Would also recommend the amazing ‘The Book of Secrets’ by @annamazz.bsky.social - definitely one of my favourite books of the year.

Yes, and you missed a great piece of television. 📺

Yeah, actually neither would I.

I’d like to know how many teachers in these schools suffer the same sanctions if they forget a pen or get their hair cut too short.

Rather ashamed this happened. I did my Ed.D there, and I’m frankly embarrassed for them.

I seem to remember at the end, a whole bunch of Hobbits sided with hard man Sharky and enthusiastically adopted fascism. And centralised town planning, oddly.

Bonfire of the Vanities is a crime novel and should be shelved on the Crime section in bookshops.

I’m glad you said that. I literally finished it yesterday, and had pretty much the same thought. Also, she was a woman on the train.

JRRT was also clear that no creatures were utterly irredeemable, even going to show some orcs aspiring to a life away from the services of a tyrannical master, and others demonstrating traits of loyalty to one other. And of course, the hallowed elves could be real bastards when they wanted to be.

Exactly. I’m deliberately minimising my own social media activities, not just because of the distraction and short attention problems, but ethically (they really are increasingly problematic with their array of idiot owner), but also cos the novelty isn’t there anymore.

As someone who was christened by a female Church of England priest inside a Catholic church, I’d say GBNews really needs to accept that there’s a lot modern Christians can deal with these days.

This reminds me of when I wrote my undergrad dissertation and included a chapter comparing Brave New World with 1984. It wasn't until years later my complete absence of research skills became apparent when I discovered that Aldous Huxley used to teach Orwell at Eton.