The Plashing Vole

I'm such an idiot. My office has windows and a door (obviously). When the wind's blowing, the unequal air pressure sends things flyi...

Some excellent publications reach me today. The new issue of the L ondon Review of Books (it's not just book reviews, but it is from ...

One of the things I love is the serendipity which arises from casual use of language. I saw this in a supermarket small ad this weekend: O...

I imagine they're on the phone to Paul Uppal this morning, asking for a little clarification, given that they're reading all my blog...

You may recall that I recently applied for the post of Head of BBC North, on the assumption that as Peter Salmon, the current postholder, re...

Yes, it's that time of the day when I crack my knuckles and ponder new ways to keep my errant MP honest.  Firstly, a correction. I im...

I mentioned a while ago that Uppal is chair of the All Party Urban Development Group, which seems to see itself as the voice of property dev...

Update: hello Tory Central Office! Enjoy your reading. Stick around, educate yourselves. You selfish, greedy, polluting, arrogant, self-inte...

I read Karen Jankulak's very lucid new Writers of Wales critical biography of Geoffrey of Monmouth today - he's the guy who reall...

I'm spending most of the day trying to work out how our new courses will work (teaching starts next week), but I'm having a lunchtim...

It's 25 years since Back to the Future , and it's being re-released in cinemas, which doesn't happen very often with mainstream ...

I wandered over to Brummidge last night for a performance of Mahler's 8th Symphony , with the CBSO, the CBSO Chorus, CBSO Youth Chorus,...

Some of them are becoming out-and-out beatnik hippy pinko liberals! Here's Sarah Wollaston, MP for Totnes, expressing the exact same sen...

In the grand tradition of university lecturers trying to reach out to students via popular culture and getting it completely wrong, I'm ...

The Pope's here (well, Scotland, which is a different territory to England and Wales in Catholic jurisdictions. It's all good fun: I...

A couple of books in the post today: Infinite Crisis - the post- Crisis on Infinite Earths shakeup of the superhero world and Star Tre...

I went fencing last night, for the first time in ages. As a consequence, my hamstrings are screaming like pigs in an abattoir. It was great ...

As is becoming depressingly clear, Tory Scum MP Paul Uppal's favourite subject is himself, and his sense of victimhood. Yet again, he...

I genuinely don't know whether Ben will love or hate this one. Is it privileged white girls (a Columbia University choir) appropriating ...

I really, really like this desk (in an architecture library, naturally). Given the rate at which I buy books, I could actually build it this...