So how polluted are you, river Wye, and does the heat make me find out?

Fantastic reporting from Ukraine by @edcaesar.bsky.social The Stunt Pilot Hunting Russian Drones www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Siri Hustvedt at Hay-on-Wye. She calls books ‘the technology of ghosts’-how the dead communicate with us. Her memoir Ghost Stories is a dialogue between her & Paul Auster, also a love story captured in beautiful, clear prose: ‘The hours skip ahead but minutes often move slowly… I sleep by pill.’

How to win a trade war (and influence people) My new essay for the FT: as.ft.com/r/19d4135a-c...

‘Energy that might once have gone into adaptation, rebuilding or risk taking is redirected into prosecuting a case’ exceptional Substack from Philippa Perry on victimhood, blame and responsibility’ open.substack.com/pub/philippa...

Could not have hoped for a more beautiful evening on the river for the launch of Rosa Rankin Gee’s glorious MY ONLY BOY: two unlikely lovers, a heatwave and encroaching and broken politics.

‘My anchovies are still sad,’ brilliant and inimitable Jill Lepore in The New Yorker on the origins of LLMs, including some early machine poetry - The Prehistory of A.I. Slop www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

‘No better guide to the new economic order’ Tim Harford, ‘Amazing. A breezy romp, without dumbing down’ Paul Krugman I say: I did not understand any of it until I read it. We may not want to be trade warriors, but the old rules-based system is not coming back. @soumayakeynes.ft.com @chadpbown.com

Sweeping, scary, timely, thought-provoking, sincere, sexy and sizzling with writerly energy - beautifully written. My Only Boy by Rosa Rankin-Gee

A great Nibbies evening celebrating The Names with Florence’s editor, the best of the best, Francesca Main. @francescamain.bsky.social

And the winner in the Debut Fiction category at the British Book Awards is THE NAMES by @florenceknapp.bsky.social - CONGRATULATIONS, Florence! 🍾

Good luck at the British Book Awards! @florenceknapp.bsky.social - you have written an absolute gem of a book. Honoured to represent it.

Daunted! One week, two extraordianry launches in London’s star bookshop. @dauntbooks.bsky.social

‘At daybreak on a warm October day, our beautiful(….)baby girl was born; skin pink and taut, scream wet and bright. I held my wife’s hand and head as our daughter emerged from her body - a daughter who had initially come from me.’ Rosa Rankin-Gee on reciprocal IVF www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

A heatwave, an authoritarian government, a love story. My Only Boy by Rosa Rankin-Gee is extracted in Esquire Magazine - good writing alert! www.esquire.com/uk/culture/b...

‘A masterclass in writing about grief… Hustvedt is an intelligent, elegant yet uninhibited writer… an intensely touching book’ The Times

A seasonal snapshot.

Congratulations to the extraordinary Jill Lepore on her much deserved Pulitzer for WE THE PEOPLE @pulitzerprizes.bsky.social

Philippa Perry on cosy crime, Ozempic and the perils of ‘bitesize’ therapy www.thetimes.com/article/8b8d...

‘A superb introduction to art history and image analysis’ - the Guardian on Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men, illustrated by Ping Zhu

And here is @patrickbarkham.bsky.social running for the Wildlife Trust in a badger costume. 💚

Could James Norton be any more impressive? www.runnersworld.com/uk/training/...

Ed Caesar’s dirst book was about the sub-two-hour marathon and as he predicted, it would be a combinations of small gains across a range of factors, from sportsmanship to weather, shoes and carb delivery. www.penguin.co.uk/books/186803...

Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt - out on 5th May.

An extract from Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt, her memoir of life with Paul Auster, their love and intellectual friendship over decades, and his death from cancer. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...

A genius. He excels both at narrative and abstract dance. The partly improvised percussion strand in Quantum Souls and how it responds to dance is astounding. www.standard.co.uk/culture/danc...

Background reading on the (just arrested) Daniel Kinehan by the brilliant @edcaesar.bsky.social who spent a year researching this story www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

A chart-topping double! The Names and London Falling are both number 1 Sunday Times bestsellers across fiction and non-fiction. Couldn’t be happier for these two outstanding books and writers. 👏

What a Time to be Alive! Marina Hyde on tour…

There are state-of-the-nation novels. This is a state-of-universities novel. Is university education worth it? ‘As moving as it is hysterically funny’ says Gary Shteyngart. Out in September in US and Canada and next year in UK. LORDS OF SERENDIPITY by Randy Boyagoda.

This is a menace and everyone should stay vigilant. We need an industry-wide email verification system. That would be a good use of tech and AI. www.thebookseller.com/news/scam-em...

Wonderful review of LONDON FALLING by the great Craig Brown in the Sunday Times.

Patrick Radden Keefe: ‘I plan like crazy. And then … I write quite quickly. I feel … if it's working, I want the book to come out of me with a kind of velocity. I want to capture that velocity on the page…I want the reader to feel that sort of energy.’ www.thenerve.news/p/patrick-ra...

‘Are all novels doll’s houses really? (…) And: in our age of politics as performance: Is child’s play the thing/ In which to catch the conscience of the not-a-king?’ open.substack.com/pub/margaret...

‘We can steer our kids in the right direction, but at the same time, they’re going to be who they’re going to be. You can do all the right things – and it may not be enough.’ www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Sadly, also true.

True story

Sensational word-of-mouth behind The Names by Florence Knapp. Top of the charts this weekend and edging close to a million copies sold. Congratulations, Florence!

‘A page-turner,’ says The Irish Times about London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe ‘we are fortunate to have him pounding the pavement to expose real-life darkness’ www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

We are a very happy number two again, with a staggering 24,000 copies sold in one week. The Names by @florenceknapp.bsky.social is out in paperback and I cannot recommend this beautiful,moving and thought-provoking novel enough!

A Sunday Times bestseller - SISTERS IN YELLOW by Mieko Kawakami, a masterpiece of teenage dreams and adult cruelties. 🍋

Out on 7th April. Book a night in. London Falling by @praddenkeefe.bsky.social

What Philippa Perry did next! ‘A joy! Cosy crime with a side order of psychological insight’ says Jennie Godfrey. ‘Wickedly witty, with delightful, quirky characters and a cracking plot’ says Jacqueline Wilson - out 7th May

Book Bar presents an evening with Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Jesse Armstrong www.bookbaruk.com/event-detail...

‘With Sisters in Yellow she proves she is still the most exciting Japanese novelist at work today’ says The Times of Mieko Kawakami and SISTERS IN YELLOW - a rave! ‘This is not the Japan you find in novels about cats, cafés and bookshops.’ www.thetimes.com/article/9203...

Indispensable

The UK government has today published a Copyright and Artificial Intelligence report outlining that it is moving away from the proposed copyright exception for AI training, widely rejected by the creative industries. Read more 👇