Aha! I do like a Speckled wood.

Agami Herons.

Entrance Hall to Cardiff Free Library.

Floor & wall tiles, with designs for the four seasons by the Victorian illustrator & artist Walter Crane.

Produced by Maw & Co. 1882

The building is now Museum of Cardiff.

#TilesOnTuesday

In his new book, 'The poetry of suicide', poet and author @jtwelsch.bsky.social weaves stories of poets who took their own lives with the history of suicide in his family, searching for a new way of understanding these difficult deaths.

Pre-order from your local bookshop or online today. #booksky

Join us as we mark the launch of 'The Poetry of Suicide: Lessons in grief from the lives and deaths of poets' by @jtwelsch.bsky.social.

Reflecting on poetry’s long engagement with suicide, interwoven with the personal history of suicide within his own family.

Tickets are on sale now. #booksky

Lot of feelings today, after working on this book for so long. Mostly I hope people find it useful for thinking and talking about this often still unthinkable and unspeakable topic.

Publishing today!

A profound exploration of the connection between poetry and suicide, drawing from the lives of poets, and his own experience, by @jtwelsch.bsky.social.

Available now from all good bookshops & online.

Head to our Events page (link in bio) to find a book launch near you. #booksky

Archaeologists Find Homer’s Iliad Papyrus Inside a Mummy in Egypt - GreekReporter.com Archaeologists found a rare Iliad papyrus inside a Roman-era mummy in Egypt, highlighting the spread of Greek culture.

“Inside one of the mummies, the team discovered a rare papyrus containing a passage from Book II of the Iliad by Homer. The text includes part of the “Catalogue of Ships,” which lists Greek forces involved in the campaign against Troy.”

greekreporter.com/2026/04/19/h...

Palantir in the NHS is linked to Mandelson

Mandelson is linked to Wes Streeting

Wes Streeting is defending Palantir’s involvement in the #NHS

Nothing to see or everything to see

Palantir must be removed from the NHS

The remarkable early-Norman crypt (1078) at St Mary's, Lastingham (North Yorks).
Burial place of St Cedd incorporating Saxon stone from the earlier church, and complete with nave, apse and side aisles.
Time peels away as you descend into this special ancient place!
📸2025

ICYMI — new HUNGARY 🇭🇺 PM Magyar says Netanyahu will be arrested if he goes to Hungary

#BLinguistik #linguistics

Conference on the Languages of the Nordic Countries as a Second Language From June 10th to 12th, 2026, the Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen will host the seventeenth scientific conference on the languages of the Nordic c...

Conference on the Languages of the Nordic Countries as a Second Language: Bergen/Norway, 10-12 June 2026
www.uib.no/en/lle/17741...
via uib.no
#nordand17 #conference #langsky

€54k for 15 bedrooms. Writer’s retreat?

Photinia. Not my favourite.

Nigel Farage Has Personally Accepted £675,000 from Foreign Sources Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has accepted more than half a million pounds from foreign companies, governments, and donors while serving as an MP, DeSmog can reveal. Since July 2024, when he was elect...

“Farage rarely turns up to do his actual job. Yet he finds time to jet off around the world on his donor’s private plane and trouser half a million quid while families struggle. Reform are not on your side. They’re just in it for themselves”

It’s so obvious, it hurts.
www.desmog.com/2026/04/18/n...

'French is omnipresent': Residents highlight tensions around French in multilingual Luxembourg Residents in Luxembourg say French remains the dominant everyday language, but their views highlight both its role as a gateway for newcomers and the tensions it can create in a multilingual society.

French is omnipresent'
Residents highlight tensions around French in #multilingual #Luxembourg
today.rtl.lu/news/luxembo...
#langsky

Correct. My mother talked of 'plumping up' cushions, and by extension, I suppose, pillows. I'm a plumper by heredity.

London’s Last Wilderness review – mudflats meets Mad Max towers on eccentric estuary voyage Through the eyes of an unseen explorer, Pablo Behrens’s experimental documentary takes us on an engaging but indulgent journey along the Thames estuary

www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ap... I know this landscape well. It is eerie, challenging and to me, utterly bewitching. In places it's dangerous, but it's always fascinating. Huge skies, trecherous silver sea and marshlands where fish, eels and snakes hide.

The paperback edition of The Devil in Dorsoduro is now up for preorder. Out May 7

The Devil in Dorsoduro: An atmospheric Venetian murder mystery amzn.eu/d/03Xf9jki

Myanmar military regime widens sanitary towel ban, claiming rebels use them for first aid Activists say clamp down on period products to target insurgents is gender-based violence and violates rights

Still so proud of my university’s ongoing franchise deal with a Myanmar/Burma college.

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

15 minutes; no questions; government got the blame; my department to have 60% of us sacked. Apparently sacking us will lead to a ‘new, improved’ curriculum. No voluntary scheme, straight to selection and legal minimum redundancy payment.

Ian Campbell P&O 6 July 2022 YouTube video by I C VC

If anyone wants to see the previous time colleagues were sacked by scripted P&O style video message, it's here in all its glory, featuring the VC who fired more people than he met in his brief reign of terror:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrsW...

Yay, @wikipedia.org!

mRNA vaccines continue to show major promise.

In a small Phase 1 trial led by Dr. Balachandran, some patients with pancreatic cancer (one of the deadliest cancers) reached 6-year survival.

This is why sustained investment in science & research matters.

tinyurl.com/f4n4anhk

Met more than a few of those during my time at an 'elite' university those many years ago. 'Brittle' says it all.

Art Sonnet Chain, 5: Tishani Doshi after Bharti Kher’s Ancestor Heart and eye braided in ampersandthe way descendant and ancestor link handsacross waves of mitochondrial inheritance.Here is an abdomen, a thorax; herdof stampeding bu…

The 2nd quartet of our #ArtSonnetChain opens with this fine poem by #TishaniDoshi (who also contributed to our #EcoSonnetChain).

As you might expect at this point, it shifts parameters to focus on one of #BhartiKher’s ‘Intermediary’ figures:

newbootsandpantisocracies.wordpress.com/2026/04/18/a...

I must check them out. Never knew.

If you've never seen Danger : Diabolik, you owe it to yourself to put that right! This looks like a good place to start....

The very best. Not quite out here yet.