Great thread from Mr Lewis. I would only add that Cecile Pin’s excellent novel Wandering Souls provides a vivid, unsensational picture of what life was like in such camps for the Vietnamese refugees in the late 70s.

The task for political leadership now is not just to tell the truth, but to make people care about what is true and what is not.

Great joke.

I've tried getting this screw in with a screwdriver. I've tried using a hammer. Why not try banging it in with my head? What could go wrong?

is it a good sign that 2 people you've invited to be on your "Board of Peace" can't join you in Switzerland because they would be arrested for war crimes?

"Meanwhile, Princess Anne went for a ride in Kirkbride, Queen Camilla went shopping in Wapping, Prince Edward dropped a clanger in Bangor, and the young ladies of Buckingham asked Prince Andrew if he'd mind staying at home. Now it's goodnight from me ... ... and it's goodnight from him."

The only reason Trump craves the Nobel Peace Prize is because Obama won one, right? I mean, his obsessions never really change.

This is the UK Amazon top 3 at the moment. Yet the friend of mine who went to see the Housemaid film last night had no idea it was based on a book. Never underestimate what a marginal art form the novel is, compared to movies.

I feel I should bang the drum for this post, which hasn't received the love it deserves. It helps to know that Jenrick's constituency is Newark.

There are certainly some controversial opinions floating around on BlueSky tonight.

One of Twitter’s most beloved contributors has made the journey over here, and I must say I’m liking his posting style.

Selfie taken today in the bathroom mirror of Maurice Ravel’s house in Montfort l’Amaury. If you love Ravel, you have to go. It’s an incredible experience.,

Incredible to think America is now a place where horrific bullshit like this can be spoken out loud and broadcast nationwide rather than locked away in some shameful, private corner of the brain.

I highly recommend @jonathancoe.bsky.social’s novel “Mr. Wilder & Me” which tells the story of the making of one of his last films, “Fedora”, from the point of view of a young English woman who becomes a film composer.

Recorded this with Adam in November last year. No memory of what I said, but it was certainly fun on the night! (And he’s a great interviewer)

This by Richard Flanagan is the best thing I've read about the Adelaide Writers' Week debacle.

“We’re going to continue generating sexualised images of children but you’ll have to pay for them” has to be the ultimate example of moral bankruptcy.

Who says that AI is unreliable and makes mistakes?

He's very charming, as well as being a famously acerbic critic. 25 years on, I still remember his Observer review of my novel The Rotters' Club, which managed to use the word 'aberration' twice in the opening sentence.

After their excellent piece on Penda's Fen a few weeks ago, @birminghamdispatch.bsky.social turns its attention to the Midlands' other great slice of celluloid history. Time for another showing, @talkingpicturestv.bsky.social?

Telegraph: This Christmas, there's only one way to save humanity - Keir Starmer must commit harakiri live on GB News.

Craig Brown spends a whole page parodying the Telegraph in the current Private Eye but even he can't invent headlines as mad as the real ones.

Really enjoyed Nouvelle Vague. Much more than I enjoyed A bout de souffle, in fact.

Why can't immigrants who come to the UK integrate as well as this?

Morons on X are salivating over the prospect of Trump destroying the BBC so that its role as state broadcaster can be taken over by - yes, GB News. That would be the GB News that produces such great documentaries, drama, comedy, light entertainment, local radio, national radio ...

And now I find out that The Salt Path wasn't even published by a real penguin.

LAST ORDERS PLEASE! You’ve got until Wednesday 17 December to order small prints, cards, wrap and slipmats for Christmas delivery. www.gailmyerscough.co.uk

I did love the adventures of Jupiter Jones and friends. ???

Me talking about books in The Guardian. As usual, the piece is a bit more nuanced than the headline.

Word.

Hard to think of anywhere that shaped my musical and literary personality more strongly than Birmingham Central Library in the 1970s. Designed by John Madin in the Brutalist style, now sadly demolished. Great to see it being celebrated in these Christmas cards by @gailmyerscough.co.uk

Lots of resonances for me in this long essay on (mainly) British comedy. Very much looking forward to the novel itself.

Fancy a bit of Greek sunshine in your life this December? Cheaper than flying to Crete, the e-book of my novel Mr Wilder and Me is currently 99p on both Amazon and @bookshop.org. Here's the Bookshop link (buying from them gives support to indie booksellers.).

I only ever had one Rupert annual - this one. (I was five.) Extraordinary to see this again - one of the key visual memories of my childhood.

The calls from America this weekend to "abolish the EU" are for one simple reason: the EU is the only thing that can keep European nation-states from becoming Russian or American vassals.

I assumed that by now I knew all the good music from my formative years, but I was alerted to this song yesterday by this must-follow account, and it turns out to have one of the all-time great riffs.

The EU discourse is perfect because there's something in it for everyone. First of all, the European Union genuinely does have a lot of problems. But more importantly, a lot of people hate it for largely unrelated and often contradictory reasons. It's a great enemy

Une certaine idée de l'Angleterre #MartinParr 🖤 @stationsimone.bsky.social @thierrychanu.bsky.social @jonathancoe.bsky.social

RIP the great Martin Parr

Happy to see a character in The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe agreeing with me on “cosy crime.” @jonathancoe.bsky.social

Don't think I can remember a Bafta awards season where so many of the films are adaptations of recent British literary sources. There's a Deborah Levy, a Jim Crace, a Maggie O'Farrell, a Kazuo Ishiguro, an Adam Mars-Jones, a Helen MacDonald (@hjm.bsky.social) and two (!) Max Porters.

This is brilliant. An amazing - if confusing - album begets an amazing - if confusing - review.

Anyone enjoying the current re-runs of vintage Call My Bluff on BBC Four might like to check out the show's cameo appearance ten minutes into this barking mad NF Simpson parody. I remember watching this in 1973 and being flabbergasted.

The excellent @birminghamdispatch.bsky.social (which has done such great reporting on the flag epidemic over the last few months) delivers the goods again today with this deep dive into the Midlands mythology of Penda's Fen.

Is the Telegraph finally acknowledging that Thatcher wrecked British society?

Congratulations to the fabulous composer Mike Gibbs who today, aged 89, received an honorary degree from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. On display, delighted to see artefacts from his collaboration with Bill Forsyth on Housekeeping, plus the score of a tune that is very close to my heart.

Not a half-baked gesture at all. Tidal has much better quality and pays artists four times as much as Spotify.

This is such a graceful post, from someone I worked with forty years ago (before she was a published poet or I was a published novelist) and whose work I admire very much.

This does an excellent job of summarising a novel which (in my recent experience at book events) is very hard to summarise.