It’s one month until the summer solstice, and so begins the most glorious time of year. Until late July daylight lasts til at least 9pm, and then comes the long magic of twilight. Time for a favourite line from Monty Don: Go outside and fill your boots with light.

On Holocaust Memorial Day one salient fact needs restating. Across territory taken in Eastern Europe, in town after town, village after village and hamlet after hamlet, it wasn’t just that the Nazis massacred Jews, it’s that they stood back to let locals massacre Jews.

As a student of 90’s daytime TV, I did not see Richard Madeley’s transformation coming.

Excellent summary by former head of MI6, Sir Alex Younger, of this new era in geopolitics…adapt or die

Really important and moving account of state failure by Madison Marriage: ft.com/content/f94a71…

Yet another reason why the Chagos Islands deal makes no sense.

“I never had any large goals as an actor, all I ever wanted to do was work.” RIP Gene Hackman, one of the very few screen actors who made every single one of the movies they were in, worth watching.

When we arrived in Bucha just a day after it was liberated in April of 2022 this is what we found: 8 men executed in an alley with their hands tied behind their backs. Ukrainians have no other choice but to keep fighting because this is what will happen across the nation if they

Is Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying bill one of the worst pieces of legislation to even get to Committee stage? It’s so ignorant of the law, of end of life care and of medical ethics, I’m beginning to think It was drafted by her opponents to freeze the debate for years to come.

Rewatching the movie The Creator, I really liked it even tho many didn’t, and it’s still one of the few films to realise the cinematic beauty of Radiohead. youtu.be/siz0q75zYKk

Goodness this is shameless.

Great, mad, deservedly overlong and completely brilliant interview with Marxist royalty Slavoj Žižek on BBC Newsnight, which means it’s time for his best quote ever.

If you have a garden pond, don’t forget the wildlife in this hot weather. Even the frogs will love a freezer block or ice pack floating nearby…

This is a great piece by ⁦Daniel Sandford⁩, rich in fascinating details, on how the Wagner Group recruits small-time London criminals into Russia’s war on Ukraine. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is really worth (re)reading; a universal story of the human condition, a parable for many of today’s most contentious issues, and all stimulated by a gem of what Stevenson discovered in his research:

Man played so ANGRY 🔥🔥🔥 RIP

Are there better songs in the 3 minute pop canon that have so much richness of character, and such melancholia, than McCartney’s Eleanor Rigby and Lou Reed’s Take a Walk on the Wild Side?

For your delectation.

On the 10th anniversary of The Bataclan attack, here’s the BBC Newsnight piece I made with Alessandra Bonomolo detailing what happened inside the Bataclan that night. It’s still a very difficult watch. m.youtube.com/watch?v=8K1lv7…

The short afternoon ends, and the year is over - Larkin.