Moar and moar on performative reading, sigh: Booksmaxxing: how reading became sexy (haven't we been here before?)
***
I haven't actually read the whole of this yet, but on reading and the sexxy, it goes the full academic: Romantasy and the quest for cliteracy. Abstract:
Romantasy – a hybrid genre of romance and fantasy – is well known for its explicit ‘spicy’ content. Like romance fiction, female desire and pleasure are central to the narrative. Drawing on textual analysis from three popular romantasy series, this article examines the genre’s potential to foster cultural cliteracy: or the recognition and understanding of the clitoris as a central site of sexual pleasure. It explores how depictions of clitoral stimulation, female sexual response and orgasm function as a form of public pedagogy on female sexual embodiment. Through detailed sensory description, romantasy offers rich narratives of female pleasure that contrast the often disembodied and risk-focused approaches that pervade school-based sexuality education. While the genre is not without its limitations, it is argued that romantasy provides readers imaginative, safe spaces to engage with the embodied, erotic and emotional dimensions of sex, gender and relationships. In doing so, it offers valuable counternarratives to patriarchal and phallocentric discourses that continue to constrain how female sexuality is understood and expressed.
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People have been going WO WO SYMBOLICKAL METAPHOR about this: ‘Most famous tree in the world’: Sherwood Forest’s 1,000-year-old Major oak dies. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has a different take (bless 'em):
Although this marks the end of the Major Oak as a living tree, it does not mark the end of its story. The iconic oak tree remains a powerful presence in the landscape and an enduring part of our cultural heritage. The tree and soil beneath it will continue to be a vital refuge for wildlife and the knowledge we have gained by looking after the Major Oak will help preserve other ancient oaks across the country. Its legacy will live on through its saplings and the legends associated with it, with plans being drawn up with our partners, and the tree will continue to be a vital refuge for wildlife.
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Honestly, this secret org sounds like a cross between the school playground and Versailles of the Sun King with who rates and why. I guess the 'got sand kicked in his face' is an aged trope (it was in ads for some body-building thing) but we feel some such back-stories must be in play.
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'Here they come building their big fancy Stonehenges, two wooden posts was good enough for us....': Archaeologists believe they have discovered an earlier, much simpler version of Stonehenge about 3 miles (5km) away from the prehistoric monument.
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A different kind of heritage: Glassy Junction, Southall: the definitive history of ‘London’s first Indian pub’
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Today in London history [last Tuesday]: RSPCA founded in West End coffeehouse, 1824.
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tamaranth Jun. 19th, 2026 06:40 am)
tamaranth Jun. 19th, 2026 06:40 am)2026/087: 1177 BC: A Graphic History of the Year Civilisation Collapsed — Eric H Cline & Glynnis Fawkes
A gorgeously illustrated update to Cline's original 1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, featuring Cline and Fawkes as narrators with a modern viewpoint (for archaeological discoveries et cetera), as well as a pair of fictional characters -- Pel, of the Sea Peoples, and Shesha, an Egyptian scribe.
Together Pel and Shesha time-travel through the Bronze Age, the centuries leading up to the collapse: and they travel physically too, from Amenhotep’s palace to the city of Hattusa via shipwrecks, battles and quayside bartering. Their interactions help to humanise the stories of the people affected by the collapse: migrants (with a comparison to Syrian refugees), merchants (whose luxury goods are no longer obtainable), families listening to grandfather's stories about the good old days...
( Read more... )
(oursin Jun. 18th, 2026 05:57 pm)
oursin Jun. 18th, 2026 05:57 pm)On Tuesday- i.e. the trains were not cancelled and did not suddenly come to a halt short of the desired destination with an announcement that we all had to disembark and get the next one, even if the actual journey was a bit long and dreary and subject to Potemkin Wifi, which claims that there is Rail Company's wifi but won't actually connect.
So I arrived with a slight amount of time in hand, during which I had hoped to grab some light snack to sustain me. Unfortunately although, once I had attained to the high street-ish area, there were several cute little cafe/bakery places, they had all closed extremely early in the afternoon (la, the provinces!) and I was obliged to resort to a wrap from the Subway more or less bang opposite my destination and consume it in the carpark, where I had been informed organisers would be turning up.
However, I had managed to transmit my Powerpoint and they had managed to load it and it was all working, and that was okay, even if I'd have preferred a bit more in the line of a podium to balance my script on.
Oh, and I was talking adjacent to the actual antique and rather manky condoms (in a display case) which were found in the local archives.
Think it went quite well - there were questions afterwards even if my response to several of them was 'er, it's All More Complicated', and further interrogations over the subsequent tea and biscuits.
No ghostly presences were encountered, but it was still daylight when I emerged to catch my train back to Marylebone.
Have submitted my invoice and been informed that it is now In the System.
(I did include an image of Sid on my first slide.)
2026/086: Glyph — Ali Smith
Whoever you thought you weren’t speaking to must’ve heard you after all. [loc. 607]
This is indeed connected to Gliff, but not in the way I think I expected. The roughly contemporary setting allows the characters -- Petra, her estranged younger sister Patricia ('Patch'), and Patricia's adopted daughter Billie -- to literally and figuratively protest the war in Gaza, and to tie society's lack of empathy to the Covid pandemic. ( Read more... )
What I read
Finished Camp! and remained underwhelmed - there was a whole section in the final chapter about how 'in the twenty-first century, feminine-presenting young men have become an increasingly popular part of Chinese culture', and apparently official backlash against this. Having seen the movie Farewell My Concubine about the Peking Opera and its tradition of travesti male stars, this is perhaps more complicated? an older tradition/retro? All felt a bit crammed and rushed.
Literary Review
For some reason felt moved to take a look again at the novels of William Cooper, and picked my ancient Penguin of Scenes from Provincial Life (1950). Set in 1939, just after Munich. Would probably be interestingly compare/contrast with all those novels by women of the period I constantly mention. Joe Lunn and his circle are both sort of flailing in a panic - much discussion of fleeing to the USA but they are not very together about doing this- and being absorbed in their quotidien professional/emotional lives. For 1950 it's remarkably not what one expects - one character, Tom, is gay but much more is made of his being the sort of person who Knows Best about everything and tries to organise everyone's lives for that reason - Joe and his girlfriend have a pregnancy scare but after a gin-swilling evening and some worry the problem disappears - however the abortion issue arises again when one of his sixth-form pupils (he is a physics teacher/novelist) has got his girl friend definitely pregnant and collection is taken up to cover the cost - Tom's boyfriend, besides being fed up with having his life organised for him, is getting interested in GURLZ - Tom, who has particular reasons to for fearing the Nazi invasion he posits is on the horizon (besides being gay, is Jewish) takes boyfriend on holiday to France -
This actually all works well both with the feel of people getting on with their lives/actually not knowing where their lives are going to go. The muddle is the point. And then the War comes and everything changes.
Unfortunately Scenes from Married Life (1961) and set in 1951 just felt rambly, though there is a useful section where Joe's latest novel has his publisher getting worried over censorship and the way that actually worked through nudges and whisper networks.
I more or less finished, with a certain amount of skimming, Tales of the Uneasy, especially as the last tale was a version of something of hers I'd already read.
Re-read of Livia Day, A Trifle Dead (Café La Femme, #1) (2013) and Drowned Vanilla(Café La Femme, #2) (2014)
Cat Sebastian, Hither, Page (Page & Sommers, #1) (2019), on the train, as I was in the middle of Drowned Vanilla and it is a paperback which I did not want to tote around.
On the go
Cat Sebastian, The Missing Page (Page & Sommers, #2) (2022), started on the return journey.
Have begun book for review.
Up next
Maybe more Cafe La Femme?
May culture
01MAY26: Samurai -- British Museum
( Read more... )
01MAY26: Iberia: Gabriela Montero in Recital -- Barbican Milton Court
( Read more... )
16MAY26: Unforgettable: Women artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 -- Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent
( Read more... )
21MAY26: Dido and Aeneas (Purcell, ~1688) -- Cutty Sark
( Read more... )
29MAY26: Backrooms (Parsons, 2026) -- Greenwich Picturehouse
( Read more... )
Also in May: a night in A&E for what wasalmost certainly not a stroke. Investigations continue, tediously but necessarily indicate probably a chronic sinus thing.
01MAY26: Samurai -- British Museum
( Read more... )
01MAY26: Iberia: Gabriela Montero in Recital -- Barbican Milton Court
( Read more... )
16MAY26: Unforgettable: Women artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 -- Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent
( Read more... )
21MAY26: Dido and Aeneas (Purcell, ~1688) -- Cutty Sark
( Read more... )
29MAY26: Backrooms (Parsons, 2026) -- Greenwich Picturehouse
( Read more... )
Also in May: a night in A&E for what was
Off today to talk about CONDOMS in Warwick.
This involves a rather tiresome journey -
Any journey which starts from Marylebone Station, which is not well-connected to the London transport network, is tiresome from the outset.
And am not madly prepossessed with the prospect of Chiltern Railways' stopping trains but at least there is no change.
I am a bit taken aback to discover, rather late in the day, that the venue in which I am speaking also holds Haunted House Tours.
Am now envisaging the story that MR James, Montague Summers, AC Benson, Algernon Blackwood, etc could not bring themselves to record: 'The Case of the Possessed Baudruche'.
(tamaranth Jun. 16th, 2026 08:25 am)
tamaranth Jun. 16th, 2026 08:25 am)2026/085: The Cat and The Masked Woman — Colette (translated by Helen Constantine)
Though Saha, like a human, was watching Camille leave, Alain was sprawling in the chair, his upturned palm like a paw, skillfully playing with the first green prickly conkers of August. [final line of The Cat]
The Cat (original French title La Chatte, feminising the masculine noun) is a short novel set in 1920s Paris. ( Read more... )
You may have noticed my absence from these pages. Aside from general busyness, I attribute this largely to the fractal complexity of family research, which has meant that every time I felt almost ready to share my latest findings, a new mystery opened up. So, I’m leaning into it a little bit. If all goes well, this will be the first of three posts on a person of whom I possess no image or manuscript papers, whose birth and death are alike mysterious, and who was in fact not a blood relation at all, but who played a central role in the family’s affairs over the three decades or so from the mid-1790s to the mid-1820s. This is Frances, also called Fanny, also called Fanch, who begins life as an O’Neill, then becomes a Butler, and finally a Sarmon.
There are three sets of mysteries I’d like to solve: one surrounds Fanny’s birth; the second the death of Charles Butler, her first husband; and the third the identity of “Daniel”, who may or may not be her son. I’ll do it over three posts.
So, Frances (or Fanny) Juliet O'Neill (or O’Neil) was baptized at St George, Hanover Square, on 17 March 1779. The figure on the right, which records the date of her birth, was clearly also initially written as a 17, but then altered to look like a 12. Whether that was just a slip of the pen, who knows? Either way, the parents are listed as “Clotworthy & Frances Oneile.”
The name Clotworthy O’Neill sounds pretty distinctive, and indeed it’s easy to find reference to a minor Irish aristocrat of that name from Shane Castle in County Antrim, who was born in 1688 and who died around 1749 in Bath, where he is apparently buried in the Abbey. So far, I’ve not been able to find any direct reference to his having children, but in 1763 another Clotworthy O’Neill – presumably his son or other close relative – pops up nearby in Bristol, where he marries a West Country heiress called Mary Arundell (1739-1793). A few years later, in 1767, they have a daughter, Phillis, who appears to be their only (legitimate) child. In due course Phillis marries a Clifton apothecary, William Mounier Yeo (1761-1809), “representative of the ancient and family of that name, seated at Huish, in the county of Devon.” Phillis and William live a prosperous life in Clifton and Hotwells, where the thriving spas of that era must have made the life of a high-class apothecary very comfortable, and they have a numerous children, including one delightfully called Beaple. William Yeo dies in 1809 and Phillis lives on in Clifton until her own death in 1846, aged 79.
Now, why do I think that the Clotworthy O’Neil who appears on Fanny’s baptismal record in London’s Hanover Square is connected to the Clotworthy O’Neil who became the father of Phillis in Clifton, Bristol, 12 years earlier?
The main reason, apart from Clotworthy’s distinctive name, is that in later life Fanny is a visitor to “Mrs Yeo” in Clifton, from as early at 1798 to as late as 1821. There is clearly some connection: either they are half-sisters (if their father is the same Clotworthy) or perhaps more distant relatives (if there are multiple Clotworthys).
In any case, Fanny’s mother, recorded as “Frances Oneile”, is clearly not Mary Arundell. There are no doubt other possible interpretations, but the most obvious inference is that Fanny is Clotworthy’s illegitimate daughter.
Between her birth in 1779 and 1798 I have no information on her at all. However, in the latter year, she pops up in the Butler household in 6, Cheyne Walk, where she is apparently already a fixture. We first glimpse her in this letter from Weeden I’s third son, Charles, to his elder brother, George, who is in Prussia undertaking a Grand Tour of sorts. The scene is the Butler dinner table, and the dramatis personae are Weeden I, his wife Anne Giberne, his eldest son Weeden II, his daughter, Harriot, Charles himself, and … Fanny:
It is also in this letter that we first hear of Fanny visiting Mrs Yeo:
At this point Fanny is just nineteen. There’s no indication that she and Charles are yet an item, but a few years later, in April 1803, another letter from Charles (this time to Weeden II) leaves no doubt. This one is written just a few weeks after Anne Giberne’s death, and Fanny has clearly played a key part in looking after the stricken Weeden I – a task more necessary because Harriet has (as related in an earlier entry) had something of a hysterical fit:
“No one so capable as Fanny!” is the Austenian mot juste, I think. Indeed, if there’s an Austen book that her story reminds me of, it’s definitely Persuasion. This will become clearer in the second part of her story, though in this first part there’s also a slice of Mansfield Park, with Charles in the role of Edmund.
Anyway, on 3rd October 1804 Charles and Fanny are married in St Luke’s Church, their local church in Chelsea. The marriage is performed by Weeden I, and Weeden II and Harriot are the witnesses, along with the church’s curate. There are no witnesses from the O’Neil side of the family.
At this point, my main questions are:
1) What is the secret of Fanny’s parentage? Does she share a father with Mrs Yeo? Who was her mother?
2) When, and how did she come to be living in the Butler household? And how did she spend her childhood before that?
The story of Charles and Fanny, but especially of Fanny, is not yet half done, but for now let us leave them in connubial bliss.
There are three sets of mysteries I’d like to solve: one surrounds Fanny’s birth; the second the death of Charles Butler, her first husband; and the third the identity of “Daniel”, who may or may not be her son. I’ll do it over three posts.
So, Frances (or Fanny) Juliet O'Neill (or O’Neil) was baptized at St George, Hanover Square, on 17 March 1779. The figure on the right, which records the date of her birth, was clearly also initially written as a 17, but then altered to look like a 12. Whether that was just a slip of the pen, who knows? Either way, the parents are listed as “Clotworthy & Frances Oneile.”
The name Clotworthy O’Neill sounds pretty distinctive, and indeed it’s easy to find reference to a minor Irish aristocrat of that name from Shane Castle in County Antrim, who was born in 1688 and who died around 1749 in Bath, where he is apparently buried in the Abbey. So far, I’ve not been able to find any direct reference to his having children, but in 1763 another Clotworthy O’Neill – presumably his son or other close relative – pops up nearby in Bristol, where he marries a West Country heiress called Mary Arundell (1739-1793). A few years later, in 1767, they have a daughter, Phillis, who appears to be their only (legitimate) child. In due course Phillis marries a Clifton apothecary, William Mounier Yeo (1761-1809), “representative of the ancient and family of that name, seated at Huish, in the county of Devon.” Phillis and William live a prosperous life in Clifton and Hotwells, where the thriving spas of that era must have made the life of a high-class apothecary very comfortable, and they have a numerous children, including one delightfully called Beaple. William Yeo dies in 1809 and Phillis lives on in Clifton until her own death in 1846, aged 79.
Now, why do I think that the Clotworthy O’Neil who appears on Fanny’s baptismal record in London’s Hanover Square is connected to the Clotworthy O’Neil who became the father of Phillis in Clifton, Bristol, 12 years earlier?
The main reason, apart from Clotworthy’s distinctive name, is that in later life Fanny is a visitor to “Mrs Yeo” in Clifton, from as early at 1798 to as late as 1821. There is clearly some connection: either they are half-sisters (if their father is the same Clotworthy) or perhaps more distant relatives (if there are multiple Clotworthys).
In any case, Fanny’s mother, recorded as “Frances Oneile”, is clearly not Mary Arundell. There are no doubt other possible interpretations, but the most obvious inference is that Fanny is Clotworthy’s illegitimate daughter.
Between her birth in 1779 and 1798 I have no information on her at all. However, in the latter year, she pops up in the Butler household in 6, Cheyne Walk, where she is apparently already a fixture. We first glimpse her in this letter from Weeden I’s third son, Charles, to his elder brother, George, who is in Prussia undertaking a Grand Tour of sorts. The scene is the Butler dinner table, and the dramatis personae are Weeden I, his wife Anne Giberne, his eldest son Weeden II, his daughter, Harriot, Charles himself, and … Fanny:
Now and then you have been thought of but generally in this Case, to reassure has been the chief Object till fond Anxiety had partly gained the Ascendancy, when paternal Affection always closed the Scene with some short Ejaculation for your Safety and Welfare. My Father generally began with “I think he might have written, since his last.” “There has certainly been Time enough,” rejoin’d my Mother. “Oh, there’s no knowing,” replied Weeden. “You can’t possibly tell if he’s hurried, or were likely so & so, & may be this & that,” with a thousand different Conjectures that he has the knack of being capable of forming. “Yes, but my dear,” retorts my honour’d Father, “it is now so many days since he has given us a single line,“ for he has the Dates as pat and regular as a four Hours Watch. “I should not mind, if he was only just to say, I’m well”; and then he chalks it out, as clear and as easy as he would a penny post Letter. I generally try in these Cases to slip in a Word edgeways, and desire him to recollect that in War Time, the opportunities are not as frequent, and to wait the Event of the next Mail. “Ah! Well! Well! I only hope he’s in perfect Health, but it’s strange I have not a Word; however, I’ll not think of him.” This concludes the discourse about your Worship whenever anyone happens to start a Clue for your Enquiry, and Tranquility is for a while restor’d. On these Occasions, Harriet and Fanny generally remain mute, thinking I suppose that the least said, as the whole can only be Conjecture, is the best.
It is also in this letter that we first hear of Fanny visiting Mrs Yeo:
Fanny is return’d from Mr Yeo’s of Clifton, which is tout près, and I never witnessed a more favorable Alteration than she brings from thence. She is grown quite stout, looks exceeding well, us’d to get up regularly at or before six …, and in general without experiencing Fatigue, from the Exercise.
At this point Fanny is just nineteen. There’s no indication that she and Charles are yet an item, but a few years later, in April 1803, another letter from Charles (this time to Weeden II) leaves no doubt. This one is written just a few weeks after Anne Giberne’s death, and Fanny has clearly played a key part in looking after the stricken Weeden I – a task more necessary because Harriet has (as related in an earlier entry) had something of a hysterical fit:
When I think of Fanny I am in Raptures, when I hear from her, I am overjoyed and almost unhappy at the ideas of leaving her. When I yesterday saw her, I was particularly astonish’d at her Deportment & Conduct throughout the different trying scenes she has almost latterly daily encountered
“No one so capable as Fanny!” is the Austenian mot juste, I think. Indeed, if there’s an Austen book that her story reminds me of, it’s definitely Persuasion. This will become clearer in the second part of her story, though in this first part there’s also a slice of Mansfield Park, with Charles in the role of Edmund.
Anyway, on 3rd October 1804 Charles and Fanny are married in St Luke’s Church, their local church in Chelsea. The marriage is performed by Weeden I, and Weeden II and Harriot are the witnesses, along with the church’s curate. There are no witnesses from the O’Neil side of the family.
At this point, my main questions are:
1) What is the secret of Fanny’s parentage? Does she share a father with Mrs Yeo? Who was her mother?
2) When, and how did she come to be living in the Butler household? And how did she spend her childhood before that?
The story of Charles and Fanny, but especially of Fanny, is not yet half done, but for now let us leave them in connubial bliss.
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The wrong people are reading.
People are reading The Wrong Things.
People (or at least, certain people) are reading Too Much.
People are not reading enough.
I'm sure there have been other reading-related panics. (Newspapers vs books, the whole thing about comics of my youth. I'd really like to know if there were hoohahs around radio and tv stopping people engaging with BOOKS.)
'Go and find out what they're doing and tell them to stop it/do something different'.
We at present seem to be in a phase of Reading Is SRS and people Ought To Be Doing It, and we get essays like this:
How I Learned to Read Way, Way More: 'I used to read a few books a year. Now I read about one a week.' (Okay, I am sniggering a bit here.)
It's also depressingly about what Stephen Potter would have called Okay Authors to reference as gambits in Lifemanship.
DFW led me to Donald Barthelme. Barthelme led me to Pynchon. Pynchon led me to wanting to read more in general. While talking to a friend about this, he recommended Clarice Lispector. Lispector led me to the mystics. Weil, Rumi, Eckhart. The mystics led me to philosophy. Then came Dostoevsky, who bridged philosophy and the novel.
Do people who do this conversion narrative about reading ever cop to being turned on to thrillers, sff, middlebrow fiction, or humorous works?
There was also a whole lot in yesterday's Observer on children and reading and Parents No Longer Read To Their Offspring. I do wonder whether the crammed nature of the contemporary educational curriculum means that teachers also no longer read to children, because I can still conjure up happy memories of being read to at school (I think there was also BBC programming for schools which featured this sort of thing?)
2026/084: Heaven's Graveyard — Grace Curtis
"No one can decide if it was a mass hallucination or a -- a mir --" Her lips convulsed. "Some kind of divine event... But I know what this is. It's fuckery." [loc. 3613]
Heaven's Graveyard is a fantasy novel, set in the same world as, though long after the events in, Curtis' earlier Idolfire (which I have not read), and featuring archaeology, sapphic romance, a protagonist who mostly lives in her head, and a murder mystery.
( Read more... )
Last week's bread held out very well:
There was even enough to include in a frittata, along with red bell pepper and pepperoni, for Friday night supper.
Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, with Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour
Today's lunch; a stifado-type casserole of diced beef, served with slowcooked Bellaverde broccoli, baked San Marzano tomatoes and sticky rice.
I suppose it is probably par for the course that the kind of bloke figuring in this article, Matchmakers Are Being Paid $25K to Find Trad Wives for Rich Men has apparently never met a specimen of the female of the species? or possibly another person.
Because those lists sound like somebody who has made up a list of requirements which don't have anything to do with personal preferences - okay, these are probably guys who live on Soylent and rawdog plane flights and so on and have not ever given any thought to the matter of developing individual tastes in things?
Anderson and other professional matchmakers tell WIRED that the men they work with are increasingly asking to be set up with traditional religious conservative women—regardless of whether they themselves self-identify as traditional, religious, or conservative.
I wonder what they mean when they say 'religious' or 'Christian', because, honestly, that covers a lot of territory, hmmmmm? ('Religious' could include a range of non-Christian options, 'Christian' =/= 'conservative'.)
Plus, the men do not sound to be prizes, even with the moolah (assuming it is actual moolah and not some crypto-based dream or AI bubble):
[T]here seems to be a disconnect between some of these men and the women themselves, who are often either already partnered or uninterested in the driven, sometimes socially awkward men who want to date them. For instance, when Anderson did finally manage to find a woman who fit her Austin-based client’s criteria, he alienated her almost instantly with his self-deprecating humor and boorish table manners[.]
Supposing that the women in question have bought into the 'tradwife' thing in the first place, I suspect that they have an image of rather more graciousness and traditional masculine courtesy than appears here in the prospective provider/protector.
The concluding anecdote:
One of her clients, a Dallas businessman in his early forties, went on several fruitless dates with a string of women, all of whom were, per his request, young, conservative, and Christian. But they never quite clicked, until she matched him with someone who was none of the above. They hit it off, and they’re currently still dating.
....
["]Someone may come to you wanting one thing and then realize the things they thought mattered weren't the most important things to be seeking after all.”
suggests that what, in fact, these guys need is just to Get Out More.
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Surprise, surprise: anti-air-pollution intervention has measurable health benefits: Emergency hospital admissions fell after introduction of London’s T-charge and Ulez, study suggests.
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A celebration of the end of England’s badger cull, despite the loss of nearly 250,000 animals, shot or trapped unnecessarily; Cattle in England to get tuberculosis vaccine from 2030 as badger cull to end
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Miller helps save watermill for the second time.
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Memories of Spare Rib (I do wonder if the lack of online availability as at time of writing was due to the BL cyberattack and it may be restored?)
***
‘The first humble beginnings of an agitation’: the women’s suffrage petition of 7 June 1866
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An Unreliable Archive of Internationalism: The Women's Christian College, Madras: 'the significant, overlooked work of colonised women in shaping the terms of the institution’s commitment to internationalism'.
***
From Olympia to Hyde Park: British anti-fascism in the summer of 1934
Off to the Royal Academy to see the Michaelina Wautier exhibition before it finishes.
A female artist who was pretty much erased; painted in genres not usually associated with lady painters; and we note the probable significance of having a male artist (brother) in the family, in fact it looks as though several paintings were collaborations between them.
Worth seeing, even if her paintings do not have the drama of her contemporary Artemisia Gentileschi.... (No decapitations.)
Observed while we were out a poster for this forthcoming exhibition: Hepworth in Colour at the Courtauld, so I think that is going on the agenda.
Also considering the Escher exhibition, adjacent in Somerset House though I'm not sure one would want to combine the two?
Tags:
What I read
Finished Blight, and hope that this series is planned to continue.
Alexis Hall, Father Material (London Calling, #3) (2026) - thought this was rather a slow starter and seemed a bit repetitive at first but then picked up, but honestly, could it get over Luc being absolutely hopeless?
KJ Charles, How to Fake It in Society (2026): um, I'm not sure I'd quite go so far as to say 'phoning it in', but this seemed to adhere to a rather familiar formula?
John Wyndham, The Chrysalids (1955), a recent Kobo deal, and I rather enjoyed The Midwich Cuckoos, but although I did read this ages ago a bit under-impressed. Though did think that these days it would probably be a massive 3-volume at least saga? points for economy.
Slightly Foxed #90: 'Sailing On'.
On the go
Paul Baker, Camp!: The Story of the Attitude that Conquered the World (2023): had enjoyed his book on Polari but I'm a bit less taken with this - I've just come across a passage where he remarks upon Ru-Paul's Drag Race having a fanbase of butch working-class straight males, and I think, 'hello, come on, what about working men's clubs going back decades?' this is hardly a new thing (but can I lay my hands on my copy of Jacob Bloomfield, Drag: A British History, which I suspect has something to this point, not at the moment).
Up next
Probably the latest Literary Review.
Tags:
- books,
- drag,
- dystopia,
- histfic,
- homosexuality,
- litcrit,
- meme,
- performance,
- queer,
- reading,
- romance,
- sff,
- slightly-foxed
2026/083: A Trade of Blood — Robert Jackson Bennett
We have stolen secrets from the bloods of the titans and taught all of nature to grow and warp and shift at our pleasing. [loc. 545]
Cat-herders! Unexpected siblings! More of Ana's background! Another ill-judged liaison! Blue grass! And a very knotty murder mystery... This was an excellent read, and very much not the culmination of a trilogy: this series could run and run, and I for one will be grateful for each new volume.
Full review nearer publication date, but I note that the 'Shadow of the Leviathan' series is rooted firmly in the mundane world, the place where we're reading. The first novel, The Tainted Cup, explored civil servants and builders, and regulatory frameworks: the second, A Drop of Corruption, tackled autocracy, with a side order of shady banking practises. This time...
Farms are not sites of hallowed tradition. They are, if anything, laboratories for profound biological change. [Author's Note]
Read because: I enjoyed the first two books so much, and leapt at the chance to get an ARC. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for the full honest review I'll write closer to UK publication date -- 4th August 2026.
Bus and Windrush line from N London to the southern peripheries to foregather with kake and friends for sociability, which was very agreeable indeed.
Also boo to miserable ol' Matthew Arnold dissing on the growing London railway network of his day as enabling people to merely move between 'a illiberal, dismal life in Islington to a illiberal, dismal life in Camberwell'. Sad git.
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In other news: have received A Very Odd email alleging that The Textbook (of all things) is now listed on Bookbub.com. It is not entirely easy to ascertain the truth of this, as the site has no search function whereby one can locate specific titles, but searching under possible categories has not shown it up. I am not going to page through the alphabetical list of titles! What is this thing that this thing is? Spam? Phishing?
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I actually have some passing acquaintance with Prof King (as usual, archives were in the mix): Turi King: ‘The Knox case shows there was a misunderstanding about what DNA can tell you’. I loved this:
You led the DNA verification of Richard III. How important was that project scientifically and culturally?
What I loved about it was that it wasn’t just the genetics. There were lots of different strands of evidence – genetics, osteology and radio carbon dating – and it involved people from lots of different areas, all bringing their expertise to make it a wonderful project.
....
I think one of the things that was missed in the film is that no one person could have done it on their own. Philippa Langley [from the Richard III Society] absolutely got the project off the ground, but didn’t have the expertise to lead it. Another thing the film didn’t capture was all of the women who led various aspects of the science. I’m not worried I wasn’t in the film, but it was two years of work. Nor did all the money come from the Richard III Society. Some of it did for the excavation, but the vast majority came from Leicester University.
And she doesn't say in any answers in so many words 'It's All More Complicated', but it's very much implied, no?
Tags:
2026/082: Generation Loss — Elizabeth Hand
I’ve lived my entire life expecting the worst, knowing it will happen, seeing it happen. Making it happen, people used to think, then photographing it and making other people see it too.
Cass Neary works in the stock room of a New York bookshop. She was a famous photographer for fifteen minutes back in the Seventies: her book Dead Girls was a hit. But her later photography, of dead or dying punks and addicts, didn't have as much impact: a brutal assault, and a series of failed relationships (her last girlfriend died in the 9/11 attacks) have reduced her to a shadow of herself. Then an old friend tells her he's recommended her for an interview with Aphrodite Kamestos, the legendary photographer who inspired Cass. ( Read more... )
The Ph.D. Is Not a Pit Stop for Creative Writers: Don’t do a Ph.D. program because you want to work on your novel. (Well, with the proviso perhaps that you're not using the PhD programme as MATERIAL either for a campus novel or maybe a murder mystery or even a rom-com.)
But, okay, the UK system is different anyway (this looks to be very much about the US setup), and anyway I did my PhD in a history-related discipline Many Years Ago and I was basically Doing It For Fun, although my workplace also considered it a form of professional development and gave me study leave, paid fees, etc.
And at the same time I was writing fiction - sf and fantasy, i.e something pretty much unrelated to my research (though that, as it were, mulched down into the soil that nourished the roots of a much later fictional endeavour!).
So it was a break and something different using different mental muscles.
I am pretty much there with the author of the article that the anticipated synergy is unlikely to be there, and the credo that
I truly believe that one has a better chance of becoming a writer by working at a bakery, a coffee shop, a bookstore, a 9-to-5 corporate job, a blueberry farm, a publishing house, etc.
(I am reminded of a Jules Feiffer cartoon featuring a guy behind a bar who mentions all these guys who used to come into the bar he tended who had sold their novel on their basis of having done these various manly roughneck career things, like working on fishing boats and tending bar, and he pitched a novel on the basis that he has done all those things, taken the advance and set himself up with a bar of his own.) (If anyone can point me at this, please do.)
Also that 'Much of the performance of creative writing happens in moments of quietude and, quite frankly, daydreaming'.
We are given to wonder whether the people who undertake this rather ill-advised course are writing for FUN or is it srs bznz? Perhaps they would do well to consider the case of Carolyn Heilbrun/Amanda Cross and writing a kind of campus fiction that involves pushing pompous professors out of windows and finding out whodunnit.
2026/081: Gliff — Ali Smith
Every classic old horse story I’ve ever chanced upon in this brave new unlibraried world deals with the bloodiness of humanity to other creatures as well as each other and more often than not ends in dutiful sadness as if the story, not totally broken, is at least broken in. [loc. 992]
Rose and Bri come home from a visit to their mother (who's taken on her sister's job). Their mother's boyfriend, Leif, is driving the campervan, but he abandons them after they find a red line painted around the outside of their house -- and later, of their campervan. He leaves them with enough canned food to last them a while...
( Read more... )
This week's bread: 2:1 wholemeal/strong white and a couple of tablespoons of wheatgerm + some pumpkinseed oil; a bit dense but quite tasty.
Saturday breakfast rolls: was intending brown toasted pinenut, but the pinenuts turned out to be well past their Best Before, so made brown with dried cranberries instead. Not bad.
Today's lunch: halibut fillets which I poached thus (perhaps a little overdone) with samphire sauce, served with mangetout peas and sliced yellow bell pepper roasted in lemon-infused olive oil, and boiled baby Jersey Royal potatoes.
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