Sunday, March 22, 2026

Le Tigre: Deceptacon

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Who are Le Tigre ? Le Tigre (Kathleen Hanna, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman) formed as an obstinately hopeful, even joyous, post-riot grrrl ...
Saturday, March 21, 2026

The Joy of Six 1492

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"It’s a well-worn tactic: Say something obviously offensive and watch as the media debates whether you were right, actually. The result...
Friday, March 20, 2026

The last episode of Shoestring: The Dangerous Game

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This post is written for the 12th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon  on Terence Towles Canote's blog A Shroud of Thoughts. Clic...

Dog solves murder: Labrador cracks 160-year-old case when he digs up bottle of Victorian poison in the garden

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Photo by Grant Durr from Unsplash The judges bid you unclutch your pearls, because the Mail receives today's Headline of the Day Award...
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The Joy of Six 1491

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Mariano delli Santi is concerned by the Information Commissioner's Office and its enthusiasm for age-verification: "The ICO are ac...
Thursday, March 19, 2026

The Somerset & Dorset Railway branch to Burnham-on-Sea

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The YouTube blurb for this video says: The Friendly Line to Burnham was one of a series of delightful programmes in 1980 under the general t...

Landspeed record celebration hit by parking tickets

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As so often these days, BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award. The judges you thought you would enjoy this from the story below: Sout...

On Liberty: New edition gives Harriet Taylor her due

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An edition of On Liberty published this month is the first to name Harriet Taylor Mill as co-author alongside John Stuart Mill, reports the ...
Wednesday, March 18, 2026

Oh, those Russians: Antony Beevor on Rasputin and the Romanovs

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The British military historian Sir Antony Beevor is busy promoting his new book Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs . Here he in the g...

The Joy of Six 1490

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"Our reviewers found that the guests or 'experts' are predominantly drawn from a pool of right wing commentators, politicians, ...

London bars shun Margot Robbie’s gin over shellfish allergen concerns

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Ladies and gentlemen, we have our Headline of the Day. Well done to everyone at the Guardian .

Focus: Sylvia

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Sylvia was that rare thing, a European hit in the UK in 1973. Despite being an instrumental, it got as high as no. 4 in the singles chart. A...
Tuesday, March 17, 2026

There's magnolia, that's for remembrance

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It's almost four years since my mother died. A strong memory from her last days is the magnolia at the end of the street. I saw it every...
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T.S. Eliot rejected George Orwell's Animal Farm for Faber & Faber

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Stefan Collini has reviewed the latest volume of T.S. Eliot's letters for the London Review of Books. It covers the years 1942-4, and t...

Now Ed Davey is implying that Nigel Farage is right

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Early last week I sent off my latest piece for Central Bylines. In it I praised Ed Davey's willingness to challenge the right's cla...
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Monday, March 16, 2026

When John Smith's Magnet Ales were advertised across York

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When I was a student in York the corner shops in the backstreets all had advertising John Smith's Magnet Ales. The shops have mostly clo...

Sign up to be informed each time a new issue of Liberator drops

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The next issue of Liberator – "The magazine for all Liberals" – will drop in a couple of weeks. If you'd like to be notified a...

The Joy of Six 1489

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Searchlight has the measure of Reform UK's leader: "It’s a script Nigel Farage knows well. Candidates or causes closely linked to ...
Sunday, March 15, 2026

Searching for Frankie Howerd in York

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I've made it back from York. Our spring conferences always seem to involve too much travel and not enough conference, so I rarely attend...

Abul Mogard: In a Studded Procession

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I came across this on BBC Radio 3's Night Waves, but what they played was an orchestration of In a Studded Procession rather than the el...
Saturday, March 14, 2026

Standing Stones of Leicestershire and Rutland

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Some local lithic goodness from the redoubtable Bob Trubshaw.
Friday, March 13, 2026

The making of Peter Brook's Lord of the Flies (1963)

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Lord of the Flies was first filmed by Peter Brook in 1963. Gerald Fell , who died in 2021, was the editor of the film and also a sort of aux...

For Central Bylines: Ed Davey takes aim at the unpatriotic right

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I have a new article on  Central Bylines this morning: People on the left tend to be uneasy about patriotism – the last refuge of the scoun...