This is Duino, where Rilke wrote the incomparable Duino Elegies (actually in this castle). And this is what he might have eaten at the trattoria where I took this picture.

Oh Max, why did you ever leave?

Obviously! But where d'you get one?

I really enjoyed this doc feature

Polling station about to close here in the Luberon

Ruby cheering for her wonderful MP ⁦Tulip Siddiq⁩. #dogsatpollingstations Woof

'You're be amazed by how hard it is to persuade women to appear on Channel 4 News . . . the majority say "Oh that's really not my area". Men rarely, if ever, turn us down on those grounds.'

Palmer?

'I have come to think that the female is intuitively more adventurous than the male. I now believe that the most courageous original and thoughtful adventurers have generally been women.' Jan Morris in 2000

Man of the day. Emperor Brummer by Rousseau. National Gallery only put this up last year. Very fine indeed

Haunted by this post. Past hope, past cure, past help

'They can't have two women on the ticket'. I've heard this three times today. Diddums! How pathetic can you get.

Thrilled to hear a scientist on the radio describe slime mould as 'a brainless organism that reproduces with spores'. Analogy potential alert.

Poppies in Norfolk wheat

Letters to the Times 1960, a thread on military nicknames: 'Sir, My father was in the Indian Army and because as a young man he was once out shooting tigers and emptied his shotgun into his own father his men nicknamed him Baghdad.’

Sara Wheeler typically clever & wise in her reflections here from BBC Radio 4 on the uses & misuses of Impostor Syndrome. Imv it’s important to bear in mind that most of history’s impostors—both wicked & benign—have been brazen & ruthlessly resourceful☺️ bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…

John Cheever on nature-writing: 'There is a path through the woods that I could take this rainy morning, but instead I will take the path to the pantry and mix a martini'. Almost always the best.

Beckett once said he wanted to be an airline pilot. This is what he might have said over the tannoy. ('Those of you on the left side will only see the vastness of eternal emptiness without end') - loved this newyorker.com/magazine/1980/…

August Bank holiday, London

A winner here at the Willi Brandt museum in Unkel