For anyone who doesn't remember the human Barbara Cartland www.theguardian.com/news/2013/ja...

File under super-creepy www.thebookseller.com/news/bolinda...

Today marks the 490th anniversary of Anne Boleyn’s execution. Her fate may seem far removed, but the deeper I delved for my book Divide and Rule, the better I understood her fierce relevance and the cold comfort in her fate. Henry VIII tried to erase her. He succeeded in making her indelible.

Once at a gig after-party, I was chatting with a group of teenagers, the children of band members, when a man lurched over and propositioned me. I detached his wandering hands and told him to eff off. Later he returned to offer me the following apology: “I’m sorry. I thought you were the nanny”.

An instant poem

If you get the opportunity to see the play 1536, no matter how tired you are or busy or tricky the logistics, GO! This standing ovation gives a only a small sense of how powerful the play and performances and staging are.

I have likely missed the serious discourse on this. I'm a big fan of Jess Philips, but the technology does not exist to stop children taking naked pictures of themselves. Or, in so far as it does, the technology is "not letting children have cameras".

I understand the narrative that says people have turned on Starmer because of negative press coverage. There’s some truth in that and the odds were also stacked against him by surging populism. BUT…

A glimpse of materials that will form part of the Andy Gill collection to be housed at the British Pop Archive in Manchester so that researchers can access it easily now and after I’m gone (no immediate plans). The collection spans Andy’s work with Gang of Four & other bands and musicians 💔

From bad to verse Havering didn’t live up to its name What a shame

As if to underscore this point, two people are stopping voters outside my local polling station to ask for their details, and one of them represents a fascist party

Seldom has it been easier to know who *not* to vote for. Which makes it harder to know who to vote for.

Several of you asked to see the recording of the discussion I moderated on AI and writing with a panel including brilliant novelist Winnie Li, Killing Eve author Luke Jennings and tech writer and broadcaster Jamie Bartlett. Here it is www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqDm... It's lo-fi so volume up.

BBC Today programme: Critics say art should be separated from politics. Anish Kapoor: They’re wrong. 👏👏👏

Wonderful to see @thenerve.news doing so well and having the enormous good sense to hire @sangitamyska.bsky.social pressgazette.co.uk/the-wire/med...

Nice. Man speeding the wrong way down a one-way street on one of those motorised bikes with chunky wheels just nearly knocked me over and then paused, not to say sorry but to mime shooting me

Time for me to suggest Dawkins should have read me and the fantastic Murray Shanahan on Claude's existential outputs ;D arxiv.org/abs/2411.13223

A sceptical fellow called Dawkins Against god delusions did squawk. In Time he met Claude And said Oh my gawd This machine god really is rocking Of course this earned Dawkins a mocking And suggestions he should put a sock in For the god he did hail Offered merely a pale Imitation of Dawkins atalking

“Those who say all critics of Israel are antisemitic mirror those who say all Jews are racist. Rightwing politicians who make accusations of antisemitism have agendas that sit far beyond the safety of Jews.” @evawiseman.bsky.social observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Spoiler: doubt it. There are no verified portraits of Anne Boleyn apart from a damaged coin. This study used facial recognition tech (what could go wrong?). Um. Short🧵 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Lest you doubted the world is regressing. “The 20 most common first names for candidates in local elections …are all male bar one…Voters are nearly four times as likely to be able to vote for a David as they are for a Sarah” www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

So many women displayed in the Leopold Museum but so few by women. The doll was made by a woman, Hermine Moos, but to the creepy instructions of Oskar Kokoschka, to look like his ex-lover, Alma Mahler.

Telling you where we were without telling you where we were

“Peace for our time”

A year without my mother though recent odd phenomena include messages from her being redelivered. My theory is that she’s bored with being dead. Here’s one of my favourite photos of her, in her eighties, at Andy’s Neve, wearing leather trousers and her trademark grin. Not forgotten. Maybe not gone.

To mark her centenary today, here are two of my beloved’s encounters with Queen Elizabeth II.

What is this? (Wrong answers only)

Because I was thinking about the #londonhasfallen meme yesterday - my instant poem of the day. #instantpoem #bunhillrow #lovelylondon

London has truly fallen. Marauding hordes of tweed-clad cyclists, some on penny farthings, are having a good time in Lincoln’s Inn Fields #londonhasfallen

Chapeau to @pippacrerar.bsky.social for the Mandelson-Starmer story. But also, no matter whether the PM knew about the failed vetting or not, the appointment was as cynical as sending a former prince bumbling around the world for Britain

Thanks to Winnie Li, Jamie Bartlett & Luke Jennings for helping to illuminate the complexities around AI & writing. Conversation ranged from the creative origins of their own work inc Winnie’s magnificent novel What We left Unsaid and Luke’s Killing Eve series to the writing process of #ChatGPT

Was intending to post about the ridiculous Allbirds news but then BlueSky went down and I started thinking how ridiculous it is to post on a tech platform about the ridiculousness of our faith in tech

There are multiple contenders for Maddest Story of the Week but this one must have a pretty good chance of trotting into the winner’s enclosure www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Interviewed by 60 Minutes for their documentary about the man formerly known as Prince Andrew. Here’s a clip. The full programme is now on YouTube youtu.be/ZqfIUb2dcuI #royals #andrewmountbattenwindsor #60minutes #documentary

The Olivier Awards just paid tribute to my mother who died last year and I am undone

The world is in chaos and so is Wordle. 1,756 is taking the mickey ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 ⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜ ⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I missed my tube stop today for possibly the most ridiculous reason in the history of ridiculous reasons for missing tube stops. I was writing a poem on my phone.

A favourite seasonal photo of Andy to kick off the long weekend #AndyGill #GangofFour

Buckingham Palace: "Their Majesties’ programme will celebrate the historic connections and the modern bilateral relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States"

Whodunnit? Is AI murdering human creativity in plain sight? Come to an event with Killing Eve author Luke Jennings, novelist Winnie M Li and bestselling writer Catherine Mayer to discuss this & other issues impacting writers, readers & the world of writing. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/human-writ...

And as the world stares into the abyss… www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Two men fighting on the street just now. An everyday scene and so too the misogynistic insults they are trading, calling each other little bs and both threatening to sexually assault the other’s mother. And still media routinely invite me to debate whether feminism has gone too far

The future is already here in London. It is not only unevenly distributed but looks as dystopian as anything @greatdismal.bsky.social described

Please join me for this special Alternative Book Fair *Plus* event on Thursday, April 16th, at 6.30pm: Human Writes: Exploring the Challenges of Writing and Promoting Books in the Age of AI and Social Media. The panel includes acclaimed authors Winnie M. Li and Luke Jennings. 🧵

Stop scrolling and read this. Oh.

Last night I had a profound thought. Didn’t write it down. Damned if I remember what it was 🤣

Today’s instant poem, prompted by discussions with friends about the confluence of protests on March 28th.

Here's an illustration of how hard it is to correct mistakes once published. Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers wrote in his memoir that Andy Gill, producing the Chili's first album, wrote "shit" in his notes about a track. That story is repeated today in Mojo. But I have Andy's notebook 🧵

Good news for a change www.thebookseller.com/news/governm...

A different question is how many supporters would be surprised, or put off, by any of this. For me, the bigger media failure has been to mainstream and normalise populists and their toxic views