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Talking to a mate today about this production- said it was very good. And the woman on a scooter is particularly good as Hermia, I think.

Tusk Lodger London Calling First Prince album Off the Wall And The Specials. I was 13 - there was also a lot of shit around too. The 1971 thing was propagated by David Hepworth - he wrote a book all about it. Also did a Spotify playlist which is pretty persuasive but I do wonder if you...

When I was in Madrid I was struck by how much I enjoyed the Tiepolos and Veroneses . Artists I had tended to breeze past on the way to Valasquez and Goya etc somehow not quite of the first rank when placed next to Titian and Rembrandt. The more I spent time with them, the more they revealed...

Re-reading The Information. Reminded again of how funny he is, also how ambitious he is, the ear grabbing voice but some hadn’t worn quite so well - the scenes with young black character, 13, sound tone deaf, he’s writing about what he doesn’t know. However, when he’s riffing on literature...

The degree of popularity/celebrity is head spinning and he knocked out masterpiece after masterpiece while editing Household Words, taking part in am dram, campaigning for all kinds of things (including copyright protection), doing his own one man shows, having a long term illicit affair and...

Yes. There is a strong sense of sincerity in how he does it which draws the reader in, almost despite themselves. I really felt this in DC when Barkis dies. Or the schoolchild in OCS

Which also makes me think of Hugo https://www.angelfire.com/mn3/mixed_lit/hugo_cp.htm

His letter about attending a public execution is pretty grim reading https://m.charlesdickenspage.com/public-execution.html

A chronological list - purely subjective and probably subject to change as i get round to re-reading the less favoured again - rattled off in fifteen minutes or so. I've read them all (plus the non fiction, Sketches from Boz, Christmas Stories and other bits and pieces) and re-read about half of...

Give me a few hours But yes, he managed to get away with some bizarre and clunky moments because so much else is so impressive

Anyone who knows me knows my Instagram is just pictures of bikes and piles of books.

Probably only @WashYourHands would agree but this has been my cotd today. I didn’t want to stick it in COTD as I don’t need the grief but thought van and the Band would once have been peak Glasto demographic. And now it’s Lizzo

Fuck…even I know about Mouse on Mars.

Absolutely- TOCS really droops when the focus is Little Nell.

Yep. I think this is the problem of Dickens - people think they know what he’s like because so many characters have passed into common currency but few people actually read him. He’s a very angry writer - I re-read Curiosity Shop recently - so much vile and cruel behaviour in there. And yes, he...

I re-read it recently. The thing that struck me most was the fascination with the mob - it was like reading something about the Chinese cultural revolution, the savagery of a mass of people, their base desires for violence and summary justice against the individual who stands for something...

There was a very good exhibition at the NPC of Lewis’ portraits. It endeared me to him once more. As a youngster I loved the Blast stuff, read a lot of the fiction but with diminishing returns, Huxley rather skewered him in Antic Hay with his character Lypiatt - a barely concealed version of WL...

Just started Ágota Kristof’s The Notebook. Part of a trilogy centred two children who have to live with their grandmother during Nazi occupation. It’s told in a really spare style but us all about how they try to make themselves invulnerable to pain but also tender feelings. As if they are...

He’s definitely a modernist and I’d argue experimental in hi own way. And yes, funny.

I often think of this thread in my daily battle as a cyclist against Southend’s fucking bus drivers. All of them, every last one is still a cunt.