It’s a great book, fantastically written. Almost made me wish I were still a teacher so I could introduce teenagers to it.

Middlemarch was an absolute revelation when I first read it. Recently, the book I think about the most is War and Peace (and I’m shy to admit it because it sounds like a flex, but it speaks to the moment in so many ways).

I was lucky that my first Shakespeare encounter was the Animated Tales from the 90s - a heavily truncated text, but a lot of the poetry remained and I just loved the sounds of it all.

Have been thinking about W&P a lot recently and wondering whether it’s too early to revisit after only three years?

Hasn’t the poor man suffered enough?

The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML I've told this story at conferences - but due to the general situation I thought I'd retell it here. A few years ago I was doing policy research in a housing benefits office in London. They are singul...

Here's a story about why it is vital to ensure that basic services work for *everybody*.

shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01...