Roger Luckhurst

General Plumer, at Old Etonian dinner 1916: 'We are often told that they taught us nothing at Eton. It may be so, but I think they taught it very well.' (from Darryl Jones's wonderful new biog of M R James)

Hear me out: it’s freedom of movement, but just for Harry Styles

Bloody hell, it’s not that bad

So basically Orr gets let off his fairly minor but still time-consuming admin duties, forcing other colleagues to do them, while still being allowed to teach and supervise! It would be comical, if there hadn’t been a slightly grimmer outcome for a Cambridge professor this summer

I only just got to the slow-burn, deeply unsettling Japanese series Sai, and it’s the architectural volumes that are the star of each episode — particularly unnerving corridor dread throughout. Recommended!

This is the only real news story that matters today, with a strong sense of inevitability that this is how many of the people reading it will die in the decades ahead

A Radio 4 podcast addressing the question ‘Are we getting stupider?’ is surely going to be stopped by the grammar police and kettled until it is re-taped as ‘Are we getting more stupid?’

So many places for Boris Johnson to hide

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, will still get absolutely fucking soaked in Storm Austen

London just isn’t safe anymore — I’m sitting in this cafe surrounded by people talking about… their relationships and stuff. I think they’ve all been radicalised by Sally Rooney

Time for my annual confession in class today that I killed Philip Larkin. I arrived at Hull University in October 1985 and Larkin clearly took a look at the new intake and decided enough was enough and promptly gave up the ghost

Just had a bag of ‘Big Hoops’ Hula Hoops and my urgent question now is just how big can the hoops go?

I’d need access to his fridge for chocolate and yoghurt at any point in the evening for that kind of money

12 hours proof-reading. Status:

Amazing scene in Alex Gibney’s doc on Musk where you see a whole room actively embrace a piece of stage magic bullshit (in that instance, Tesla battery swap) rather than face reality

That delivery guy just walked away saying out loud to himself: ‘what crazy-ass kind of surname is that?’

I’m in the overstimulated hellscape of the South Bank, and remembering whenever I come down here that canteen place called Cafe 51 that took up the basement of the RFH and was sparsely populated by biddies laboriously writing out cheques for 65p ice creams or for tomato soup and toast for £1.23.

Just saw a film that was so French that when it finally fully disappeared up its own arse it said”Bof!” and shrugged theatrically as it volatilised itselfout of existence

The Prince Charles Cinema Secures its Future The Prince Charles Cinema is thrilled to announce that we have signed a new 25-year lease with no break clause, ensuring our projectors will keep rolling for years to come. #YouSavedthePCC

I could think of quite a lot of contemporary authors that it would be really great if they came out in support of Palestinian Action rn, and maybe then we could swap them out with Sally Rooney?

I get the sense it’s going to be longer than 4 minutes late

If your day is going badly, at least you are not the Society of Authors

Amazon just asked me: Did End Times Fascism meet your expectations?

Great to hear R4's Today programme from an off-shore rig today. In an effort to get ever closer to the news, Nick Robinson will be dangled from a drone over Houthi front lines and Justin Webb will be reporting the midterms while actually stapled inside Trump's current nappy arrangement

Autumn is here! 🍂 As the nights grow longer & chillier, there’s no better time to curl up with a hauntingly good book. From Gothic style to graveyards, we’re summoning the perfect reads for autumn’s darkest hours. 🎃📚 Explore our spooky season reading list: buff.ly/zdntQiL #Autumn #Fall #Spooky

Wow, it’s true what they say, ‘Other Mommy’ makes no real sense at all from one scene to the next in a really quite car-crash compelling way.

I just watched Alex Gibney’s 4-hour Musk doc at the #LFF and the man next to me ate 5 bags of crisps, including 2 sorties for more crisps. Seemed an integral part of the immersive Musk universe

pulling together multi-author proof corrections, tricky and boring, and yet one of the few times I can legitimately say 'I'm still collating' in emails, just like Ash in Alien

Completely fascinated by the weird casual shitness of backdrops for podcasts suddenly needing video content. A particularly fine example here: the mismatched curtains roping off the office, 5 books stolen from a nearby theme pub. “Yeah I’ve got this microscope?” “Bang it in, bro!”

This certainly explains Basingstoke

Favourite request for directions in quite a long time: “Bro! Bro! Do you know how I get to Dalston? I only came here to buy this hat and now I can’t get out of this place”

It’s at this time of night that the horrible new office block at Liverpool St most obviously looks from our angle like an opened milk carton

It won’t be a smokeless bonfire, either, will it, because that would be woke

Signing this beautiful limited edition of Le Fanu’s Carmilla I was involved in — but how am I supposed to compete with this amazing stylised signature!!?

Obscure complaint

One of my most treasured moments recently was my partner’s epic and glorious meltdown at the labyrinthine stupidity of these new lockers to some poor sod employed to soak up visitor rage all day.

Christ, what will happen if Xi finds out that H P Lovecraft was a bit racist?

Topics Kemi BadEnoch might well up about in her conference speech: - no bail for RNLI boat-slashing Danny Tommo - lower number of heat exhaustion deaths than hoped for this summer - more legal routes for asylum claims from refugees from war zones - Grant Shapps's face pressed up against conf window

This weekend I'm giving a 30-minute talk just on the wink to the camera, the final shot in Hitchcock's Family Plot (and the final shot of Hitchcock's final film). Loads of stuff on looks really great!

JFC

I lost interest in this community event when it turned out that the ‘free face painting’ only applied to yourself, you couldnt just go up to council officials and add whiskers or turn them into orcas

Delighted to discover belatedly that earlier this year the American Analog Set put out an EP of even longer, even dronier versions of songs from their 2005 disbanding album Set Free.

6.33am I woke up from a horrible nightmare which involved time running backwards. The next time I looked at the clock, though, it was 3.20am which completely freaked me out. News headlines when I finally fully woke up all seem to be from the racist 1970s, so this all seems to track.