Digital Minimalism

The New York Public Library
“Just a few days later, the terms of her posthumous fame were set when the Observer published an anguished essay, by the influential literary critic Al Alvarez, containing loaded phrases such as ‘peculiar genius’ and ‘possessed’. And so the melodramatic Plath myth began, and for well over half a century she has been more famous for her death than for her life and work.” Ann Kennedy Smith’s review of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath.

A discussion of Aristotle’s use of hamartia, and how it came to be (mis)understood as denoting a tragic flaw.

An interview with John Berger at 90.

“For pure pleasure I turn to essays and book reviews to which I am addicted. Among my (fairly obvious) favourites are Craig Raine’s Haydn and the Valve Trumpet, John Carey’s Original Copy, James Wood’s The Broken Estate, Edmund Wilson’s The Triple Thinkers, Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, John Updike’s Picked up Pieces, Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind and VS Naipaul’s The Writer and the World. I suppose they interest me because they were all doing the most exalted possible version of journalism. I feel like a Ryanair pilot gazing at a spaceship.” James Marriott is great for book recommendations if you like essays and history.

Plays to see on tour in 2026. (I highly recommend the Rupert Goold Hamlet.)

The Jewish Food Society has published a cookbook.

“In The Obituary of Richard Smyth, which is a catalogue of all the people who died in Smyth’s parish between 1627-1674, the ones that are most affecting are those with just a little detail, such as ‘Mr. Leeche’s wife (minister at Bow Church), drowned herself in the Thames; taken up at Cuckold’s Point.’ Bow Church is still there, as is Cuckold’s Point. One cannot read Smyth without noting that several of the priestly suicides happen on holy days.” Henry Oliver on John Aubrey (and Izaac Walton, and Samuel Johnson).

“A spooky convergence is happening in media. Everything that is not already television is turning into television.” Derek Thompson’s article Everything Is Television made me more hardline in defence of radio. Radio is not dead!

Colour palettes for everything!

How to Build a Newsletter People Actually Read. This is one of my golden rules regardless of what I’m writing: “Curate your reading diet. Your own writing improves when you’re regularly consuming excellent work.”

For International Women’s Day, Five Forgotten Feminist Novels: an interesting list.

I shared this article on the development of the English language with a colleague, so I may as well share it here too. (I have read it before but it’s such an interesting, easy read that I always end up rereading it.)

This video of the Merchant & Mills house (where you can stay if you do one of their residential courses). I plan to adopt some of its curtain designs.

You can download 60,000 artworks from the National Gallery!

I knew The Daughter of Time had been voted #1 in a list of top 100 crime novels, but now I have found the full list. (I love TDoT but The Moonstone was robbed. And The Talented Mr Ripley at #45? Absurd!)