Jon Courtenay Grimwood
LightNews LightNews
joncg.bsky.social
Jon Courtenay Grimwood
@joncg.bsky.social
4K followers 590 following 820 posts
Maltese born, Edinburgh novelist. ASD. Lapsed journalist. PhD St Andrews. Writes as Jonathan Grimwood, Jack G & Jon Courtenay G. Owns cat that’s a drug addict.
he/him

‘Triumphant…’ FT

http://jonathangrimwood.com
http://jackgrimwood.com
http://j-cg.co.uk
Posts Replies Media Videos
joncg.bsky.social
You'd think the Guardian would be able to spell kidnapped...
Screen grab from Guardian site, reads... Venezuela • Live updates US will be 'strongly involved' in Venezuela oil industry, Trump says after Caracas attacked and Maduro captured 2m ago
January 3, 2026 at 3:25 PM
joncg.bsky.social
File under, we never quite know what's coming next.

One of my favourite embassy reports. The UK ambassador in East Berlin reporting in after the fall of the Wall...
A photocopy of a letter that reads.. British Embassy EAST BERLIN The Rt Hon Douglas Hurd CBE MP Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs London SWl Sir, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC : ANNUAL REVIEW 1989 1. I ended my last year's Review With the remark that "Accidents apart, I expect no substantive change of course in 1989"...
January 2, 2026 at 9:36 AM
joncg.bsky.social
Still stands...
December 31, 2025 at 10:34 PM
joncg.bsky.social
Arrested for lacking the right papers? For protesting the slaughter of the innocents? For suggesting Starmer is in hock to Pharisees who've cornered the global market in loaves and fishes?

The public wants to know...
The picture shows a photograph of grubby and violent chancer 'Tommy R' (not his real name) talking into a microphone while wearing a bad bluish/grey suit, and looking like a seedy used car salesman.
December 28, 2025 at 1:02 PM
joncg.bsky.social
Hive mind (niche):
Does anyone have a good julebolle recipe?
Very sticky Norwegian bun, with zig zag icing on the top, broken open to show sultanas, mincemeat, and probably marzipan. On a white plate, on a cafe table in Oslo.
December 20, 2025 at 4:46 PM
joncg.bsky.social
As always, a tip of the hat to St Columba, the Irish aristocrat who exiled himself to Scotland after starting a war back home by pirating a book. Until demoted, in favour of St Andrew, he was by default Scotland's saint
#standrewsday
Unlikely stained glass window of St Columba in a sailing boat, and twice the size of everyone else, wearing a brown rope and a halo
November 30, 2025 at 3:52 PM
joncg.bsky.social
'I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself...'

Damn.
RIP Tom Stoppard.

He had a good line in cheekbones and louchly-worn coats; wasn't bad with words either.
Black and white photograph of a young Tom Stoppard looking like a French intellectual, with shaggy hair, a cigarette, tweed jacket and a heavy roll neck.
November 29, 2025 at 8:00 PM
joncg.bsky.social
Let Feed the Cat Before You Go Out be the whole of the law.
#Samhain
Nineteenth century engraving showing howling cats on a Parisian rooftop watching witches on broomsticks ride off into the sky.
October 31, 2025 at 8:09 AM
joncg.bsky.social
Just in case you want to push it over two million...
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...
September 27, 2025 at 7:57 PM
joncg.bsky.social
I guess it was inevitable the moment Starmer announced Mandelson had his full and unequivocal support...
Mandelson stands in front of a lectern with a US flag in the background.
September 11, 2025 at 11:09 AM
joncg.bsky.social
Tell them their govt's going back to basics, and reintroducing the England flag carried at Hastings*. Then make drawing at badly a capital offence.

[there are so many things wrong with this statement I'm not going to bother to unpack them]
The golden dragon flag of Wessex. A golden clawed dragon with a serpent's tail on a red background.
September 2, 2025 at 9:21 AM
joncg.bsky.social
Still from the film Death of Stalin, showing Marshall Zhukov wearing full medals and a dashing grey cloak. He flanked by two lesser, less bemedalled, less dashing officers
September 1, 2025 at 9:58 AM
joncg.bsky.social
Full house, unsurprisingly, for Laurent Binet interviewed by Chris Power at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which is a bit of an ultimate buy one get two...

@chrispower.bsky.social @atahualpavasari.bsky.social

#eibf
Two youngish men sit on stage talking about books, in front of a very full audience. The background is lilac, a logo for the Edinburgh International Book Festival is off to one side. The conversation looks intense.
August 19, 2025 at 2:09 PM
joncg.bsky.social
M John Harrison at the Edinburgh Book Festival being M John Harrison, which frankly was enough.
Elderly author, in brown jacket and shortish white beard, sits on stage and stares in intense but slightly perplexed way at a copy of book he conceived in the early 80s, wrote in the early 90s, and has now been republished.
August 16, 2025 at 7:42 PM
joncg.bsky.social
Rereading this for my event with Eva Björg Ægisdóttir and Roland Gulliver at the Edinburgh Book Festival tomorrow, and it's actually not bad, which is a nice surprise.
A paperback copy of Arctic Sun by jack grimwood sits on a cafe table beside a mostly empty cup of coffee. The paperback cover has a man, seen from behind, wading through deep snow towards a distant military base. This is either iconic or a cliche, depending on how you feel about covers. A sticker declares it Times thriller of the month.
August 13, 2025 at 10:53 AM
joncg.bsky.social
If you're at the Edinburgh Book Festival next Thursday, come and watch Eva Björg Egisdóttir (Home Before Dark) and me (wearing my Jack G, Arctic Sun hat) explore getting v v cold as writing method, and why Moominland Midwinter is one of the great unsung existential novels*

[*possibly not]
August 8, 2025 at 1:08 PM
joncg.bsky.social
Fierce, brilliant, frankly terrifying 60 minute set from Australian artist Sam Kissajukian at Summerhall, talking about the 300 paintings he created in a single manic six month episode...

If you're at the Edinburgh Festival, and you can still get tickets, consider going...

(Seriously.)
Very large and blue, semi abstract painting showing two kangaroos, the artist and his nephew all looking up at the night sky. A large, semi abstract, pale blue painting of the skyline in Edinburgh, with a large clock in a tower showing the time as 12.05, which is the time the artist's show starts at the edinburgh festival. Large red painting with black numbers, three to a line for the first two lines, two numbers in the third and last line. The numbers are 0-9, but out of order and the last two, a one and a five, lying on their side.
August 4, 2025 at 4:39 PM
joncg.bsky.social
'...but nothing she might find would be
familiar. other than

by inference: a certain turn of phrase,
the way two bodies touch, that momentary

halcyon of everyone
together, voices, singsong in the dark.'

-

Brilliant, and lyrical, tricksy and sad. As you'd expect from John B's final collection
A thin, paperback book of poetry propped up on a table. The book has a dark cover, with a shadowy fox turning its head to look back at the reader. Other books, out of focus, can be seen behind it.
August 3, 2025 at 1:14 PM
joncg.bsky.social
Heading south to a friend's birthday party in London. Newcastle sun (and sea haar around Berwick.)
View of Newcastle from train, showing cloudy but bluish sky, buildings and the ironwork of a bridge. Fog anove the waves, seen from a train window. The gorse looks dark, and on the imprecise horizon the sea mixes with the sky.
July 24, 2025 at 1:21 PM
joncg.bsky.social
Sat on one floor of this cafe,with @theothersambaker.bsky.social sat on the other, occasionally texting each other about how shit writing is (it's still better than not writing.)
Inside of large, industrial looking cafe in edinburgh, with petal pipes on the ceiling, and lots of brown chairs that would like to be leather. The floor is possibly wood, possibly pretend.
July 17, 2025 at 10:26 AM
joncg.bsky.social
Thought I'd give Rod S on the pyramid stage a miss and watch a Miyazaki instead.
#glastonbury
A pig with dark glasses and a moustache, who is wearing a khaki trench coat and cap, sits next to a uniformed Italian airforce pilot in a darkened cinema in early 1930s Italy.
June 29, 2025 at 3:43 PM
joncg.bsky.social
Paris, innocents and not so innocents abroad, that damn missing manuscript.

Reading this and wondering how much about Robert Louis Stevenson is made up and how much is research...
A small red-coloured, hardback copy of Ian Rankin's The Travelling Companion, resting on a copy of the London Review of Books. The cover type is silver, and the cover shows a stylised bookcase with two human skulls in among the books.
June 22, 2025 at 1:29 PM
joncg.bsky.social
'From the pine tree, learn of the
pine tree; And from the bamboo,
of the bamboo.'

Spent the morning with Sam looking for hidden pandas at the Botanics in Edinburgh. I mean, if they didn't want adults looking they wouldn't have put some of them at head height, right?
Tiny toy plastic panda chewing leaves, hidden on a rock beside a leafy waterfall on the Chinese hillside at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh for children, and some adults, to find. Tiny toy plastic panda, hidden high on the branch of a red barked tree on the Chinese hillside at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh for children, and some adults, to find. Tiny toy plastic panda, tied on the thin branch of a fir tree on the Chinese hillside at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh for children, and some adults, to find. It looks as if it's walking across a bridge.
June 21, 2025 at 9:03 PM
joncg.bsky.social
'Some of y'all can't handle 2 high agency males going at it and it really shows...'

#FrankieGoesToTheWhiteHouse
June 6, 2025 at 9:55 AM
joncg.bsky.social
And it's done and I've successfully defended my thesis and passed my PhD viva, with only literal and missing words corrections.

Think the big shock was discovering it was fun; that, and happily using up more words than I'd usually speak in six months in ninety minutes.
May 9, 2025 at 2:26 PM