here's @arusbridger.bsky.social on that subject: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Articles on Matt Goodwin concur he is characterised by extreme impatience, vacillation and delusion, resulting in a notable (ie. well under 50%) ability to predict the future. His background can be described as 'academic' but only if prefixed by 'failed'; and 'BBC fugazi' (look it up) will do too.

Two closely observed photographs of the telegraph room at Governor’s House in Madras in 1918, revealing the information technologies underpinning imperial rule. Outside in the city, food riots proved that technocratic efficiency was neither omnipotent nor immovable. eaho.substack.com/publish/post...

Here’s a short distillation of Britain’s Indian Empire in two photograph’s of the telegraph and telephone room at Governor’s House, Madras, taken shortly before the end of WW1 in November 1918. eaho.substack.com/p/a-peek-ins...

It demonstrates an Edwardian fusion of techno-orientalism: efficient, but neither omnipotent nor immovable. At the time the pictures were taken a flu epidemic, food rioting and looting had broken out in the city - both indirect consequences of war, laissez faire trade policy and railways.

An opportunity to deliver a core workstream in a national programme to help UK museums, libraries, archives and galleries to enable their collections to become part of a unified digital research infrastructure. N-RICH is seeking high quality bids from interested parties for this AHRC-funded work.

Here’s a short distillation of Britain’s Indian Empire in two photograph’s of the telegraph and telephone room at Governor’s House, Madras, taken shortly before the end of WW1 in November 1918. eaho.substack.com/p/a-peek-ins...

And more. What are those inverted commas doing, exactly ?

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An opportunity to deliver a core workstream in a national programme to help UK museums, libraries, archives and galleries to enable their collections to become part of a unified digital research infrastructure for cultural heritage. N-RICH is seeking high quality bids from interested parties.