Stoppard's interest in philosophy was long-standing - it is now on the record that he attended evening classes on the subject while a working journalist in Bristol, from Prof. Stephan Körner (a surname he would use as Kerner when he needed a last minute replacement in Hapgood).

Read "Stoppard's Philosophical Investigations ; Or, Wittgenstein's Dogg's Hamlet" by @drfergusedwards.bsky.social It's available in the April 2023 issue of Philosophy and Literature via @projectmuse.bsky.social muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

To celebrate the life and legacy of Tom Stoppard, read "Wittgenstein: Stoppard’s Muse" by Fergus Edwards @drfergusedwards.bsky.social in issue 154: philosophynow.org/issues/154/W...

Sharing enthusiasm for Stoppard's work with @helenshield.bsky.social, here, from 1:55:45 www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Looking forward to talking to @helenshield.bsky.social about Stoppard's life and work, tonight on ABC Hobart - probably around 20:30... 🎭

Privileged to write about what mattered to Stoppard, for @aunz.theconversation.com theconversation.com/its-wanting-...

One of the best interviews with Stoppard is here @parisreview.bsky.social , featuring his favorite curtain lines: STOPPARD “The son of a bitch stole my watch” [from The Front Page]—I quote from memory—and “You that way; we this way” [from Love’s Labour’s Lost].

For a more detailed look at Stoppard, Wittgenstein, and performative linguistics, this is in 'Philosophy and Literature' 47.1: "Stoppard's 'Philosophical Investigations'; or, Wittgenstein's 'Dogg's Hamlet'" muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

For those who want to know more about philosophy in Stoppard: "Wittgenstein: Stoppard's Muse" is in the Feb 2023 edition of @philosophynow.bsky.social

Stoppard has died at 88. The Brantley and Billington obituaries are the most notable so far; appreciative of the man and generously acknowledging their gradual reassessment of the philosophical and emotional content of his work. Of which there is much more yet to be said. Vale.

Just out. I've written a major report (with David Edgar) looking at the effect of Covid on British Theatre. You can download it here: www.britishtheatreconsortium.co.uk/britishtheat...

Published next Monday with a beautiful introduction by Dan Rebellato that makes me teary and blush @nationaltheatre.org.uk @methuendrama.bsky.social @danrebellato.bsky.social

Finn: Is this the appeal of ultrarunning? To push ourselves to a place where we stand face to face with the devil, but then to rise up to overcome it? Jennings: laughs, calls it an interesting theory. For her there is something else. Only Caitriona is right... www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/n...

Tom Ford on Evelyn Araluen's new book The Rot theconversation.com/grim-funny-a...

Yep, you're all getting 'The Rot' by @evelynaraluen.bsky.social for Christmas and there *will* be a test...

Harms done to people of the palawa and pakana when recognising genocide is elided with an assumed extinction are sensitively introduced in @lrb.co.uk But: part of that harm is forgetting lutrawita and the palawa and pakana, and only using Tasmania and Tasmanians... www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

News report on our Read, Write, Publish day yesterday!

Really enjoyed watching the third year show from @utas.edu.au's Theatre & Performance students this afternoon... 🎭 ...thankyou Adrian, Anna, Autumn, Brooke, Laree, and Megan, and everyone involved!

And we're down to the final runner! 🇦🇺 Phil Gore He starts loop 114 alone and looking SO FRESH - if he makes it back within an hour he wins - but as last person standing he won't have a shot at his world record... 🇧🇪 Awesome Ivo Steyart finishes loop 113 and "refuses to continue" #bigdogultra

And we're down to the final two! 🇦🇺 Phil Gore 🇧🇪 Ivo Steyart After 112 continuous loops - 4 days and 16 hours, 751.027km - they're out on loop 113...! 🇺🇸 Harvey Lewis timed out after a fantastic 111 loops to place third (not finish third: technically no-one ever finishes a backyard...) #bigdogultra

It's 🇬🇧 Sarah Perry's world record 🥳... ... but maybe don't tell her? She's got a shot at the whole thing: 11 set out on loop 93, the world record is 119... #bigdogultra (96 'yards' will be 96 hours and 400miles: 4 days of 4.167miles every single hour) 🇺🇸 Megan Eckhert made an awesome 92 laps

The race isn't over, but the womens's world record has just gone... 🇬🇧 Sarah Perry 🇺🇸 Megan Eckart ... are both through 88 'yards' (590km) - one yard an hour, every hour - as it looks like 14 athletes are still standing at the #bigdogultra 🥳

Syllabus! A unit on home, empire, and the unheimlich. Texts from Victor Séjour, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Alice Perrin, Marcus Clarke, Rabindranath Tagore, Lettice Galbraith, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and more ...

Phenomenal 24hr Running World Championship yesterday Two women beat the previous world record... + Australia's Holly Ranson 273.058km ...and the new world record holder: + Great Britain's Sarah Webster 277.559km 🥳 www.irunfar.com/great-britai...

Travelling from Tasmania to see Indian Ink at the Hampstead Theatre in December! (Conveniently can see family at the same time) The @leslietravers.bsky.social staging will be unusually relevant for a Stoppard; neither the radically determined set of a Jumpers nor the freedom of a Rosencrantz...

Love writing? Curious about how to get published? Teaching creative writing? Come join a vibrant community of writers at Read, Write, Publish: Hobart on Monday 27th October! www.facebook.com/share/19hBVu... @utas.edu.au

The (idiosyncratic) Nobel Prize for Literature is announced tomorrow One Australian has the best the odds (Gerald Murnane), another (Alexis Wright) is seen as a genuine possibility (FWIW, if it's Tom Stoppard I'm here for all your media inquiries... 🤓) lithub.com/here-are-the...

2nd at the Coastal Pathway 64km (5h12) (and a 50km PB (4h) en route) 🥳 Wonderful crew, good running weather, lovely day out all round Now for a nap and all the food

Running the first Coastal Pathway 64km Ultra on Sunday 🏃‍♂️ Latrobe -> Ulverstone -> Latrobe Hoping for dry(ish) and still(ish) 🌦️ As always, it will be hardest on the (wonderful) crew...😬

Looking forward to chatting about Kate Kruimink's novel 'Heartsease' with @helenshield.bsky.social on ABC Hobart, tonight at 21:15 2025 Tasmanian Premier's Prize for Fiction Winner, with, among other things, a fair bit of middle-class Hobart in it...

"You can be an academic badass and a track goddess" BA in English (Cam) *and* 200m silver medallist (22.14s) at the World Athletics Championships If you need a sporting role model, you could do a lot worse than Amy Hunt... www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/s...

This was a joy to listen to - intelligent, humble, informed, and, unexpectedly, intensely moving. I cannot imagine a better case being made for King Lear. Thankyou Douglas Schatz, Mark Lawson, and Michael Billington 🎭 open.spotify.com/episode/4od4...

Teaching HEN319: Literary Cultures @utasenglish.bsky.social, and the treatment of Meanjin is an obscene paragon of what we're studying www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/08/m...

Grateful for @jamesley's most recent SRB piece. The key (the call to arms is elsewhere): Neo-liberalism's "transference of the emancipatory language of rights and freedoms to capital makes the rights and freedoms of actual people secondary and conditional." sydneyreviewofbooks.com/reviews/bast...

Enjoyed Diana Souhami chatting Bryher, Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, and alternative titles for her book: 'No Modernism Without Women Who Had Special Relationships With Other Women That They May Not Have Known How To Define' or 'Lesbians Galore!' open.spotify.com/episode/4qF7...

A pleasure to chat with @helenshield.bsky.social about Zadie Smith's 'The Fraud' - historical fiction that begins with a floor of a house collapsing under the weight of its books. 📚📚📚📚📚 Arguably a consummation devoutly to be wished... Here, from 2:27:30 www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

The launch of a new Tasmanian publisher (Evercreech Editions) and a new Tasmanian novel (My Heart at Evening, by Konrad Muller), on August 7 at Fullers. Launched by Geordie Williamson, Adam Ouston and Richard Flanagan. www.fullersbookshop.com.au/event/my-hea...

Repeal the “inequitable, “pernicious,” and “perverse" Jobs Ready Graduate Policy! openpetition.org/!repealjrg

24 hours in Melbourne: Sport (2/2) Lions! Wallabies! MCG! (Rugby Union!) A game that I suspect many more than 90,000 might claim to have attended...

24 hours in Melbourne: Literature (1/2) Homer! Virgil! Bookshops! Library!

There is a cloud over Launceston this morning.

Work in libraries? Tell me a bit about your experiences with library work and mental health (as well as your perceptions of them). Anonymous survey running through August 1. Details in the form for more info.

Chatted about Adam Ouston's 'Waypoints' - and reading it in a glass box in Hobart... 🛩️ The conversation's here, from 02:28:30 www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Sam Jinks - Mortal Reflections - at Launceston's QVMAG. Life size, hyperreal sculpture; intensely moving.

New equity in teaching survey is dropping as part of our ACSES-supported project, "Supporting academics with inclusive & equitable curricula, teaching and learning"!

Just published an article about WritersBLOCK/ReadersBLOCK, written with the project's instigator, Dr Lucy Christopher @utas.edu.au - it's here @aunz.theconversation.com theconversation.com/we-spent-a-m...

"WRITE ABOUT THE THINGS OF THE WORLD WITH NO GLAZING" Lockwood -brilliantly- identifies the specific value of reading Plath's collected prose alongside the journals and the poetry, saying something important about her work that we didn't see before. If Plath matters to you (too), read this.

Western States has started! Weather looks consistent with records...🤞 Kudos to the livestream for gender equal coverage. Love our sport.

If I'm back with Stoppard, then, in my case, it's also time to go back to Wittgenstein... ...though, in this case, it's not only Ludwig

Returning to Stoppard, and 'Brazil' (1985) couldn't be more timely. Newly learned that the final shot - the torture chamber - is, in fact, Croydon.