It’s a good one isn‘t it? Perfectly captures the balance between humour and sadness (as ever). I only got around to reading The Lowlife this year: hope your excellent review encourages more listeners/readers to try it!

Hi Valarie, you've reminded I'd love to read these. *joyfully inspired/reaches wearily for the TBR list & a pencil*

621 pages of “Politics and aristocratic life in the last days of the Habsberg Empire” turning out to be more exciting than it may sound

Congratulations to you both!

Ooh, those lucky, lucky students! So glad it went well, Andy. The thought of those students going around this week saying "wow I saw this amazing thing" is very joyful!

Great that Snakeskin is still going! (met George at a WW1 poetry conference in 2013)

Backlisted listener joy here too, Claire

It's an autobiography. must read it again one day!

(See also: Books and Music and Film)

Ok so I’m a Books person, and you ‘Books AND Music’ people have me absolutely floored. You do the same thing all over again in a whole different genre with the same encyclopaedic knowledge and depth of affection and understanding and ability to tease out the themes and nuances. Anyway I love these 🧡

Oh, I love those! They're so practical – what we had before we had fitted kitchens.

I've been using the kitchen drawer pair of pliers! they do the job really well, but they do slightly knacker the plastic of the bottle top, so this wooden gadget looks intriguing. Might need a bit more side leverage? Worth experimenting with some bits of wood...