I think this is BBC writing in general. Will Gompertz used to write reviews that dripped with contempt for the reader.

*Sniffs top of shower gel bottle* "Oh yeah. That's really good sauce"

I think the only fair exchange is that we let the Greeks make a movie about the Founding Fathers, filmed in Greece with an all Greek cast, and also George Washington wears doublet and hose, and drives a steam train around, and the British Army all wear pith helmets.

A state of the nation tale: a publisher won't accept my slim volume of verse about parsnips

It's striking how much more fun this list is than the guardian one. Romance, horror, adventure.

Me doing 'how many of these 100 novels have you read' things in the papers

"A typical clown of the Western 'buffoon' tradition" sounds like something Chinese netizens would call Joe Biden

I don't think there's a better feeling than finally fixing a slow draining kitchen sink. I stood for two full minutes watching in wonder the water run down.

The only criticism I have of the opening segment of Master of the Senate is that Caro takes at face value the founder's claim that the Senate was based on classical Republics, when it was transparently a way to shoehorn a House of Lords into a supposedly egalitarian constitution

Bring these things back en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuphar

So much lit crit is still in thrall to a moralistic 20thc orthodoxy that short words and simple sentences are somehow more "serious"; florid writing isn't inherently a fault, just a different taste and personally I prefer my food rich, my cities ancient, and my prose Byzantine.

Anthony Trollope never mentions a Georgian house without commenting on how ugly buildings from that era are. It's so interesting because for modern readers the stately homes are part of the romance, but to Trollope the characters are squabbling over the equivalent of Chigwell mcmansions.

I would like to see the little mushroom men

Glad to see someone is still fighting the good fight on Lavender Hill, which is not, never has been, and never will be in Clapham

Train journey to town with the beloved to go see The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and onto drinks party with auld pals means 2 hours with @thefence.bsky.social and the joy of a @williamasclarke.bsky.social quiz

If I can give you only one piece of advice, I would say don't leave a tube of hydrocortisone cream on your desk right next to a tube of superglue

I'm a frozen turkey truther. These fires are all caused by too much oil, which is being displaced and spilling onto the open flame. They would ignite whether or not the turkey was frozen!

Shorn by the WeWork barber

Racehorses used to be beloved celebrities. Secretariat, Red Rum, Shergar. Sadly, young people these days are more interested in twitch streamers than the athletic achievements of a massive terrified mammal with exercise-induced rhabdomyolysis.

Interesting subgenre: photos of soda jerks where they look like the Devil in a Twilight Zone episode about a man selling his soul for an ice cream sundae

Issue 26 is here 📸 With a cover from @daveyjones.bsky.social and work from Tamlin Magee, @garyiship.bsky.social, Ella Benson Easton, @williamasclarke.bsky.social, Zara Meerza, Antonia Bentel, @jimmymcintosh.bsky.social & more www.the-fence.com/shop/

This is better than nothing, but the older I get the more I realise that drinking after midnight is a fools game. What we need instead is for pubs to open earlier. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Good take. Just answer the phone. It could be something interesting.

Apologies for being a joyless intellectual snob, but what these discussions reveal is that most people think about food, and especially the food of foreign countries and cultures, in an incredibly shallow way.

Thank goodness my dishwasher beeps when it's done. I hate to think what would happen if I didn't remember, and left my clean dishes in it overnight.

I hope whoever replaces Bragg on In Our Time focuses on what really made the programme great. Yelling at nerds.

Really happy with how this illustration turned out. Would be even happier if you took the chance to subscribe to the mag!

I'm noticing a lot of performative men ostentatiously reading Sorrows of Young Werther, dressing in blue frock coats and yellow trousers, and shooting themselves with pistols borrowed from their love-rivals

R/moths is generally a pretty laid back subreddit, but every so often someone posts a picture of a spotted lanternfly, and all hell breaks loose

I'm as anti-AI as they come, but I do think this sort of thing can best be explained by the fact that, almost by definition, a small portion of the population is always going to be making very strange choices.

My copy arrived today, and I must say it's already drinking very well

There's an absolute glut of early sloes this year, and I can't find a recipe to make them into booze because Kier Starmer's firewall blocks the winemaking subreddit

The Pub Is Finally Open! With writing from @seamas.bsky.social, @roisinlanigan.bsky.social, @anakinsella.bsky.social, @jimmymcintosh.bsky.social, @charlotteivers.bsky.social, John Banville and @vizcomic.bsky.social. Available at all bookstores & the link below 🍺 www.penguin.co.uk/books/462310...

I would like a restaurant that only sells elaborate aspics. A hushed, cool, dimly lit, dining room. Solemn, sacerdotal waiters. Every dish comes suspended in a block of pellucid jelly.

In conclusion, Zambia is a land of contrasts

Nobody travels to China disguised as a Nestorian monk on a mission to steal silkworms for the Byzantine Emperor any more.

It's incredibly perverse that Dorothy L Sayers wrote 11 Lord Peter Wimsey novels that contain not a hint of the supernatural until the last chapter of the last book, in which it is established that ghosts exist, and have regularly been seen by title character.

I always found Beadle a compelling and sinister figure. I was delighted to learn about his arcane library, scattered and ransacked like the Mortlake collection of John Dee.

My colleague in Australia is off sick because he was bitten by a poisonous spider. Ridiculous country. It must be like living in a platform game.

Queen Anne was a 17th century monarch, and I won't be discussing this further.

If I ran a restaurant I would only take reservation by phone. Not because of bots, I just think you would get a better class of customer that way.

Personally, I prefer a nice long conclave

I wonder what the booze situation is like at the Conclave? I reckon a glass or two of light red with lunch, then you get a pretty free run at the drink over dinner, but no digestifs.

The papaya, or "fool's mango"

Due to a mishearing, I have spent the last few weeks telling people that the new Minecraft film is the directorial debut of Jared Harris

It's interesting how "drinks party" implies elegance, but a "drinking party" sounds grotesque and depraved.

Get in on this

I said 'hop in'

Frantically googling sugar beet, carob and chicory root companies, to position my portfolio for the new era of deglobalisation