I've lost count of how many streets claim to be Britain's steepest, but Vale St in Bristol is one of them - and that's the setting of Banksy's latest masterwork (photo courtesy of Ayako, who lives nearby).


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I switched on the radio this afternoon to hear someone paying a very nice tribute to Jan Morris, who has just died, aged 94. (A good age - the same as my mother - but still.) It turned out to be Michael Palin ( Read more... )

One of the regular topics of conversation with my Japanese friends over the last few months has been the relative scarcity of COVID-19 in Japan, compared to the West in general and the UK in particular. I've had similar conversations with Haawa in Uganda, where the death rate is precisely zero. Of course this could all change, and there have been ( Read more... )

Rowling is of course a symptom, not a cause - but she's also a convenient stalking horse, and I'm sure the timing of this announcement is no coincidence ( Read more... )

"History is ghastly. Nothing but misery and war and brutality. One should be glad it’s over."

Thus Clare Paling, the protagonist of Penelope Lively's Judgement Day. She is being sarcastic, and Lively ironic - for both are historians, and know better ( Read more... )

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Today the statue of Edward Colston in the centre of Bristol was pulled down by Black Lives Matter protestors, and thrown into the harbour. People from outside the city may not understand the resonances of this act, other than that Colston was a slaver who bequeathed much of his wealth to the city. A lot of things in Bristol are consequently named ( Read more... )

The government seems to be doing everything it can to encourage a second wave of Covid-19 ( Read more... )

I've not said much about the politics of the virus in recent days, but since there's a lot of misinformation and history rewriting about, I want to make a few notes here before I get sucked into the spin cycle. Some of this is just copied over from Facebook, but that's an oubliette. I'm not offering much commentary, just a few things that I've ( Read more... )

Here's a game, if you'd like to play.

A week or two back on Facebook, someone speculated that Ian McEwan was probably even now writing a novel based on the Covid-19 lockdown, and asked for suggestions as to what it would be called. There were some good replies, but the best in my opinion was Containment. In fact, if McEwan doesn't write a book ( Read more... )

I'm a cynical old soul who find orchestrated displays of emotion rather cloying, so I don't suppose I'd have participated in yesterday evening's unfortunately named "Clap for Carers" had not all the neighbours I happen to know best been medical professionals. As it was, I was roused from my computer at 8pm by the sound of saucepans being rattled ( Read more... )