Immigrants & asylum seekers are not our enemies. They are not responsible for the austerity, privatisation, erosion of civic life, thinning of democracy and concentration of power we suffer. But they're being punished for these things. Punished at the behest of the very people who *are* responsible.

Mailing Envelope with Ink and Collage Peter Beard, 1984

Filled with envy.

Forza, amico mio.

Lovely article on Dial House, an absolutely beautiful place. When I went to interview Penny Rimbaud there for Out Of The Woods he told me amazing tall story, claiming to have knocked out the UK’s comms with the nuclear submarine fleet by flying a kite into the nearby Marconi military radio masts

I read a lot of Jeffrey Archer's novels when I was a kid & found them quite exciting. Mind you, I loved that sort of thing – Hornblower, the first six Tom Clancy novels, Douglas Reeman etc etc. Were they a guilty pleasure? No, I was 12/13. But I like how Sinclair writes about it all here:

Have you read his biography, Holy Ghost: The Life and Death of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler by Richard Koloda? A little bit too like an annotated discography in parts, but worth the effort.

"To have no map is frightening. To discover that you can still imagine a destination may be another name for hope."

"It connects wandering with age rather than youthful adventure, which is precisely what makes CC and Given so interesting. The young traveller is expected to be going somewhere. The older traveller knows that eventually the road is going somewhere with you."

There's that.

Have you read the new Cormac McCarthy biography?

You sacrificed your middle age to it!

I haven't read any of my father's books. I did attend the first West End performance of The Heretic (starring Leonard Rossiter as Bruno).

My father died on this day, 27 years ago. My wife found his lifeless body by his desk, moments after his heart gave out. A writer, he had been at work right up until the last seconds of his life: his pen had trailed from an incomplete word, down the page of the yellow legal pad he used for drafts.

They steal the saint while you’re making the shrine -W. S. Merwin, from ‘Korean Figures’ (for m.o.)

Yes.

Didn’t we all? [sigh]

YES! Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature.