In case you’re listening to the BBC Today Programme on Radio 4, I’ll be on at about 8.45 to talk about… Katy Perry going into space with Jeff Bezos’ fiancée. (And why it may not be exactly a feminist achievement.)

On Sam Mendes’ Beatles, ‘participatory culture’, and the rash of premature fan responses. Late to post, but here’s yesterday’s column for The Observer.

www.theguardian.com/music/2025/a...

I found myself thinking about the Cultural Revolution, and the moment when teenagers at one Beijing's most elite schools murdered one of their teachers in the name of Mao.

I see someone with an interest in the reputation of Deng Xiaoping's daughter, Deng Rong, has trained Chat GPT well.

You should of course click through & read the whole piece, but I found this a striking interviewing in the "content / trigger warnings" debate. Eline Arbo is quite clear that the proliferation of warnings increased the susceptibility of audiences to fainting during the abortion sequence in her play.

Facebook, Instagram, WashPo, Amazon, Twitter. If a photo had been released of Vladimir Putin’s meeting of July 28, 2000, at which he set out the terms of collaboration to Russia’s oligarchs, it would have looked a little like this.

Clicking aimlessly through Wikipedia and I find myself refamiliarising myself with the youth of Felix Yusupov, killer of Rasputin.

Well, Anne Marie Duff is pretty bloody mesmerising in Little Foxes at the Young Vic, isn’t she? Yes, this is a melodrama which telegraphs its twists and turns at every stage, but it’s a magnificent role and Duff nails it.

This is a man who never bothered to find out what happened to Don Juan.

Ozymandias