It occurs to me that the shift, after the Reformation, towards 'justification by faith' ameliorates 'the spurns that patient merit of th'unworthy takes' (Hamlet). In this transcendent perspective, our achievements, so often unrecognised & undervalued, just don't matter so much.

Thank you ⁦The RSC⁩ & ⁦Factory International⁩ for press-night Radiohead Hamlet - during much of which I felt rushed into my own hurtling nightmare of the play. 🚇 💀🎭 Amazing to see Ophelia wrestle ‘To be, or not to be’ into her own speech & being too. 💐

The English Association is in a very dynamic & purposeful phase of its distinguished history - it’s about as old as the discipline itself - & I’m looking forward to attending its conference tomorrow, when I am fortunate enough to be being welcomed as a new Fellow.

Thanks to the English Association for the honour. Delighted to join the Fellowship alongside Tiffany & others I admire at a conference showcasing dynamic work across the discipline, including Dr Sarah Olive’s. Thanks too for recognising ‘Everything to Everybody’ LibraryofBirmingham.

#Shakespeare This week, guest bloggers from the Friends of the Shakespeare Collection (FoSC), highlight their exhibition on how love in the bard’s plays is very rarely uncomplicated - theironroom.wordpress.com/2025/06/17/lov…. Photo Ref: S 601/12/1951. LibraryofBirmingham Shakespeare B Trust Ewan Fernie

A summer evening in Barnard Park, Islington. So important such places exist to promote community: commingling in unity. A much needed alternative to our competitively acquisitive culture. And more moving since this was developed after devastating bombs in WW2.

Today’s shoot was a pleasure - thanks to the good offices of the simpatico but ultimately invisible questioner / director. (And he’d have told me had I been doing that with my finger throughout, I’m sure.) Show to be announced in due course. A privilege to work on it.

Thanks again to English Association for this honour - & to my fellow fellows for the flattering & distinguished fellowship! Our subject needs & deserves all the fellowship it can muster. I applaud & I line up with the positive & forward-looking ambition of the English Association.

Thank you to Iqbal Khan & the cast & production team for this ace adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera Sangheera's Marriage Material. The long loops of the plotting give a thoughtful poignancy to the humane, often hilarious action. So good to see it come home to the Midlands. Don't miss!

Birmingham Snow Hill Station after a powerful production of The Seagull by postgraduate students from Birmingham Conservatoire ⁦Birmingham City University⁩.

Just finished reading this. About now & all of us - as individuals & as a society - it is centrally concerned with the complicity & collapse of a middle-aged academic. Mirroring a wildly unmoored but not altogether hopeless condition, it will stay with me. Recommended.

It isn’t always, to my mind at least, but this evening ‘the deep blue air’ really is, as Larkin recognised, a mystical window or opening onto ‘nothing’, which ‘is nowhere, and is endless’.

I may be working too hard as I woke musing on the theme tune from The Wombles. Still, 'wombling free'; the Common & the commune; making good use of what's discarded; living in the green world but with a library; the natural silver hair. Reminiscences of a better culture, no?

Thanks to ⁦The RSC⁩ for their current Winter’s Tale, in which Bertie Carvel is utterly magnetic. Why is jealousy so much more importunate, central & terrible in Shakespeare than other kinds of sexual sin? thetimes.com/culture/theatr…

In the company of a mutual friend, I ran into Sabbath's first manager, Jim Simpson, yesterday. He said to us what he has said to the press: Ozzy was a nice, simple & loveable man, diabolism notwithstanding. He remains very present in Birmingham.

Please, Keir Starmer - as UK Prime Minister - recognise Palestine.