Spent this morning with lots of great people who are doing lots of great cultural things in Gloucester. Really energising to see the impact ACE funding can have.

Just started this and really enjoying it - reminds me of David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten

This sounds amazing!

Really lovely get together at Salisbury Arts Centre to remember Jill Low today. Catherine’s piece below is perfect. Jill gave @stephaniejalland.bsky.social and I a home for Hoodwink and the Arts Centre felt like home again today with staff, volunteers and artists all there, so good to see everyone.

“Material Worlds: Contemporary Artists and Textiles” from the Hayward Gallery has arrived at The Wilson in Cheltenham and it’s a wonderful exploration of textiles in contemporary art. Really want (need) the wallpaper by Marc Camille Chaimowicz.

Great to see ACE supported work of the best quality getting to our most far flung communities www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/s...

Well done @bsidefest.bsky.social on the launch of The Portland Dress as part of the Big Weekend. Hundreds of local stories embroidered in a very special community textiles project. And beautiful choral work led by Destination Opera to mark the launch at the Old Engine Shed tonight. (1/3)

Enjoyed Pagans by @jamesbluecat.bsky.social very much, highly recommend. Read after the excellent Hild and Menewood by @nicolaz.bsky.social and had a very pleasing historical fiction/alt history continuity

Holiday accommodation lamp winner for all time.

Cycling in Suffolk yesterday, we stopped outside house with an unmanned stall selling jams and marmalades and bought Dark Horse, ‘finely treacled’ marmalade and Oh My God why did I not know about this before?! Absolutely fantastic.

Hey UK, my reality-bending mother-daughter-found-family-multiverse novel is on sale on Kobo. It's about being lost, trying to find the best version of you (literally), the mysteries of our parents, neuroparasites, murder and features two of my favourite characters I've ever written in Dom and Amber

This is my flag.

I would buy this album in a heartbeat (@fakemusic_br instagram) #funk #acdc

1/ In my Gove thread I showed how reform managed inequality rather than solved it. Here’s why “social mobility” itself is the bigger fiction. Another thread.

How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek, And wait the season, and observe the times, And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes, And shape his service wholly to my device, And make him proud to make me proud that jests!

The Music Works is a Gloucester based outreach charity that works to transform the lives of young people through music. It doesn’t matter what skills you have or what you’re passionate about; as long as you want to make music, they can help you make it happen. I visited last week and loved it.

Bit of a treat when one of your favourite authors reviews another of your favourite authors.

Reading the Value of a Whale by @adriennebuller.bsky.social has made me wonder how much time and effort is being wasted in the academic sphere on research that aligns closely with green capitalism, and what knowledge could have been produced instead

For thousands of years, we have been parasitised, exploited and destroyed by elites. Our survival depends on overthrowing them. Fascinating article by @dpcarrington.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Well this by @nicolaz.bsky.social was very good indeed! Feel like I less read than moved in and lived there. Hild herself is an extraordinary creation and to see C6 Britain through eyes mesmerising. The evocation of nature and the complex politics equally accomplished. It made me read so late!

Coming as I do from a BBC comedy background, I have a shitload of suggestions for how to make great television programmes more cheaply (such as not budgeting them at $10m+ per episode) none of which anyone is interested in. They don’t want cheaper TV. They want cheaper people.

What an extraordinary novel, deeply satisfying, beautifully written. Can only hope the oligarchs and oil executives get to pick it up.

I am writing a policy pamphlet. Here are all the ways to demonstrate I don't really have a policy answer, that I need to avoid: a. You call for a "national conversation or debate" b. You suggest that what is needed is “a change in culture” 1/

Across Europe, the financial sector has pushed up house prices. It's a political timebomb | Tim White

Great interview with B Catling, love this on Blake: For me he is not a frocked dreamer wafting about and talking to angels. He is a grafter, a working man, whose small factory was crowded with other beings while he daily had to make crappy prints for other artists.

This is a lovely radio drama www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

I’d like to propose an end to embracing uncertainty and beginning to make the weather.

2. We need to do four things all at the same time. A. Ensure that 8, 9 or 10 billion people receive a healthy and sufficient diet. B. Do so without destroying Earth systems. C. Rewild as much land and sea as we can, to stop and reverse 6th Great Extinction drivers. D. Prevent food system collapse.

I must have first read this when I was 18, very excited to be tuning in to a live channel!

In all this Bob Vylan pearl clutching some are conveniently forgetting the IDF is committing genocide.

Because I’m an idiot I’d probably never have picked this up if it wasn’t for book club and I’m so glad I did. Sharp and precise and true, funny and sad. And the men are nearly all fantastically awful. Good choice @phillimilne.bsky.social

Never a good sign when another @greatdismal.bsky.social prognostication manifests… www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

🔴Engineered Estrangement | An Interview with Cory Doctorow The author, activist, and technology critic Cory Doctorow on reckless broligarchs and what their 'enshittified' platforms are doing to our future www.bylinesupplement.com/p/engineered...

Students in England graduate with average £53,000 debt. Total debt £266bn, up to 7.3% interest. Most European nations don't charge university tuition fees, England does. What was public debt, is now personal debt. People penalised for education, can't start family, business. Abolish uni fees.

God this is an unbearably lovely book, very good review here www.theguardian.com/books/2023/n...

Sounds like faint (or niche) praise - which it isn’t, but this is the best podcast on menswear and class politics you’ll ever hear. Thanks @joseph-gent.bsky.social for flagging. open.spotify.com/episode/1yF0...

This is absolutely lovely.

Really great 2 days in Somerset seeing Stacked Wonky www.stackedwonky.com East Quay Arts (huge thanks to @jessprend.bsky.social for the tour and conversation), Taunton Brewhouse www.tauntonbrewhouse.co.uk and a last minute visit to the amazing @museumofsomerset.bsky.social. Looking forward to more!

Fantastic book!

Top read, highly recommended. Great story, fantastic insight and lovely writing - plum rain! @garyseconomics.bsky.social

Fantastic book, taken me too long to get to, highly recommend.

My message to British journalists who are complicit in Israel's genocide in Gaza: You will pay for what you did. I was honoured to receive the People's Choice Award at the @amnestyuk.bsky.social #AmnestyMediaAwards 2025. It is dedicated to the people of Palestine.

Very enjoyable George Eliot in Words and Music at Salisbury Festival last night. Thanks and congratulations to Wiltshire Creative and @rosacorb.bsky.social

Pound Arts are looking for a new director. Deadline 12 June poundarts.org.uk/whats-on/joi...

Inspiring What Next West visit to Old Printworks Arts in Radstock yesterday with Ruby Sant - welding, gardening, skate park, ceramics - and deeply inclusive maps.app.goo.gl/r9yFTbymVMfV... @little-lost-robot.bsky.social

📣 Join Wessex Museums as a #Trustee! Wessex Museums Trust is seeking a new independent Trustee to join the Board. This is an opportunity to contribute to the leadership and future direction of the charity.

Enjoyed this very much, thank you @sarahcrown.bsky.social for the recommendation

Very positive to meet @jessicatoale.bsky.social and lots of cultural partners on Friday to plot the ongoing flourishing of culture in BCP. Thanks to BEAF, Lighthouse, Russell Coates, AUB (thanks for hosting!), Soundstorm, @bmthwritingfest.bsky.social and @bournemouthso.bsky.social