Take my camel dear (answers on a postcard) … 🐫 A piece by me for Engelsberg Ideas on an entirely random selection of literature’s great opening lines.

What connects Hildegard of Bingen, Barbara Pym, Leonard Bernstein, Victoria Wood, Shakespeare, Emily Brontë, and Alan Bennett?

Planning a performance or recording of Tippett's music? Our grants programme is open till the end of September and we'd love to hear from you. tippettfoundation.org.uk/grants

-Who’s that next to BBC presenter Ben Robinson? -His lunch. (Filming at St Margaret’s at Cliffe about its distinguished former resident Sir Noël Coward)

A year today since the death of the great Michael Gambon - lucky enough to have seen his last stage performances, I wrote up my memories for Engelsberg Ideas. #michaelgambon engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-u…

My review of Caleb Carr’s devoted (and alas posthumous) book about his cat, My Beloved Monster, is in today’s The Spectator spectator.co.uk/article/i-had-…

The artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust) is having a moment, with a documentary in cinemas (by Mark Cousins), and now a fabulous new book on her Glacier paintings from Lund Humphries, which I’ve reviewed for Engelsberg Ideas. engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-ec…

Immensely sad to hear of the death of Paul Bailey at the age of 87. Reading and rereading his novels and memoirs over the last year has been the greatest pleasure imaginable.

My review of Alan Bennett’s new novella, Killing Time, is in this week’s The Spectator. spectator.co.uk/article/a-geri…

Noël Coward was an angry young man whatsonstage.com/news/noel-cowa…

Last scene Noël Coward wrote to receive its world premiere this month whatsonstage.com/news/last-scen…

“The hands of the dying are so often beautiful, and my father’s were no exception.” Oliver Soden writes the story for this year’s winter double issue. And it is a true story. prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/68709/…

Unopened presents… a Filofax… a pair of slippers… Oliver Soden’s father died last Christmas. Here are Oliver’s memories of the man and that time. prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/68709/…

"Dickens eventually had to defend the death of Krook, the sozzled owner of a rag-and-bottle shop, by listing the historical precedents. He knew a thing or two about a rapid reaction between fuel and oxygen that emits a fiery blaze of energy," writes Oliver Soden

"Dickens the Enchanter is a patchwork of loosely thematic essays forming a series of night walks through a unique mind: shadowy, horribly restless, concerned with the devilish and the insane." By Oliver Soden thespectator.com/book-and-art/c…

Russia’s reinvention of invasion literature | Oliver Soden engelsbergideas.com/notebook/russi…