Me on RCs

Palm oil, freshly bottled in Leverville.

Interwar public goods (with a second century Antinous patched by an eighteenth century sculptor).

The ornate fireplace of a South Seas director (hence the cowrie shell cornucopia) bought up by an Edwardian palm oil magnate (Lord Lever).

You need to like that sort of thing (Pre-Raphaelites) but the long gallery at the Lady Lever is very splendid.

If you so choose

I wrote about this good if unduly solemn book last year unherd.com/2025/08/the-...

Never went to Southport's gallery much when growing up but saw a Tracey Emin, a Paula Rego, a Cornelia Parker and some interesting Laura Knights here yesterday. Returning from BC, it is the quiet and unheralded strength and depth of English culture that impresses.

Zahed Taj-Eddin, The Sheep go to Lampedusa

Very Conrad: an Argentinian called Mac Alister.

Southport's very magnificent WWI memorial.

I wrote about Fr Rolfe and Graham Greene for @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

London Liverpool Turin Haifa Montreal (I already get to live in Vancouver)

The perfect thing for one hieratic sovereign to give to another (George V)

Should you choose

A helmet donated by the King of Bhutan in 1910 to Sir Charles Bell - a Buchanesque figure who retired to Victoria, BC.

Deus nobis haec otia fecit

Pre-conquest Aztec codex in Liverpool - a thrill to see it.

Congolese magical objects in Liverpool museum - a deeply Conradian place.

Wonderfully Victorian Samurai suit at the World Museum, Liverpool

British Columbia (Haida Gwaii) in Liverpool

Wonderful to be back in Florence (Liverpool)

As a BCer, it feels both odd and familiar to smell wildfire smoke in Merseyside.

Improbably funny and very wise memoir

Burnhamism (1927)

Keynes Keynesing

Edwardian Stoicism (from the crystalline recollections of the New Statesman's Kingsley Martin)

A fantastic book - written in Vancouver about Ghana. CanLit might be best when it is not fussing about Canadian identity.

About 70 CAD from Winchcombe's magnificent bookstore.

A Hardy novel in miniature

English local museums!

It has been too long

I'm not sure whether it is coming home, but I have

Watching USA crash out at YVR en route to England - perhaps this is winning at FIFA?

Cobalt Yvonne McKague Housser 1931

We have already rightly forgotten Carney at Davos, but the Balogun thing confirms his 'even hegemons need rules' point. metro.co.uk/2026/07/06/k...

Nun ist die Zeit

Separatists: we must leave Canada as our elites hate oil 'n gas Elites: on the contrary (taking a big suck on the pipe) we adore oil 'n gas.

Must be shifting nationality finally, as I was much more concerned that Canada should win.

Extraordinary Guardian photo of England fans at the 86 Azteca

Knausgaarded

Der Erlingkönig

Dinner of the gods (but I don't think despite Ken Sim that I have ever seen Chinatown emptier).

So good on the thinness of social life in Canada - from a tortured Egyptian journalist who nonetheless found life richer as an exile in Lebanon than in safe Tronno. www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

Feels like Coyne wrote this after the game

The Globe makes a good case for a Richler revival (but passes over my favourite of his, This Year in Jerusalem - a remarkably clear eyed account of Israeli society).

The maple leaf nonetheless forever

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Go Canada! 🇨🇦 Allez Les Rouges! 🇨🇦