Merlin (Cornell Lab)

It took me about four seconds to become obsessed with the Merlin birdsong app. Thank you, @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social!

I'll be running a three-day #travelwriting workshop at West Cork Litfest this summer. Loads of other great workshops too, if travel writing isn't your thing...

Pulled a calf muscle via the “explosive movement” of crossing the road

Coming of age in New York’s music scene “Every room was to be destroyed”, Mark Ronson writes in Night People, his rapturous account of his early life as a hip-hop DJ in New York in the 1990s.

Mark Ronson’s memoir is a hoot. He makes 90s NYC sound even more exciting than 90s London. My review for this week’s @thetls.bsky.social www.the-tls.com/lives/autobi...

An inspiring and beautifully written piece!

Joe Kennedy obituary Other lives: Plant breeder who created new varieties of primula based on rare Irish primroses

A wonderful piece by @akennedysmith.bsky.social about her father Joe Kennedy:

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A lovely sentence from a segment of the Today programme: “Gorillas understand the concept of a friend of a friend”.

Oxford World’s Classics

This story about Laurence Sterne (told here by Ian Campbell Ross) is new to me

The Observer Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism is looking for the best new voices in cultural criticism.

Entries close on 28 February 2026, so get scribbling!

First prize is £3000 and publication in @theobserveruk.bsky.social

Find out how to enter: www.anthonyburgess.org/observeranth...

Very well, thanks! Hope you are too

If my brother Tom, former producer of In Our Time, were on here I’d tag him for confirmation

It’s a very good thing that @maryelmorris.bsky.social and I made ourselves do Parkrun this morning, because our reward was meeting this gentleman:

Bristol: the home of Aardman Animations

Unity St, Bristol

Unity Street, Bristol

Doing this very soon! Arrghh!

The US-China confrontation; beliefs vs facts; Tennyson, science and catastrophe; Iris Murdoch’s poetry; Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein; a history of shamanism – and much more.

The new TLS is out now: www.the-tls.com/issues/curr...

The aristocracy today; Sally Mann’s creative process; the majesty of László Krasznahorkai; the charge against Chaucer; how grey became cool; small press struggles – and much more.

Out now: www.the-tls.com/issues/curr...

That sounds like such an interesting talk!

Dignity and Historical Injustice: The History of an Albanian Family Join Professor Lea Ypi FBA as she reads and discusses her new book, tracing the journey of a woman from Ottoman Salonica to a life under surveillance in post-war communist Albania.

As part of the @britishacademy.bsky.social Lecture Programme, in partnership with Coventry University, I will be reading and discussing Indignity tomorrow. 6pm, free event, followed by reception and book signing but registration is required 👇!!!

www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/lectu...

It’s here: the newly refined and now fortnightly TLS.

www.the-tls.com/

Strong intro.
“There are lots of kinds of insects all of them a bit the same.”

Here we have Eimear McBride with her TLS tote bag:
@thetls.bsky.social

(One for you, @chrisgpackham.bsky.social ?)

Falmouth fox

I recently heard about the “theory of unexpected red” in interior design. The Fox Rosehill (subtropical) Gardens next to Falmouth University show us how it’s done:

Wow!

Sorting through childhood stuff again. There’s no way I’m ever getting rid of this

🤣🤣✅

🤣 Good advice