Quite right. Disgusting behaviour. Just waiting for Someone to say, 'These are great people, great people.' Ryder Cup MC apologises and steps down over foul-mouthed McIlroy chant www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/s...

'Perhaps surprisingly comic.' As if the blessed Virginia isn't actually very funny even in the course of her most serious novels, not to mention the diaries, etc. ‘A cottage of one’s own’: Newly unearthed Virginia Woolf stories to be published www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

Nathan Gill is no fringe politician. He was the leader of the Reform Party and before that UKIP in Wales. A Brexit Party MEP. A friend and ally of Nigel Farage, who in 2016 called him: "terrific," and "as honest as the day is long." This is a MASSIVE story www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Everything that's wrong with the US right now is reflected in the Ryder Cup crowds. Not just the constant inane chanting and the booing of European players, but the refusal to applaud even an outstanding European shot. It wasn't always so.

As Reform's Nathan Gill admits taking bribes from Russian 'secret service pawn' Oleg Voloshyn, here’s a nice photo of Nigel Farage with Voloshyn’s wife.

So I've just been watching the Ryder Cup, and I'm wondering what the etiquette is if you're an American golf fan and a Democrat. With the Donald’s golfing tips, surely the USA can’t fail to win this Ryder Cup bigly www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/s...

Reform's highest-profile politician in Wales spread a false cancer claim and recruited people into a multi-level marketing scheme. Before her current stint as an MS, Laura Anne Jones made wildly misleading and pseudoscientific claims to promote a business model in which...

Keir Starmer's aides are reportedly telling him not to go to the COP30 climate conference, because Reform would attack him for it. Yes, they might. And he should wear it as a badge of honour. Standing up for humanity, for science and a habitable planet. Where's the hazard in that?

The Book of Kells New research may rewrite origins of the Book of Kells, says academic www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

Spot on

Hurrah, just sent off an article on A Passage to India that I've been tweaking for weeks. Nice to have cut the knot.

It is good to know that Musk can push an Irish far right candidate hard on his pet social media network, and a whole country can just say absolutely not. Come on Brits, learn something.

Just stop with the messing about. Starmer has to go, and Burnham is the person to replace him. Anything else is blather. Can Keir survive? Inside the plot to bring down the prime minister www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

The US is on the brink of another era of political violence – and Donald Trump ‘couldn’t care less’ | Jonathan Freedland www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Phillocks nation.cymru/news/reform-...

I heard this bulletin. Mason seemed to me to be trying to make a joke of it, but if so it was exceptionally crass, and if not it was inexcusable. The BBC news department needs to be independently investigated on the issue of political impartiality.

Anyone else think it would be a good idea for Starmer to replace Mandelson with a career diplomat with a solid history of competence who'd rather read a good book than go to parties with the dodgy mega-rich?

"It is never my custom to use words lightly. If twenty-seven years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die." (Nelson Mandela, 14 July, 2000)

Justin Webb is the exemplar of the lack of impartiality that has come to disfigure BBC news reporting on the once fair and reliable Today programme.

'America is a gun'

Can we just stop turning the creation of excessive personal wealth into a grotesque competition? Larry Ellison dislodges Elon Musk as world’s richest person www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

My doubtless unpopular take: Eliot was a terrible reader of his own poetry.

Good question What is the endgame in this toxic immigration debate: is it friends and neighbours thrown out of the country? | Jonthan Liew www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Poodle of the Baskervilles

'You cannot be racist and Irish' (Imelda May) When I left India, Ireland welcomed me in. I won’t let bigotry destroy the country we love | Cauvery Madhavan www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

One of the better developments on the Beeb in recent years has been "BBC Verify", which does proper fact-checking & analysis. But this substantive analysis seems entirely divorced from its political commentary, which is entirely focused on "showbiz" & sports-punditry. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This. One by one, leaders learn that grovelling to Trump leads to disaster. When will it dawn on Starmer? | Simon Tisdall www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Quite apart from the fact that this is garbage, I see that Mr Free Speech "will not stand for" people teaching interpretations of the past that he doesn't agree with.

In the end, it was a no-Rayner.

'It's amazing what you can do with porridge.' Experience: I am the world porridge-making champion www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Warehousing asylum seekers?Are you serious, Home Secretary? Cooper suggests asylum seekers could be moved into warehouses instead of hotels – UK politics live www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

@samcoatessky.bsky.social hi Sam, this morning you stated “…the main opposition parties, the Cons and Reform UK…” Unless I missed 67 Parliamentary by-elections since July, the Lib Dems are very much the main opposition party with the Cons, not Reform. Do we have to keep doing this?

If there's just one issue Starmer should be decisive about, it's this. Keir Starmer’s legacy could be electoral reform – or Farage as prime minister | Polly Toynbee www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Taken at Camp Donald, Maryland

Good sense and kindness here Ordinary people outside hotels raging at ordinary people inside them: that’s the tragedy of this refugee controversy | Rowan Williams www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A new fascicle from one of the world's greatest lexicographical projects. Always a good day for scholarship!

Note the language in the Shropshire Star post: 'vandalised' with the "Love All, Stop Hate" message.

My wonderful colleague Lawrence Jones and I organised a symposium on Modernist Editing at Reading @cbcp-unirdg.bsky.social! We’ve got a DREAM lineup of leading scholars in textual scholarship, especially @greenbowlerhat.bsky.social! And we have a few travel bursaries. Details👇 Gonna be a fab day!

Today's new arrival, and it's hot stuff!

This is excellent. Languages matter for all kinds of reasons, and governments should be pressed to facilitate and encourage their take-up in schools and universities.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇮🇪

Just received the sad news that Michael C. J. Putnam has died, at the age of 91. Not only a Latinist of great distinction, but a lovely man. He will truly be missed.

"Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has attended a demonstration organised by a neo-Nazi party and posted a picture of himself with Eddy Butler of the founders of Combat 18, whose funds have been frozen for funding terror organisations." socialistworker.co.uk/anti-racism/...

So right. Writing starts with ideas, but more importantly begets ideas, as we search for understanding.

So which six wars has Trump ended, exactly? The Hundred Years' War? Peloponnesian War? War of Jenkins' Ear?

The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. One of the world’s greatest lexicographic projects, ongoing since the 1890s. Indispensable for Classical research.

sic subway tyrannis

Honestly, these two restaurants are next to each other in Nelson Mandela Square, Sandton (the northern end of Johannesburg).

Philistines at a great university.