Skies are the grey of turps-thinned whitewash from my train this morning. The land exhales. Three horses on a hillside nibble at the earth, indifferent or disconsolate, I cannot tell ‘We are now approaching…’ says a voice. The train rocks gently We’re still approaching. Maybe we’ll approach forever

Focusing on plans for this fantastic upcoming symposium: www.techne.ac.uk/training-and... In my keynote, I'll be combining live storytelling and ecopoetic reflection to explore how sharing un-pastoral tales drawn from mythic Britain might help us dream together towards liveable, shared futures.

Really looking forward to welcoming Corinne Harragin to Liverpool this October with her new storytelling show Troubled Waters. A tapestry of transporting tales that have shaped our relationship with rivers, the lifeblood of our landscape. Details and tickets: capstone.hope.ac.uk/whatson/trou...

BBC news showing the Trump protest in London, Sylvester McCoy has just appeared on a vox pop.

Be generous. Now be more generous. Share your privilege. We need creative professionals to step up & volunteer to mentor a young person who doesn't have the connections or financial backing to believe they could access a creative career. Sign up to mentor in 2026 👉 www.arts-emergency.o...

Only 20 minutes into this, but it's STUNNING - gorgeous music and so many stories that were new to me. Mad-Haired Moll of Bedlam an instant favourite song, about a woman locked up for 'raising her voice to a policeman'. (Thanks to @scriblit.bsky.social for the recommendation!)

Whaur yon broken brig hings owre; Whaur yon water maks nae soun’; Babylon blaws by in stour: Gang doun wi’ a sang, gang doun… —“Song”, by William Soutar (1898–1943) from William Soutar: Collected Works vol. 1, @tippermuirbooks.bsky.social 2024 #poem #poetry tippermuirbooks.co.uk/product/will...

Two adorable Egyptian figurines: a roaring hippo and a baby hippo, dating ca 1,800 BC. Hippos were associated with life and rebirth. On display at Neues Museum Berlin. 📷 me 🏺 AncientEgyptBluesky

'The arts are essential to a rounded education; they are social not solitary'.

🌟Registration is open to become a volunteer mentor in 2026 with Arts Emergency across London, Greater Manchester and Merseyside.🌟 bit.ly/4lux6Fb

To mark publication of Upon A White Horse, a story for The Guardian about a quest to find an ancient stone where I was photographed as a boy. www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/...

People gathered for great meat feasts at end of British bronze age, study shows - www.theguardian.com/science/2025... "Evidence of millions of animal bones at sites in West Country and Surrey points to ‘age of feasting’" amazing

We've got a chunky @britishacademy.bsky.social report out looking at the emergence of 'cold spots' where you can't study arts, humanities or social science subjects close to home. We call for an urgent review of HE funding & monitoring of at risk subjects www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/univers...

Other work by the Ladybird artists 'September' (Shell Guide to Flowers of the Countryside) 1955 Artists: Edith and Rowland Hilder

The knight stood, triumphant, over the prostrate dragon. He raised his sword high above his head and- "I wouldn't if i were you" The voice was in his head. Confused, he glanced around. A black cat was cleaning a paw, casually nearby. He raised the sword again. "Are you REALLY, really sure?" /1

We are certain that you will have seen these windows before which are in the Governor's Parlour at the Hall. One depicts York, whilst the other is thought to be Copenhagen. Although we know that they are early 20th century, we are not sure where they were made or where they came from...

I just re-read The Shield of Achilles by WH Auden. My god that is a great poem.

Into the Labyrinth

"Silence is Golden" one of hundreds of small lochans along the Golden Road on Harris.

'Chemical dyes are often toxic for the environment and bad for human health, so the costume designers at the theatre are experimenting with using flowers including indigo, dahlias, hollyhocks, camomile and wild fennel to create the vivid colours used in their productions.'

Underpasses Are Liminal Places: 2

Reading about the foundation of the BBC and how it was banned from carrying news, so Peter Eckersley did silly voices and comedy routines and musical gags and played the jingles on a drainpipe, like a proto Everett, and it became an unstoppable hit, and thinking how everyone should be told this.

Colours of a storm #Shetland

Just removed the date label from an old book and discovered that someone has drawn a design for a teapot that can serve either tea or poison how's your day going?

Am completely wiped out, clutching multiple scraps of paper, and very pleased with life after an excellent day of collaborative research with the wonderful folk at the Village Storytelling Centre, documenting the growth of Glasgow's contemporary storytelling scene. Yay! (Falls over. Message ends.)

The great British seaside🍦 #BankHolidayMonday

One of the towers of the Lang Dyke, a chain of small fortresses built along the Clyde at the behest of the thirteenth Earl of Argyll as homes for his pet cormorants.

"castles such as Watch Hill and Rougemont have become fortifications once more, sheltering not armoured knights but plants and animals. Birds and badgers have taken up residence in the structures built as homes for aristocrats." - me on castles and wildlife nehnetwork.wordpress.com/2025/06/03/j...

Password

"The meaning is in the waiting." R.S. Thomas

The UK government will evacuate nine of the 40+ students in Gaza with scholarship at UK universities. My PhD student Shaimaa isn't included. We must now make sure they help the other students - email your MP today. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Pls sign and share this open letter to the Bristol VC, against the School of Humanities's decision to withdraw the BA in English Literature and Community Engagement (ELCE): the only part-time, flexible undergraduate degree programme available at the University forms.gle/SbyhXPSJgQTc...

...absolutely incredible. Here's what Medieval Bologna would have looked like when all its towers were intact. Florence didn't have so many but did have dozens, so the richest part of the city center would have looked much like this. Much to the despair of the city fire brigade! 11/?

For the Aeschylus fans.

Victorians entirely underrated in their proficiency at inventing things and then making them seem like they’ve been around forever

A fantastic few days of storytelling and storytelling-adjacent goodness in sunny Edinburgh this week. It was grand to catch up with a host of excellent folk, and loads of deft/bold/heartfelt/daft new work.

The hogback stones at St Andrew’s, Penrith, are over 1,000 years old. Shaped like the curved roof of a house, they were Viking-era grave markers – a “home” for the dead – decorated with intricate carvings that blend Norse and Anglo-Saxon styles.

Kurt Vonnegut’s definition of what makes something “art” is one of my favorites I’ve seen - from a letter to his brother in 1995.

Back in 2020 I posted this.

A bit over five years since a pandemic stopped me getting to Edinburgh to see Wind Resistance, I did manage to catch Karine Polwart's soulful, elegaic Windblown this evening. Lads, I sobbed. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WPc...

a university is not for generating profit, it provides cultural enrichment via weird little gremlin people who love visigoths or haikus, and very occasionally a scientist who figures out faster than light travel

‘When Britain conquered Egypt, it shipped 180,000 mummified cats back to Liverpool to be processed into fertiliser. Soon the dead were being reclaimed before they could even be put to rest.’ @jjvincent.bsky.social on the scramble for phosphorus: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

'Jockey Jack': a talented C18th horse-rider & groom who fell on hard times & ended life as a pauper in Nottinghamshire. He was found, after his death, to have been born a woman Love little snippets like these... #18c

The Haunted Paper exhibition is now open at Dorothy, Jamaica Street in the Baltic Triangle Liverpool. Thanks to everyone who came last night to the opening. Lots of you! And some great conversations. The exhibition is on until September 19th, weekdays. I would love you to see it.

Please write to your MP and demand that the Home Office act to help these students make it out of Gaza to study in the UK this September. Time is running out to get the government to move on this; they absolutely could take action and are — so far — choosing not to.

There's a great maze of tunnels, a Labyrinth. It's like a great dark city, under the hill. Full of gold, and the swords of old heroes, and old crowns, and bones, and years, and silence.

My September storytelling and creative writing workshop @porticolibrary.bsky.social has already sold out! Those Manchester folk must be properly hungry for more wandering through storied landscapes, imagining new ways to inhabit our different, diverse norths. www.theportico.org.uk/event-calend...

Every carousel? Every (and I cannot stress this enough) carousel.

Do not pander. Do not dumb down. Do not make your voice less magical. Trust your audience to be smarter than you. Trust them to be as curious as fuck. Never blame anyone for the tepid, lazy choices you make in your work.