"When Alaric the Visigoth held Rome to ransom in 408 ad, he demanded, on top of gold, not silk but 3000 lbs of black pepper." www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

@wigmore-hall.org.uk hi loving this Partitas concert! Happy birthday! For your celebrations how about making the hall more comfortable for punters? The middle seats are veal crate tiny - so unless you get an aisle it’s not worth going.

@lner.co.uk any chance you. An get a message to Josh at York? I’ve been in a vestibule in this train from kx for three hours and am over 70. Wd love a seat! End of coach a.

@lner.co.uk hi where are the reservations? I’m on delayed 1103.

minack.com/whats-on/com.... Anyone in Cornwall grab a chance to see this!

Wonderful concert at kings place - Caroline Shaw and Andrew Yee. Such poise, calm, fire and talent.

France is mandating solar panels on every large commercial car park in the country — turning millions of square metres of idle asphalt into one of Europe's most productive clean energy assets. I have been mentioning this for months - they are shooting up on all the supermarket car parks.

👀 Excellent, funded PhD ... someone's going to be busy! "...combining archaeological excavation of targeted heritage features, palaeoecological studies to establish long-term ecological heritage & investigating intangible heritage of folk customs & traditions [+] Advanced digital visualisation..."

'Night Flats', Camberwell (c.1967) by David Hepher (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art)

🎉Happy birthday to Julia Maesa — a formidable political strategist & one of the most influential women in #Roman imperial politics! Elder sister of Julia Domna, sister-in-law to Septimius Severus, aunt to Caracalla & Geta, & grandmother to two emperors: Elagabalus & Severus Alexander.

Please help get our campaign message out.

Pleased with myself! Hemmed in by a massive 4 by 4 and unable to get into drivers seat of my car, couldn’t inch over from passenger seat as two new knees not up to it, had brainy wheeze to corral a kind man, released handbrake and he pushed. Result! Home in time for Repair shop.

@tommckinney.bsky.social viz paperback / hardback paperbacks always! Apart from heavy reference works there’s no Need for hbs. They don’t sell. Paperbacks nowadays are beautiful light pocketable - see Daunt/Fitzcarraldo/ Persephone etc.

The deity that is Anohni. #barbican

Only a fallen society needs this sign

Genuinely one of the coolest things I've ever seen a cultural venue post

Happy Easter! Life imitating art. Fresco of dish of eggs from the Praedia of Julia Felix, #Pompeii and an exhibit of eggs that astonishingly survived the AD 79 eruption in Herculaneum. 🥚🥚🥚

@boatmancryptics.co.uk three-quarters done! And I dreamt one answer …(r***** c*****). Phew!

Finishing Glorious Exploits. Can’t bear to. What a 📕!

A super-rare Sherlock Holmes novel just raised £11,000 for Oxfam 📚 It sold at auction with first editions of “Pride and Prejudice” and "A Clockwork Orange,” and a copy of “Stride Toward Freedom” signed by Martin Luther King Jr. himself. All proceeds from the sale went to Oxfam 💫 #FoundInOxfam

@georgiamann.bsky.social I’m with the chap you just quoted. Went to a come and sing at the German church Knightsbridge lately. Mind blowing ! And the choir director is doing SJP at St Giles cripple gate this fri evening. A must.

Keir Starmer has dragged the UK into this war against our will. UK bases face further attacks - putting military personnel and civilians in the potential line of fire. This is a Prime Minister who promised a vote before any military action - that must now happen on Monday.

This is absolutely brilliant. Instigated by Gordon Brown, delivered today. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

@willnorman.co.uk Hey just saw I won’t be able to take my e-bike on the overground anymore. Fair enough. Please can you in return attend to the bicycle boxes on the roads and make them motorbike free? Then it’ll be safer all round and my extended ride won’t seem so scary.

Painting created c.1967, by Muriel Lewis, in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital, where she was compelled to live. Her illustrative work features faceless figures & depicts life inside & outside the psychiatric system; including Surrey villages, romantic trysts & scenes from home & her past

Wanted: resourceful knitters to live crofting dream on Fair Isle

Wishing a very Happy Mother’s Day to all the incredible mums, grandmothers and mother‑figures across London. Your care and dedication keep our families and communities strong.

Tenías self-propelled almond harvester.

Early worrying indications that Chris Mason will be trying to make "tranche" happen today

@georgiamann we used sing duermete Nina in our little ‘world music’ group called The Bordurian Working Women’s Chorus. Also more gorgeous lullabies- there are a lot of Nanitas to different tunes - Spanish lullabies- any of those would be lovely to hear.

@eurostarjustin.bsky.social hi Justin! Can’t find a general eurostar @ so writing to you.. this train to Paris (8 am from kxsp) has filthy loos and nonavigo passes…maybe pass it on?

@tommckinney.bsky.social good to have you back! Everyone bewailing end of WOlympics but aren’t the Winter Paras happening next week? Often much better.

Hope to get my dad to take me to Clapham Junction one day.

@tommckinney Richard Stokes was our French and German teacher at school - excellent and a nice man. He ran Liederabends then too.

The people of Minneapolis have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The first time a city's population has ever been nominated. www.newsweek.com/minneapolis-...

NEW: Carney nails it. We have to stop pretending. Read this to understand the deep & dark hinterland behind the speech & why Vaclav Havel’s concept of ‘living in truth’ is the guide we need right now 1/

A brilliant speech by Canada's Mark Carney in Davos: "The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy...The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home & to act together."

The Gendered Experience of ECT: Insights From a Global Survey | Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psyc...

Poplar trees with evening sky Albert Steiner, 1920s

Not sure why my phone has passively aggressively sent me this message, it sounds like something you'd say to a drunk ambassador.

Astronomical #winter starts today. It's the shortest day of the year in terms of daylight with the sun starting to set later each day until Summer Solstice. The mosaic depicts the dancing Genii (protective spirits) of the four seasons. The Genius of winter is wrapped in a heavy cloak.🧵1/2 #Solstice

These are bad times for the BBC: Trump is suing, its leaders have resigned, GB News snaps at its heels. In our winter issue, @aiannucci.bsky.social, @lewisgoodall.com, @sophiasgaler.bsky.social and others suggest how it could change.

Three failed Xmas fruit cakes and I’m off to buy an Xmas Colin the 🐛 instead.

@tommckinney.bsky.social my favourite ‘Christmas’ song is Tchaikovsky s Crown of Roses. Sad, haunting, certainly not jolly, seeing the bleak future for Jesus.

@petroc.bsky.social oddly as you played Les Tricoteuses yesterday I was driving over Hampstead Heath on the way back from Yarn Club at work.

In #winter 2018, Icelandic photographer Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir wanted to show her partner, who was away in the capital, how much it had snowed overnight at their home and posted a photo of herself on FB #womensart

@tommckinney.bsky.social my music of the year was Caroline Shaws The Swallow sung at a Dunedin consort @dunedinconsort weekend in Stirling. I still try and sing it with friends. Quite hard…