In Henry James's garden

I've just used E.F. Benson and Henry James's loo

'Good morning' from Sappho, who's anxious here to get out of this antique shop.

#Sappho

My entire life has been spent doing this: thinking 'no, no, no' when I've been asked to do something, but my lips then contradicting me by saying 'yes', and usually adding a smile when a grimace would have been better #CharlotteBrontë #Villette

Holiday reading but also reading for my sabbatical project. How much I'm looking forward to re-reading this!

'Quai-Hi!' (to quote Major Benjy)

'The Village Fete', the first episode of Mapp and Lucia, was originally broadcast on this day in 1985. Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales and Nigel Hawthorne headed the cast.

In 1942, German bombs blew the statue off its pedestal...
More here: www.kentonline.co.uk/canterbury/n...

The bluebells in the middle of Queen Mary's campus lighten up the day, at least

Diana Rigg and Peter Vaughan in Bleak House (8th April 1985)

Some things to be grateful for, despite the darkness of the times. The tulips in my garden are lovely, as is the liquid singing of a robin in the tree. Good morning...

April on the Moomins calendar, with Snufkin, the "dreamy philosopher poet", is rather lovely and cheery today #moomins #tovejansson

The front cover of the MHRA edition of Thomas Mann's later stories

Publishing in May: a brand new translation of Thomas Mann's last short stories 📘

Available now for review – journals are welcome to get in touch

Details here:
www.mhra.org.uk/publications...

Pupils in England are losing their thinking skills because of AI, survey suggests Two-thirds of secondary school teachers report a decline in core abilities such as writing and problem-solving

“Students are losing core skills – thinking, creativity, writing, even how to have a conversation,", “AI is destroying what ‘learning’ [...] is,", “Children no longer feel the need to spell as voice-to-text replaces knowledge."
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Reading a physical book on the tube/bus/train sometimes feels like a revolutionary act of resistance...

A turtle with maracas, how wonderful 🪇 🐢

Why do photocopiers inspire extreme violence in me? I'm normally a calm gentle soul, but they turn me into an axe-wielding maniac...God hold off the day that we get AI photocopiers

Fabulous

Sometimes a library is a very eerie space. What was it de Chirico said, something like...[the books] 'gazed at me with mysterious questioning eyes'

#library #libraries #fiction #books #lovelibraries #librarysky

Good to be back in the London Library, even if it's vertigo-inducing

Thanks! I hope everything's good with you!

Spoilers! I'm wearing the orangutan tie today because I'm lecturing on Edgar Allan Poe's 'Murders in the Rue Morgue' and Sherlock Holmes. What you might call a value-added lecture...

#EdgarAllanPoe #SherlockHolmes #spoilers

Top of the Pops (16th February 1978). Kate Bush makes her TOTP debut.

Counterrevolution in Egypt The agents of coercion in Egypt – its military, police, and intelligence services – have been locked in a perennial struggle for power since their inception. Each institution has vied for dominance, s...

@versobooks.bsky.social is running a sale through 20 February.

You can get 20% off when you preorder my book Counterrevolution in Egypt:

Yes, Fosco is very good choice!

I forgotten about Clare - good call. And I was hoping for an Eliot suggestion too!

‘The Music of the Venusberg: Richard Wagner and the poetry of Arthur Symons’ ‘Sin was with us in my rooms; the Flesh was with us always; the Arch-demon arose from Hell whenever I evoked him and certainly my Venus and I came near, night after night, afternoon after noon, hel…

'[...] and unite
In the intolerable, the whole
Rapture of the embodied soul'

On my chapter about the Decadent poets Arthur Symons & Theodore Wratislaw & the music of Richard Wagner in a new essay collection 'Salome's Bookshelf: Artists and Writers of the 1890s'.

verseandmusic.com/2026/02/08/t...

Who's the greatest villain in Victorian Literature? Any suggestions welcome! #Victorianliterature #Victoriannovel #VictorianFiction #EnglishLiterature #Victorian

One in six autistic pupils in UK have not attended school at all since September Data comes as government prepares to publish plans to overhaul Send system in England

....and as only 3 in 10 adults with autism are in any kind of employment (Buckland Review, 2024), you can see from this article how people with autism are being failed. The attendance rates for the other five pupils are, of course, very poor #autism #mentalhealth

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

George Eliot defines my pastoral role for undergrads: 'The middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions [really?]...should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair.'