Thomas Halliday
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Thomas Halliday
@tjdhalliday.bsky.social
210 followers 84 following 22 posts
Author of OTHERLANDS (Foyle's Book of the Year 2022), currently writing a second. Palaeontologist, sometime TV quizzer, international croquet player, lapsed choral singer.
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Fungus spotting in Gobion's Wood this half term, where we found about 25 species (of apparently about 550!)
Brown roll-rim mushroom. Classic golf tee shape, brown with speckly white edge to the head. Deadly. Alder bracket. Ridges of fungus that look a bit like melted yellow wax sprinkled in cocoa powder on the side of a tree stump by a pond. Candlesnuff. A weird little fungus that looks like a moose antler with black main stalks and white tips. Just a couple of centimetres tall and surrounded with fallen leaves but very pretty. Too small for anyone to bother trying to eat.
November 3, 2025 at 7:19 PM
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Ever get the feeling you're being watched?

Publication day for the Illustrated Otherlands - get your own copy at all bookshops, or get your local library to order one and borrow it!
10 copies of Otherlands Illustrated, with big dinosaur eyes on the cover, in which is reflected a fabulous scene of rearing sauropods. Ferns adorn the cover, and one book is open showing the story of the asteroid at the last mass extinction.
September 25, 2025 at 4:12 PM
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I mean, seriously, Iceland. I've not even had time to leave the city but you're still just so nice to be in.

Thanks for inviting me, and I'll be back.
From the top of a little hill in the centre, the glass Harpa building looking sleek and modern, dark and glassy, next to a building made to resemble lots of sedimentary rock layers with strange long horizontal windows peeking between them. There are ships in the harbour behind, hills far away, people going for walks.
September 17, 2025 at 9:51 AM
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I've spent the last couple of days in Reykjavik at the Umhverfisthing (Environmental Assembly). Lots of visions of climatic and Environmental hope, great engagement with the community. From the architecture to the food to the people, Iceland has quickly become one of my favourite countries.
Hallgrímskirkja, the big Lutheran church that dominates the skyline from all directions. It looks like a sine wave of basalt columns rising to the clock tower. In front, a statue to Leifr Eiriksson, the leader of the first European group to land in North America. Above, *such* blue sky. The Althing, the Icelandic parliament building that now houses a parliament that has met for almost all of the last 1000 years. In front, there is a stone with The Black Cone of Civil Disobedience, to remind people of their right to protest, disrupt, and revolt against unfair government. The artwork shows a black cone pointing down into and apparently splitting a large grey boulder in two. The view from the shore in Reykjavik is of beautiful bays and distant mountains covered with sunlight. The conference was in Harpa, the concert hall. The walls, shown here from the inside, are like a honeycomb of glass windows, each pane of glass slightly offset at different angles so that the light passes through differently. Here, some seem totally transparent, and others appear a bit yellow.
September 17, 2025 at 9:43 AM
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Anyone in the Brighton area should come and watch some of the Golf Croquet World Team Championships (Tier 2). 5th-10th of August, Sussex County Croquet Club.

Fierce competition between 12 countries to get promotion to the top tier in four years time - and Scotland are in with an outside shot!

🔵🔴⚫🟡
The oldest team in the competition, but one with plenty of experience and the best Scotland squad ever. In the picture, Stephen Wright, our #1 for the competition, and Scotland's first ever international croquet player, having started as a teenager in the 1970s. Martin Murray, our captain and Scotland's most capped player who was top 5 in the world in the 80s and is still formidable. And Mark Shanks, Stefan Colling, and Thomas Halliday, three players who have been voted most improved over the last few years. Gie's but the mallets, we've the will. Auld Scotland counts for something yet.
August 4, 2025 at 9:15 AM
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🚨Exciting news🚨
The illustrated version of Otherlands has appeared through my letterbox!

The art by Gavin Scott is just beautiful, with more than 100 pages of scenes, stories, and guides to bring the past to life.

Perfect for readers aged 7-11, but also for anyone who just wanted more pictures!
A child sitting on the sofa totally engrossed in Otherlands, the illustrated edition. A double page spread of the book featuring a cartoon strip style story about a nesting Caudipteryx. A double page spread of a book featuring a panoramic view of Pliocene Africa, complete with early hominids, elephants, giant otters, sivatheres, and many others.
July 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM