Heads-up for #crossword types (and the crossword-adjacent). I'll be relaunching this in 2026, so maybe start thinking ahead: these make fantastic birthday, anniversary or new-baby gifts. Feedback on my Christmas puzzles included "awesome", "fantastic" and (my favourite) "you're so clever".

I enjoyed this thread so much I now want to listen to the record, which frankly I hadn't heard of. There's so much old music that's new to me, I rarely bother with new new music these days.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! For 2026, History Book Club meetings will take place bimonthly. Our first two books are... - NONFICTION – The Wrath to Come by Sarah Churchwell - FICTION – The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller Sign up here: histfest.org/history-book... 📚

This new US TV adaptation of Maigret sounds dreadful. Cliché after cliché.

Right, The Internet, tell me how your country translated these little buddies' names. 'Tommy & the Tiger' in Norwegian (♥️), 'Lassi & Leevi' in Finnish. It's 'Casper & Hobbes' in Dutch (amused that 'Calvin' was too foreign, but Hobbes wasn't...). What's yours? More alliterations? Any puns?

Second anniversary of our Apple TV’s spectacular attempt to understand me asking for “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas”

"Lucid, profound and moving, it is his best book." Many thanks to @mathewlyons.bsky.social for including Upon A White Horse in the Engelsberg Ideas Books of 2025. It's an honour to appear in this list of excellent works. engelsbergideas.com/reviews/book...

I'd be most grateful if anyone in possession of a field guide to British birds from the 1950s/1960s could provide me with a photo of the relevant page featuring the turtle dove, along with the bibliographical reference. In return, I'm happy to make a Christmas donation to a charity of your choice.

Another great article on the catastrophe that has been the last fifteen years of management at the British Library.

The vanity, ignorance and tedious predictability of these kinds of projects is shameful. Of course, 'Animal Farm, but by Beavis and Butthead' is also wrong. But at least it has the virtue of surprise.

Slightly bemused by comments I'm seeing in my timeline suggesting that bringing in a film at 90 minutes is a sign of genius, as opposed to competence.

Why not turn Christmastide into a thirteen-day Bach celebration, experiencing the Christmas Oratorio as it was first performed across Leipzig’s feast days in 1734–35? The wonders of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio | Elisabeth Braw engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

“I wish to God you could pay more money.” I wrote about F Scott Fitzgerald’s Christmas wish, and how his difficult final year led him to produce some of his best work: the irresistible, cynical, revealing and very funny Pat Hobby stories.

The last Writer’s Bookshelf of the year this morning: eight questions about writers, books, and reading with the great Sarah Gristwood!

Erik Satie predicts:

On the loom of winter, shadows gather in a web; then the shuttle of St. Lucy makes a pause; a dark weave fills the room… —George Mackay Brown, “Maeshowe: Midwinter” in FOLLOWING A LARK (John Murray, 1996) #poem #poetry #Orkney #archaeology #prehistory 5/5

Happy #solstice! 10th-c. monk/scholar Aelfric reminds us that the winter solstice heralds spring: "...but when [the sun] turns [northward] again, it drives away the winter chill with its hot rays." (British Library Cotton MS Caligula A XV f. 146r) #MedievalSky

Some weekend reading from me: a round-up of all my writing this year. (With a half-price subscription offer at the end!) open.substack.com/pub/mathewly...

This is a terrific end-of-year reading list! I'm particularly interested in the Selznick book. I hadn't heard of that.

Some weekend reading from me: a round-up of all my writing this year. (With a half-price subscription offer at the end!) open.substack.com/pub/mathewly...

A round-up of everything I’ve written in 2025! open.substack.com/pub/mathewly...

Still shopping? BUY MY BOOKS. Buy this one for anyone who likes the world and was once a kid. www.hive.co.uk/Product/Rich...

Hard no to this: French publisher Harlequin has told translators that their work will now be done by AI. They can ‘revise’ AI translations at much lower rate. It’s a subsidiary of Harper Collins so treat this as a test for rollout elsewhere

This doesn't sound good: www.thebookseller.com/news/waterst... (And it's already terrifying that such an important asset to the UK economy, cultural soft power and to generally making life better is owned by a US hedge-fund.)

A round-up of everything I’ve written in 2025! open.substack.com/pub/mathewly...

Christmas isn't Christmas without…

For the first time Margaret Beaufort is featuring in this years online conference. So #teachers & #students, do sign up! It’s a fantastic resource.

The poet's breakthrough collection, The Less Deceived, anticipated the sexual freedoms of the 1960s while pre-emptively rejecting its promises. Philip Larkin’s arrival, undeceived | @jwikeley.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/phi...

This is really poor. Apart from anything else, why are Books Etc selling uncut US copies into the UK market? Can you advise @yalebooks.bsky.social?

Some lunchtime reading, part two.

Some lunchtime reading, part one.

Hey all you Hastings/St Leonards heads and Sussex Syd people. I'm making a 600 mile round trip to do this gig. Drop by and say hello. dice.fm/event/k6nm58...

My favourite Kipling story is An Habitation Enforced, about a rich American forced by illness to stay on an English country estate, and ends up embracing the seemingly inefficient relationships that keep the estate going for the long term. Beautiful end line…

My Spectator review of Elizabeth Goldring's exemplary new scholarly biography of Hans Holbein is now up on the Broken Compass.

Who went bra shopping with John Berger? Whose childhood routine involved visits from the snake charmer? Who disliked the “big, unfriendly giant” Roald Dahl? Was it the same person Dahl told to try children’s fiction because “the little bastards’d swallow it?” I read some memoirs by Booker winners:

In this week’s newsletter: how has public history changed since 1951? 📬 Sign up for Miscellanies at buff.ly/IiLJMDj, and we’ll send it to you on Thursday.

Really enjoyed this. Yes, Kipling was an old imperialist. But his work stays with you, all of it. And The Jungle Book mesmerised my childhood. As for the poetry, when I was in Norwich I helped host Alan Wearne, the Aussie poet. He gave me the impression of being quite the ocker. To break the ice, I

Very rarely does a post warrant all caps, but: SEARCHABLE INTERIM MANUSCRIPTS CATALOGUE. At long last! searcharchives.bl.uk

When I interviewed Spinal Tap and Marty DiBergi this summer, none of them broke character, for the whole hour. Except Rob Reiner, once, losing it when Michael McKean's David St Hubbins talked about minimalism. I didn't use this in the feature and hadn't published any audio, but this is joyful.

A chance discovery in a Tokyo library uncovered a medieval memoir by Lady Nijō, a glimpse into the tradition of female autobiography in Heian and Kamakura Japan. Confessions of a Japanese noblewoman | @katherineharvey.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/con...

🎄*TIME FOR THE BIG REVEAL*🎄 It’s Monday. The 15th. The ides of December. And that means that it’s time for the 2025 Bluesky Bubble Christmas Present. (¼)

New on the Writer’s Bookshelf: eight questions about writers, books, and reading with the incomparable Gerry Cambridge.

Mme Maigret, their marriage, their domestic certainties and comforts, is one of the great joys of the Maigret books.

Happy birthday to Jane Austen, and to this very on-brand Economist chart www.economist.com/christmas-sp...

This is the first of the extended editions of the Bootleg series I've bought. It does a fantastic job of showing Dylan growing into Dylan.

Some weekend reading from me. First, a wonderful edition of the Writer's Bookshelf with the great @cescapeacock.bsky.social mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-writer...

Great that Sylvia Townsend Warner will be a visible presence in Dorchester. I wrote about her early life here: akennedysmith.substack.com/p/sylvia-tow...

A brilliant book! Everyone should have a copy.

Some weekend reading from me. First, a wonderful edition of the Writer's Bookshelf with the great @cescapeacock.bsky.social mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-writer...