You’re right about first impressions mattering. If a new line launches and it delivers a high quality service, people will forget about the overspend and the delays (eg, the Elizabeth line)

Here's Frank on the Simpsons, which he voiced while I worked for him. I can not tell you how often I walked around the Gehry partners office saying "yo Frank Gehry, like curvilinear forms much" after this aired www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MyT...

First verse opens with ‘Welcome to my Christmas song’, which I’ve always taken as confirmation that the whole thing was Elton’s attempt to write a Yuletide banger for the royalties and nothing more. Job done

Beautiful cover on that edition too

British (from London) and think I’ve only ever heard the ‘s’ version

standing up for the BBC (or anything really) would involve Starmer being in possession of a backbone

Hate is a strong word, but I re-read it last year (having loved it when I first read it two decades ago) and couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about

Is it ego? I'm going with ego

I used to love your twitter travelogues; the one from São Paulo made winter just that bit more bearable

Thanks for sharing these photographs. I used to live right by Republic (still visit occasionally) and was curious about the buildings and the sculptures; looking forward to any future updates on their history.

Genoa. It's reachable from London by train within a day, has loads of history (plus beaches). And its range of public transport oddities is impressive, including multiple funiculars, a narrow gauge railway to the mountains, and a lift that runs both horizontally and vertically.

I thought the same! But I just checked and it’s Vilnius, Lithuania