Lori Inglis Hall
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loriinglishall.bsky.social
Lori Inglis Hall
@loriinglishall.bsky.social
360 followers 650 following 47 posts
Writer with a veg patch. Debut novel THE SHOCK OF THE LIGHT coming early 2026 with the Borough Press (UK) and Pamela Dorman Books (US). Hello.

https://linktr.ee/loriinglishall
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loriinglishall.bsky.social
Lori Inglis Hall @loriinglishall.bsky.social · Dec 31
Happy New Year! 2024 has been a little wild, both good and bad, but will always be the year I made @the-bookseller.bsky.social. A dream come true!
www.thebookseller.com/rights/the-b...
The Borough Press wins Inglis Hall’s debut in six-way auction
Suzie Dooré, editor-at-large for The Borough Press, has triumphed in a six-way auction for Lori Inglis Hall’s debut A World of Our Making, in a significant deal.
www.thebookseller.com
loriinglishall.bsky.social
Thrilled to say I will be speaking about The Shock of the Light at this years Cheltenham Literature Festival alongside brilliant fellow 2026 debut authors Rosie Storey and Imani Thompson. Tickets on sale NOW: www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/the-b...
Promo image for Lori Inglis Hall and Borough Press proof party at Cheltenham Literature Festival, 15 October 2025, 4pm
September 4, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
john-self.bsky.social
"I didn't like winning the Booker at all. Success can be a lot more challenging than failure. I was used to failure, like most writers are. I did failure beautifully, believe me. I didn’t do success quite so well."

I spoke to Pat Barker about her @thebookerprizes.bsky.social-winning The Ghost Road:
Pat Barker interview: ‘Success can be more challenging than failure’ | The Booker Prizes
Thirty years after winning the Booker for The Ghost Road, Pat Barker discusses feeling like an outsider, writing about men, and the under-representation of working-class voices
thebookerprizes.com
April 30, 2025 at 8:31 AM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
krissychula.bsky.social
This is high art
April 6, 2025 at 9:37 PM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
john-self.bsky.social
Which novel probably has more exclamation marks than all his others put together? Which is a bleak little jewel where the author never flinches? Which packs in so much you may suspect the presence of hidden trapdoors?

I wrote about Ian McEwan's best novels for @thebookerprizes.bsky.social website:
Where to start with Ian McEwan: a guide to his best books | The Booker Prizes
As a Booker Prize winner with multiple shortlistings, Ian McEwan stands among the most celebrated authors in modern literary history. As he marks 50 years in print, we select some of his best works
thebookerprizes.com
April 2, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
tomgauld.bsky.social
My cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.
Panel One: A man is cooking in a kitchen. Behind him, his partner unpacks books from a cardboard box and puts them on shelves. He says to here “Your library can't spread in here as well! The books will get damaged by oils and steam from my cooking.” “Good point.” She replies. Panel Two: The woman now sits at the kitchen counter reading. Her books fill every shelf and cupboard in the kitchen. Through the window we can see that outside, in the rain, the man is attempting to cook on a barbecue.
February 15, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
marinaoloughlin.bsky.social
this interview - Lynn Barber on Marianne Faithfull - is the sort of brilliant, bonkers thing nobody writes anymore. It reads like a meeting of fabulous monsters

www.theguardian.com/film/2001/ju...
Marianne Faithfull: 'You know, I'm not everybody's cup of tea!'
Late, rude and unapologetic... and then the interview goes from bad to worse. But after some prompting and wine, Marianne Faithfull talks to Lynn Barber about finding a new lover at last, what she rea...
www.theguardian.com
January 31, 2025 at 11:03 AM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
john-self.bsky.social
“My own particular weakness is a refusal to learn the difference between ‘which’ and ‘that’.”

Julian Barnes on being edited by The New Yorker (from Letters from London):
It begins with the department known, not always affectionately, as the 'style police'. These are the stern puritans who look at one of your sentences and instead of seeing, as you do, a joyful fusion of truth, beauty, rhythm and wit, discover only a doltish wreckage of capsized grammar. Silently, they do their best to protect you from yourself. You emit muted gargles of protest, and attempt to restore your original text. A new set of proofs arrives, and occasionally you will have been graciously permitted a single laxity; but if so, you will also find that a further grammatical delinquency has been corrected. The fact that you never get to talk to the style police, while they retain the power of intervention in your text at any time, makes them seem the more menacing. I used to imagine them sitting in their office with nightsticks and manacles dangling from the walls, swapping satirical and unforgiving opinions of New Yorker writers. Guess how many infinitives that Limey's split this time?' Actually, they are less unbending than I make them sound, and even acknowledge how useful it may be to occasionally split an infinitive. My own particular weakness is a refusal to learn the difference between which and that. I know there's some rule, to do with individuality versus category or something, but I have my own rule, which goes like this (or should it be 'that goes like this? - don't ask me): if you've already got a that doing business in the vicinity, use which instead. I don't think I ever converted the style police to this working principle. The editor who gently interposed himself between me and the style police was Charles McGrath. I worked closely with him for five years, under the overall sovereignty first of Bob Gotdieb and then of Tina Brown. I's customary at this point in the preface to a collection of journalism to praise your editor's tact, savvy, unwavering helpfulness, and so on, and ite equally customary at this point for the preface-reader to let M a mo… McGrath's editing. About halfway through my stint we were on our third or fourth extended conversation about a particular piece; it had been through a couple of sets of galleys and was now in page proof. By this stage any writer knows the article almost by heart: you are as fed up with it as you are familiar, you long for it to be put to bed, but you civilly attend to what you hope will be the last few queries. It was at this point that Chip picked on an adjective I'd used, one of those words like, say, crepuscular or inspissated, which don't form part of your core vocabulary but which you reach for from time to time. 'You've used crepuscular before,' said Chip. 'I don't think so,' I replied. "Yes, I think you have,' he said. 'T'm fairly sure I haven't, I replied, beginning to feel a little irritated - hell, I knew this piece inside out. 'T'm pretty sure you have,' Chip responded - and I could hear his tone hardening too, as if he was really going to dig in on this one. 'Well,' I said rather snappily, 'which galley did I use it on then?' 'Oh,' said Chip, I don't mean this piece. No, it was a couple of pieces back. I'll look it up.' He did. I'd used the word some nine months previously. I naturally excised it now. And that, if anyone wants to know, is editing. After your article has been clipped and styled (not always a gentle process: sometimes the whole poodle is thrown back at you, it is delivered to The New Yorker's fact-checking depart-ment. The operatives here are young, unsleeping, scrupulously polite and astoundingly pertinacious. They bug you to hell and then they save your ass. They are also suspicious of generalization and rhetorical exaggeration, and would prefer that last sentence to read: 'They bug you a quarter of the way to hell and on 17.34 per cent of occasions save your ass.' Making a statement on oath before a judge is as nothing compared with making a statement before a New Yorker fact-checker. They don't mind who they call in their lust for veri… information system, with objective authorities; they check to your face and they check behind your back. When I interviewed Tony Blair at the House of Commons, I was impressed by the elegant door-hinges of the Shadow Cabinet room. My Pevsner guide told me they were attributable to Pugin, or rather, 'Augustus W. N. Pugin'. Pevsner states: 'He designed, it can safely be said, all the details in metal, stained glass, tiles, etc., down to door-furniture, ink-stands, coat-hangers, and so on.' Half-wondering if the department of verification would swallow the phrase 'It can safely be said', I ascribed the hinges to 'Augustus Pugin' in my copy and awaited the fact-checker's call on this and related topics. 'Could we leave out "Augustus" so as not to confuse him with his father?' was the first shot. Sure, no problem: I'd only put 'Augustus Pugin' because I fancied American style prefers 'John Milton' to 'Milton' (the truth also is that I didn't know Pugin had a father, let alone that my suppressing the initials would cause genealogical havoc). Then I waited for the next question. It didn't come. Semi-satirically, and with my Pevsner open at the page before me, I asked, 'You are happy that the hinges are by Pugin?' 'Oh yes,' came the reply, 'I checked with the V & A.' In my five years I only knew the fact-checkers defeated once. In a piece on the redesign of British coins, I referred to members of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee walking past a Landseer on their way to work at Buckingham Palace. The call from New York came through. T'm having a little trouble with the Landseer.' "What sort of trouble?" I need to find out whether it's still hanging where it was hanging on the date your informant walked past it. Well, I suppose you could always ring up Buckingham Palace? *Oh, I've talked to the Palace. No, the problem is, they refuse to confirm or deny whether such a painting is even in the Palace? I used to rather enjoy it when the heat went off me and on to my informants. A… to all So e, up comic disparities between how you describe people and how they see themselves. There was the Lloyd's Name who didn't want it said that he lived 'off Ladbroke Grove' but rather in Holland Park' (well, he was trying to sell his house at the time). There was the other Lloyd's Name who wanted the tainted words second home' altered to 'cottage'. And there was the political observer who jibbed at the label 'veteran' and pleaded with the fact-checker that 'seasoned' would be a more appropriate adjective. But always, in the end, the fact-checkers come back to you, the writer. And it was here that I discovered, after several years of filing, two of the most powerful words of New Yorker-ese: the words on author. If, for example, the fact-checkers are trying to confirm that dream about hamsters which your grandfather had on the night Hitler invaded Poland - a dream never written down but conveyed personally to you on the old boy's knee, a dream of which, since your grandfather's death, you are the sole repository - and if the fact-checkers, having had all your grandfather's living associates up against a wall and having scoured dictionaries of the unconscious without success, finally admit they are stumped, then you murmur soothingly down the transatlantic phone, 'I think you can put that on author.' Those magical words are then scribbled in the margin of the proofs, words absolving The New Yorker and laying the final literary responsibility on you, the writer. Of course, you must utter the phrase in the right tone, implying that you are just as frustrated by the unverifiability as is the checker; and you must not use it too often, lest you be suspected of frivolity, of winging it with the truth. But once pronounced the words have a quietly papal authority. This preface has, faute de mieux, been fact-checked by me (and yes, I can confirm that the United Kingdom's land-mass is very close to that of Oregon), while the Letters from London have benefited from the d…
January 30, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
theguardian.com
Thousands of trees planted in Devon to start creation of Celtic rainforest
Thousands of trees planted in Devon to start creation of Celtic rainforest
More than 2,500 native trees have been planted to form a temperate rainforest in decades to come The first step towards creating a Celtic rainforest – a now extremely rare habitat that once covered large swathes of the west coast of Britain – has been…
www.theguardian.com
January 29, 2025 at 6:17 AM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
londonreviewbookshop.co.uk
has gone from bad to worse. all of these have arrived in the last 15 mins. finally got through to someone at waterstones putney bridge who pleaded complete ignorance of any scarecrow competition (but pretty sure i could hear the other booksellers giggling in the background)
January 28, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
emilyherring.bsky.social
I'm going to reproduce a thread I did on the other place because I think you will like it.

I posit that for every photo of a French philosopher looking drunk there also exists a photo of them looking cool. The drunker they look in the first the cooler they look in the second. Exhibit a Beauvoir.
Black and white photo of a middle aged Beauvoir raising a glass and looking drunk A black and white photo of young Beauvoir looking impossibly cool in a man's coat and a tie
December 19, 2024 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
michaeltanner.bsky.social
I see Undercliffe House is up for sale again. I wrote a long form piece for Viva Lewes about this remarkable place (that I lived directly beneath) a decade ago. A cast of residents that you couldn’t invent, a pure Edward Gorey fantasy.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/1...
January 21, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
theguardian.com
‘Get on my land’: the farmers who want strangers wandering their fields
‘Get on my land’: the farmers who want strangers wandering their fields
A growing number of landholders are joining forces with right-to-roam campaigners to boost public access to the countryside When Debra and Tom Willoughby first arrived at their tenant farm in Nottinghamshire, they tried to reroute a bridleway that runs…
www.theguardian.com
January 8, 2025 at 10:20 AM
loriinglishall.bsky.social
Happy New Year! 2024 has been a little wild, both good and bad, but will always be the year I made @the-bookseller.bsky.social. A dream come true!
www.thebookseller.com/rights/the-b...
The Borough Press wins Inglis Hall’s debut in six-way auction
Suzie Dooré, editor-at-large for The Borough Press, has triumphed in a six-way auction for Lori Inglis Hall’s debut A World of Our Making, in a significant deal.
www.thebookseller.com
December 31, 2024 at 9:13 AM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
seamas.bsky.social
Gonzo's delivery of the single greatest line in film history is made infinitely better once you realise it is an EXACT rendering of Charles Dickens' own emphasis in the original story.
Passage from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: "‘Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world."
December 24, 2024 at 10:26 AM
loriinglishall.bsky.social
Yes! The thought of missing #duvetknowitschristmas is genuinely the first time I've missed the other place.
rhodri.biz Rhodri Marsden @rhodri.biz · Dec 24
So, let's try doing #duvetknowitschristmas here this evening? People are literally Driving Home For Christmas right now, which MIGHT JUST mean that they'll be sleeping somewhere unusual. 1/
December 24, 2024 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
theguardian.com
‘This book is my bible!’ The women who read Miranda July’s All Fours, then blew up their lives
‘This book is my bible!’ The women who read Miranda July’s All Fours, then blew up their lives
The wildly acclaimed novel about a perimenopausal woman going on a journey of erotic awakening has left a wave of women following in the protagonist’s wake ‘I don’t read books that literally,” says Abra, 49, from Arizona. “I don’t read literature as…
www.theguardian.com
December 24, 2024 at 8:48 AM
loriinglishall.bsky.social
Excellent. @londonreview.bsky.social
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Andrew O’Hagan · Disguise-Language: Christopher Isherwood’s Artifice
In a way, ​Isherwood was pre-acclimatised to American unreality. ‘He holds the future of the English novel in his...
www.lrb.co.uk
December 18, 2024 at 5:22 PM
loriinglishall.bsky.social
Oh, I love this.
kardyology.bsky.social Katherine Hardy @kardyology.bsky.social · Dec 12
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

maybe [Ms Hesketh] will now understand what it’s like for someone living 200 miles away to submit a planning application that could dramatically change the place you call home."
Cheshire village turns tables on landowner with sheep museum plan - BBC News
Residents angry over 500 homes in village target the landowner's London pad with a planning bid.
www.bbc.co.uk
December 12, 2024 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
kardyology.bsky.social
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

maybe [Ms Hesketh] will now understand what it’s like for someone living 200 miles away to submit a planning application that could dramatically change the place you call home."
Cheshire village turns tables on landowner with sheep museum plan - BBC News
Residents angry over 500 homes in village target the landowner's London pad with a planning bid.
www.bbc.co.uk
December 12, 2024 at 12:45 PM
loriinglishall.bsky.social
Wow.
20thcenturymarc.marcburrows.co.uk Marc Burrows @20thcenturymarc.marcburrows.co.uk · Dec 9
I'm not saying that AI-written books are becoming a problem on Amazon, but here is the first page of a new book on the 1980 Iranian Embassy Siege.
The forweord to a history book that begins "I understand you're looking for a 3000-word foreword for your book that ...", obviously written by ChatGPT The cover of a book called THE SEIGE THAT SHOCKED BRITAIN - London's Iranian Embassy, 1980, by Diane Fairweather. The image is black and white and shows a figures in combat gear looking out of a window.
December 10, 2024 at 10:26 AM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
matociquala.bsky.social
No, even professional writers don't know when to use "that" and when to use "which." This is why we have copyeditors.

{"Professional writers" = "me")
December 8, 2024 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by Lori Inglis Hall
ncrenic.bsky.social
Two stages of writing:

1) This shouldn't take too long
2) Oh no
December 4, 2024 at 7:36 PM