The Plashing Vole

Here's a song that could have been written for the Papal Conclave which as you know, vents white smoke when a Pope has been elected and ...

Great news for The Dark Place, according to Paul Uppal MP, the secretive millionaire: As the Minister may be aware, the number of pri...

Good afternoon all. Apologies for the late appearance of my daily dispatch from the educational front line. The big news of the day is the...

The clip above is of Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato , which has provided my marking soundtrack for the day. It's a Dutch version...

Did you see what I did there? Did you? So anyway, last night saw rocking up at Birmingham's Town Hall (a lovely venue) to see Steve Re...

I wonder what people would have said ten years ago when asked to describe a Romanian or Bulgarian. Perhaps some highly-informed people would...

As you may know, my appalling MP is a Secretive Millionaire, having made his pile in property speculation (adding the sum of 0 to human know...

Afternoon all. I've been quiet today because I've been too busy to become outraged by anything. First of all we had a seminar on Par...

Bonus points if you know where I stole that title from. Anyway, if you tune in to Radio 3 tonight, you can hear one of my very favourite c...

Afternoon all. I've just finished a class on Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies , which is appropriate because I spent the weekend partying ...

Lots of feverish speculation around about what the Eastleigh by-election 'means' for 2015. So here's some more. Nothing. Tha...

Morning everybody. Lots to do today, including finishing a column for the university magazine and seeing lots of dissertation students - mos...

I've been presented with a book by a comrade returning in triumph from Japan, carefully chosen with me in mind. It's Essays in I...

I couldn't resist the confluence of two momentous events: the Papal Conclave and the Eastleigh By-election Cardinal 1: What are we h...

One of my favourite writers can be found over at Days of Enlightenment . He's an Eeyore-ish character: grumpy, depressed and misanthropi...

I wake today to this headline : Labour to join Tories in backing a £25bn deal to renew Trident fleet and the story starts with this: L...