"How would it be if you came and had tea with me?" ~ Mr. Tumnus C. S. Lewis revealed that ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’ “All began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen.”

Captain Ahab from Melville’s Moby-Dick is driven by madness as he pursues the White Whale. To sailors, the whale was no mere beast but a symbol—fate, nature, or the untamed wrath of the sea itself. Some say Ahab’s ghost is still sailing, forever bound to the mythic chase.

And much as I love Austen, maybe next year we could do some Elizabeth Gaskell or something? Whoever was the first person to describe North and South as Pride and Prejudice with factories really wasn't wrong!

I kid you not: I was just leaving the library when an old lady, seeing my tower of books, said to my wife, “All these books will keep us out of trouble—and they didn’t cost a penny! Everything is so expensive, I can’t afford groceries… I may as well go to the library!”

Call me crazy but I want a society where everyone from the artist to the janitor is paid a living wage, where careers and creative hobbies aren’t being stolen by machines, where books and music and learning are celebrated instead of demeaned.

o, to possess the looks of a dying minstrel in a fancy picture (George Eliot, The Lifted Veil)

Curiosity is just about the most attractive quality a person can have. It takes real courage to resist a world that doesn't want you to learn or think. In an era when so many brains are becoming mush, you've kept the integrity of your mind and I think that's beautiful.

Goodwin court just behind St Martins Lane unchanged since the days of Dickens note the bow window Georgian architecture

My latest Substack, from my #biography of the Pre-Raphaelite artist & model / muse, Lizzie Siddal lucindahawksley.substack.com/p/an-excerpt-f…

Very unpopular opinion but I think in a healthier world our schools would teach the so-called “useless things”: Latin, old poetry, classic cinema, how to read and enjoy challenging novels. Studying these things won’t make you a better person. But they will give you a better life.

Spotted on the Tube just now: man in mid-20s deeply lost in Canto V of Dante, across the way a woman a few years younger reading Mill on the Floss. Both in hard copy. There is hope!

I hear this all the time. “Why are you reading on the subway? You should be scrolling like the rest of us!” There’s no such thing as performative reading. It’s good to read in public, good to read books you enjoy. Don’t let anyone shame you for seeking to broaden your mind.

I wrote an essay reviewing and ranking my eighty-five FAVORITE books from thirty years of reading - the plays, poems, mysteries, fantasies, diaries that have shaped me. Please tell me in the comments which books I missed. (link below)

I'm begging everyone who hasn't yet to read this book. The premise, about a man living in an infinite house, is terrifically inventive, and it goes in a direction you don't expect. No other living author writes with such a keen sense of horror & beauty. The book of the decade.

it feels so good to give a piece of clothing a longer life by repairing the holes, the tears & imperfections (below: my little embroidery practice on a friend's broken waistband)