I think it is an unacknowledgedly big problem when people take on editing projects to satisfy their own free time. So many wonderful, but B-list, authors remain without critical editions because someone has pridefully been doing it for three decades

Olga Tokarczuk - brilliant

I am very much looking forward to talking to students tomorrow about studying English at Trinity. All the details below of where you can find me and when trin.cam.ac.uk/subjects/engli…

Two old dons overheard at the bar "I don't feel equal to Prometheus this evening, but you may". They were of course selecting an ale

One of the best articles I have read in a long time. Superb. Land value tax now

So thrilled to see my dear friend and mentor Chris Smith elected as Chancellor. A voice of reason and ambition in challenging times. He is for me an icon and an idol cam.ac.uk/news/new-chanc…

I ate my sandwich that I brought to work for my lunch at 9.45am today. It has been a terrible day

Strong, optimistic stuff

Have spent the day trying to work out an essentially trivial problem about Augustine, and it involved reading in five languages. The half-sentence it will add to my work was hard won and I want a lie down now

Lottie is one of the next great thinkers in poetics. This paper is groundbreaking. I am very lucky to call her a friend

Just overheard someone on the phone "That would be my advice, and that is what I would do, if I were doing it, I would do it like that." If only I had his confidence!

Getting emails from the university follows a predictable formula. The more insistent the email is about its own importance "IMPORTANT" "ACTION REQUIRED", the less important it will be. The real important stuff will be at the bottom for a 4000 word plain-text waffle

I saw Girl from the North Country at The Old Vic last week. It was unexpectedly outstanding, vitally new and deeply felt tragedy. Subtended by phenomenal arrangements of Bob Dylan music. The lead performance by Katie Brayben is incomparably brilliant oldvictheatre.com/stage/girl-fro…

“Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano. What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.” — David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

BBC iplayer’s no. 1 recommendation for me is a junior minister making a statement on the infected blood enquiry on BBC Parliament. I don’t think that’s a compliment

My modest addition to this debate on reading aloud in the humanities this old account in the LRB about Christopher Ricks (by Colin Burrow)

My modest addition to this debate on reading aloud in the humanities this old account in the LRB about Christopher Ricks (by Colin Burrow)

A wonderful vignette just witnessed in Boots. Middle-aged bloke shyly walks up to the counter with a box of condoms. The cashier brightly says "they're 3 for 2 if you'd like to get more". He calmly responds "I think that will be enough"