Started this in April 2019, feels like a lifetime ago

What I hate about Poppy Day is how it glorifies war. You can’t move in Britain for people talking about what a jolly lark the Somme was or quoting Wilfred Owen's famous poem "This Is Such Fun, We Should Do More Of It".

Thirty-three years ago the ECB issued a set of postcards of the six Test grounds in England with photos taken by the legendary Ken Kelly. Interesting to see how much some of them have changed ... a couple almost unrecognisable ... No.1 The Oval

“Ten years I have had my soul flattened and pressed till it’s not the thickness of paper. Henry has ground me in the mill of his desires, and now I am fined down to dust I am no more use to him, I am powder in the wind.” Dame Hilary Mantel. #WolfHall tomorrow, BBC1 9pm.

BREAKING: King Charles has been caught on hot mic talking about the ongoing controversy around the Archbishop of Canterbury’s refusal to resign. He was recorded saying "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be

“When the days they seem to fall through you, just let them go…” Released on this day in 1995. Utterly majestic. Blur - The Universal (live on Jools Holland)

On this day, 61 years ago, a new partnership was formed. #SterlingCooperDraperPryce #OnThisDay December 13, 1963

📆[20/12/1996]| On This Day Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield performed Last Christmas on Channel 4's TFI Friday. #ManicStreetPreachers | Manic Street Preachers | Chris Evans

It bewilders me that an education secretary who proclaims her ambition to “drive up standards in state schools” wants to make it so difficult for state school students to study a language invaluable for the subjects she herself studied at Oxford: history & French

Iraq, 1991

Every day post-COVID I thank God that — for all those thinkpieces we were subjected to in 2020 on ‘masks are here to stay’, ‘is the handshake dead for good?’ &c. — mask-wearing just didn’t become the permanent cultural norm here.

Hypothetical Top Level Domain Names Of Europe In 1199 AD credit: Alena Atlasova.world More about each of them: brilliantmaps.com/tld-europe-119…

5 years to the day since schools closed for Covid and changed forever. That day is v much etched in my memory , the last day of an old era.

A glorious 1972 photo of Tolkien strutting down Catte Street in front of the Radcliffe Camera and the Bod in his Hon DLitt gown, which he wears rather magnificently.

“The year 927, when Æthelstan first formed ­England, should be as recognisable as 1066, the date when ­England was undone.” David Woodman, in his superb new biography of England’s 1st king. England really should be getting ready to celebrate her 1100th birthday in 2 years time

“This is Kevin Maguire ‘eritage” #stgeorgesday

A pro crime barrister. What in the blue sky?!