Repeatedly emerging from laptop and realising I’m freezing

for the The New Statesman I wrote something – a paean, inevitably – about Joni Mitchell, the absolute GOAT (an acronym Mitchell has used), revisiting her exquisite 1974 record Court and Spark (a "perfect album" in Brian Eno's view), released 50 years ago newstatesman.com/culture/music/…

a 'cohesive' capitalism sounds even scarier

"The sound of someone thinking and feeling aloud, Mitchell’s profoundly moving songs – across her body of work – show you that you are sadder than you realised but also at times happier than you might like to think." Marvellous appreciation of Court & Spark, from Lola Seaton

Fab essay by ⁦Lola Seaton⁩ on the 50th anniversary of Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark in the ⁦The New Statesman⁩. ‘It’s music that lines your heart’. newstatesman.com/culture/music/…

I would hate to be someone who receives hundreds of emails a day. Hope that never happens to me

Be honest who here reads every single chartbook

For London Review of Books I wrote about the novels of AK Blakemore lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

For The New Statesman I reviewed Lauren Oyler’s new essay collection No Judgement, and reflected on the fun, as well as, sometimes, the frustration, of self-awareness in writing (by which I mean the performance of self-awareness) newstatesman.com/culture/books/…

For the latest New Left Review I wrote about Anne Carson and ten things you can do to avoid boredom (jk...sort of) newleftreview.org/issues/ii146/a…

On Martin Amis’s memorial and language as a source of joy newstatesman.com/culture/books/…

For New Left Review, I wrote about Yoko Tawada’s “Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel.” newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/…

This is an amazing piece which it feels like no one else in the world could have written

fantastic piece on the Irish novelist Sally Rooney via her new book Intermezzo (def the best I've read so far)

"Attacking neoliberalism for its official aversion to government intervention has limited political traction in an age when public institutions are so deeply intertwined with the escalating concentration of private wealth." newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/…

Here’s my somewhat lengthy but cameo-strewn New Left Review SCar piece on Bob Dylan from 61-66—his aesthetic priorities + personal obsessions, plus why he’d have hated online dating, via the fun if limited A Complete Unknown (h/t Ian Leslie Lola Seaton) newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/…

For The New Statesman I wrote about Notes to John, Joan Didion's unpolished but undeniably interesting record of sessions with a psychiatrist in 1999-2002, found near her desk when she died newstatesman.com/culture/books/…

I wrote about Sheila Heti for The New York Review of Books nybooks.com/articles/2025/…