Fox host says he 'hasn't washed hands in 10 years' Harvard and Princeton graduate Pete Hegseth says germs don't exist because he can't see them.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-u...

‘We wasted a lot of lives’: CIA spymaster’s caution over past Iran intervention resurfaces from beyond the grave A documentary about Peter Sichel – the ‘Jewish James Bond’, whose wine portfolio boasted Blue Nun – includes striking mea culpas about the cost and efficacy of US involvement in the Middle East

This article and the associated documentary might be of interest:
www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ap...

Frustrating news.

Students sitting in the front row? Nah. (Think vampires and garlic.)

Hello Norma, I knew you at the Other Place; we shared our admiration of Peter C-A.

@hookland.bsky.social and friends. Laudatory review of the recent biography by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan of J.G. Ballard:

Even when it amounts to 'No comment'.

Kubrick captured the moment on film.

Oh yes, Kenneth Clark.

A very Happy Birthday to you, Jane.

Better angry women than reactionary men.

Pope James David Vance the First The vice president has decided he’s a more accomplished theologian than Leo XIV.

The Atlantic's offered him the top job: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

This excerpt from a review of Ian Buruma's recent book on wartime Berlin seems apposite:

Testing tolerance levels from over-size shoes to blasphemy.

Sterling work. All credit to the Guardian for keeping Putin's invasion in the headlines.

Farage has found his Boswell.

Written with panache. I particularly liked the description of A.J.P. Taylor once feeling 'deeply uncomfortable, as chaplain on a pirates’ ship.'

A superb and pointed analysis. Many thanks.

Repeat offenders, the lot of them.

There's growing disquiet in the military. The Iran war made it worse Since Trump began his second term, his administration's use of the armed forces has left a growing number in the military unsettled, according to NPR interviews with service members and advocates.

In fairness, there's also this:
www.npr.org/2026/04/10/n...

Yes. Not a fleeting memory but one that draws you in, dissolving the present and the familiar.

Acute and lacerating criticism of MAGA's foreign policy myopia. A very fine piece.

Scruton's trips behind the Iron Curtain to talk to Czech dissidents might have added to the misplaced Romanticism.

Replace 'lacked' with 'had', I think.

I think the author mangled the intended meaning.

An ancient and arresting landscape.

Agreed. Re. the Suez parallel, perhaps it's only a kind of journalistic short-hand suggestive of past military misadventures rather than claiming any deeper connections. Journalists could as well draw a parallel with e.g. the Walcheren expedition if only it were more widely known.

A very Happy Birthday to you, Laine, our favourite poet of paths and pebbles. 🍷

Location is also key in The Third Man but I wonder whether it could have been set in another zoned city, Berlin, rather than Vienna. I'm unsure.

From the NYT obituary for Norman Bussel, a POW in Nazi Germany: