Sarah Drew
LightNews LightNews
banner
sarah-drew.com
Sarah Drew
@sarah-drew.com
470 followers 320 following 780 posts
Writing about romance & red tape in 1819. Unbalanced accountant, voracious reader, few fixed opinions, slightly Scottish.

https://sarah-drew.com

Amazing cover art ©www.claremelinsky.co.uk
Posts Replies Media Videos
sarah-drew.com
This is my favourite illustration from Hugh Thomson's Emma—Mr Knightley "walking away from William Larkins". The polished boots, Wm Larkins' bemusement, the detailing of the pegs on the haystacks and the shading of the trees.
A well dressed early C19th gentleman (Mr Knightley) with his head bent and his hands clasped behind his back is walking away from a farmer on a horse. The farmer (William Larkins) looks after Mr Knightley bemusedly. The picture illustrates this extract from Chapter 15. " Of their all removing to Donwell, Emma had already had her own passing thoughts. Like him, she had tried the scheme and rejected it; but such an alternative as this had not occurred to her. She was sensible of all the affection it evinced. She felt that, in quitting Donwell, he must be sacrificing a great deal of independence of hours and habits; that in living constantly with her father, and in no house of his own, there would be much, very much, to be borne with. She promised to think of it, and advised him to think of it more; but he was fully convinced, that no reflection could alter his wishes or his opinion on the subject. He had given it, he could assure her, very long and calm consideration; he had been walking away from William Larkins the whole morning, to have his thoughts to himself. “Ah! there is one difficulty unprovided for,” cried Emma. “I am sure William Larkins will not like it. You must get his consent before you ask mine.”
November 26, 2025 at 12:24 AM
sarah-drew.com
Signed up, thanks
November 25, 2025 at 2:21 PM
sarah-drew.com
Registration has now closed, apparently. Bother.
November 25, 2025 at 12:27 PM
sarah-drew.com
I can't unsee that.
November 22, 2025 at 4:26 PM
sarah-drew.com
I am taking this all so so personally! 🫢
November 13, 2025 at 9:09 PM
Reposted by Sarah Drew
spokes.org.uk
☝️ #PrincesStreet plans unfit for modern #European capital

🙋 Wed 11 Nov p.m. #Planning Cttee debate

Item 7.3 on agenda--> democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/ieListDocume...

Webcast--> edinburgh.public-i.tv/core/portal/...

@edi.bike @edfoc.bsky.social @chdot.bsky.social @sw20.info @thecockburn.bsky.social
start of spokes deputation http://www.spokes.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/251112-CEC-PLANNING-COMMITTEE-SPOKES-Deputation-princes-st.pdf CEC PLANNING COMMITTEE, 12.11.25 - written deputation from Spokes 7.3 Non-Statutory Planning Guidance – Finalised Princes Street and Waverley Valley Strategy The proposed draft guidance, whilst including many worthwhile proposals, has one over-riding failing, in that it completely neglects the huge area of land occupied by roadway, and assumes it must stay as now. It is as if we have separate Planning and Transport departments rather than a unified Place department. This cannot be the right approach for a holistic view of Princes Street and the Waverley Valley. Nor is it right that large amounts of money should be invested without the whole area being considered in a unified manner. The earlier, consultation, proposals were widely criticised by the West End and New Town Community Councils, by internationally renowned Richard Murphy architects, and others for lacking ambition and imagination. Nor did they go anywhere near the recommendations of the Council's commissioned report by urban designer Jan Gehl, way back in 2010, who identified "cycle and pedestrian priority" and reduced vehicle presence as "essential" for Princes Street to achieve its "huge potential." Sadly, the draft Guidance document presented today shows little change in these respects. It fails to live up to what is expected in the heart of a modern European capital.
November 12, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Reposted by Sarah Drew
writeups.org
With alt text.
You know a country by its values. By what a country values. And it turns out thatwhat a country values can change overtime. Sometimes, though, there's a sort of cognitive delay between the country you think you are in, and the country you've actually become. For example, you can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word - but if you then chronically underfund your cultural institutions, and treat your cultural workers with contempt, many people will suspect you of being full of it. And as the decades pass - and fewer and fewer Shakespeares and Austens and Orwells emerge from your little island - even more people will begin to suspect that in truth you do not value culture at all, and are in fact running a giant heritage museum in which the only cultural workers you respect are the dead ones.
November 12, 2025 at 8:55 AM
sarah-drew.com
I think it was one of my accountancy textbooks.
November 11, 2025 at 12:37 AM
sarah-drew.com
Was dining alone with a book. A couple stopped on their way past my table. "You gotta tell us what the book is. We been watching you read it, & you frowned & you laughed & you stopped with a spoonful of crème brulée half way to your mouth. We gotta know what the book is."
November 10, 2025 at 9:42 PM
sarah-drew.com
Under-rated third-biller. Casablanca needed his suave irreverence. (Like North by Northwest wouldn't be the same without James Mason.) Came into his own in Mr Skeffington.
November 10, 2025 at 3:47 PM
sarah-drew.com
This is Sir Gregory Page-Turner. "Come on," he's saying, "come on, bring on de worms."
Painting of Sir Gregory Page-Turner in 1768, by Pompeo Batoni, He is wearing a long red coat, red waistcoat and breeches. In the background is a bust of ?Athene and a ruined /abbey. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pompeo_Batoni_-_Sir_Gregory_Page-Turner_-_WGA1508.jpg
November 7, 2025 at 12:29 PM
sarah-drew.com
A blog?
A blog about how you research and how you organise it (handwritten notebooks? brain soup? pretty pink sticky labels?) so it's not all: "the bit I need was on a RH page..."
Please?
November 6, 2025 at 3:07 PM
sarah-drew.com
They're selling a book about Victorian Women Detectives. One-clicked!
November 3, 2025 at 2:14 PM
sarah-drew.com
...but not "winching"—why???
October 31, 2025 at 10:58 PM
sarah-drew.com
Bits had flaked away,
But they could just make out a sign that read
In Latin or Italian—“As I stand
Here ever, so your Leader and your God
Founds his eternal Empire.” This chap said
All they could see was miles and miles of sand.
He thought the whole thing was distinctly odd.
October 30, 2025 at 2:18 PM
sarah-drew.com
Talking of package tours, at lunch today
This chap was telling us about a queer
Experience in Tripoli last year.
It seems—or was it Tunis?—anyway
They took a longish trip inland, and they
Were somewhat puzzled when the coach stopped near
This massive concrete tower, tier on tier
Of crumbling arches.
Illustration by the amazing Chaya Prabhat - https://chaayaprabhat.com/ozymandias - with permission. The image has a semi-realistic, semi-abstract background in yellows, ambers, oranges of a desert with a huge golden sun. In the foreground, in dark brown, a tilted plinth, with two legs only remaining of a statue above. On the plinth are the first words of Shelley's Ozymandias— "I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. "
October 30, 2025 at 2:18 PM
sarah-drew.com
Spreadsheets are one of the ways we know there is a Beneficent Being. Spreadsheets and #BreconGin.
Though avoid the latter if operating the former.
October 29, 2025 at 9:40 AM