Hi-Jinks
This is one of my favourite pictures. We were sitting in a piazza in Venice, drinking tea and watching a pair of acrobats practising their art. They were also being watched by a group of children who were absolutely transfixed by what the pair were able to do. So eventually, they were invited to join in. And this is what started to happen. It was a lovely moment, which I’ll never forget. And I’m so glad that I captured it. Those kids are all in their mid-twenties now. Wonder if they remember it too.
Quote of the Day
”This audience reminds me of nothing I have ever seen and of nothing I have read about except the city in the Arabian tale where all the inhabitants have been turned to brass and the traveller finds them after centuries mute, motionless and still retaining the attitudes which they last knew in life.”
- Mark Twain on being in the Festival Theatre in Bayreuth in 1891.
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Leonard Cohen | Hallelujah (Official Live in London 2008)
Long Read of the Day
In their own words: MAGA UK’s Trump worship
Lovely blast by Sam Bright.
I said earlier this week that we shouldn’t allow Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and their cronies to rewrite history. They have been Trump’s accomplices, and they should now share in his downfall.
To stop them from denying reality – from pretending that they never even knew the guy (nor celebrated his corruption and warmongering) – I have documented their public adoration for the now-loathed leader of the free world.
Trump’s political fortunes have also been damaged by his administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency at the centre of his mass deportation drive, has become a flashpoint and an emblem of Trump’s autocratic rule.
Yet, across the Atlantic, some of the UK’s most senior right-wing politicians have spent recent years enthusiastically praising Trump, celebrating his political leadership, and seeking to emulate his policies.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has repeatedly presented himself as one of Trump’s most enthusiastic international allies. At a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event in February 2025, he declared that Trump is “the bravest man I know”.
Farage also described the president’s 2024 election victory as a source of inspiration for his own political ambitions. “This is all going to blow back and help us. We are now topping every opinion poll in Britain, and we are going to win the next general election,” he said.
With Reform falling in the polls and the party facing police and parliamentary investigations, that prospect now seems increasingly unlikely…
Keep reading. It’s great.
Books, etc.
M. John Harrison has won the Booker Prize. I’ve never read his work, but Henry Farrell (Whom God Preserve) has, and his long essay provides a good way of catching up. Wikipedia has also had a shot at it. The book imagines aliens overrunning Britain. As usual, the UK is running behind the US, where aliens have been running the country since 2024.
My commonplace booklet
A good friend who teaches architecture wrote to me after reading the bit about analogue copying in my recent Observer column:
I wrote a paper once about repeated copying. My students and I played a game like Chinese whispers, but with drawings. A person copies a drawing, a second person copies the copy, and so on. One might imagine that designs would deteriorate and fade away, but no. Even when the participants are told to copy exactly, the drawings begin to take on new lives and evolve in wonderful ways. This is because, of course, the copyists are human.
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