Kate Phillips
@andanotherkate
My affections and wishes have not changed.
I had never before heard of this astonishing detail (from Riley Black’s The Last Days of the Dinosaurs). We suffered through the indignities of Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, and they never thought to give us DINOSAURS IN SPACE?
I am once again seeing people talking up The Goldfinch. These people are wrong. Not my words; the words of SCIENCE, as proved by this graph.
Another Republican congressman enjoys twenty minutes of quality chat with Mitch McConnell, who’s on typically sparkling form.
I finally saw DISCLOSURE DAY. I need to sit with it for a bit; there were some very effective moments but I’m not sure it really worked for me or that it makes the most of its themes. One thing that is definitely clear: Spielberg needs to break up with Janusz Kamiński.
I saw a few people slagging off John Byrne on my timeline. I knew nothing about him as a person, but used to enjoy Alpha Flight, so I did a bit of digging and read this on his Wiki. I don’t need to see anything else. No-one who uses this phrase is anything other than an absolute arsehole.
Prepping for my move, I came across this guide that BBC Analysis and Research produced as quick reference for coverage of the 2001 election. I seem to remember writing all the entries for Staffordshire. We were a proper country once.
Fabulous sleeve design. The original, as reproduced in Catalogue, doesn’t have the blue details making it even more striking.
I loved Dear Miss Lake by AJ Pearce, as I have all the books in the series which it sadly concludes. Beautifully involving, moving and inspiring, it’s one of my favourite pieces of WW2 fiction (after the unmatched genius of Mollie Panter-Downes).
Keir Starmer with his finger firmly on the pulse as always. Kind and hopeful are absolutely the first adjectives that come up when people are talking about Britain at the moment.
I am not generally much of a re-reader - there’s always so much else to explore - but sometimes a book casts such a spell I can’t help myself. Twenty years since I last read it, this has lost none of its charm and generosity. Colwin reads like a kinder version of Nora Ephron and I just love her.
Looking at British society and politics as an imminent and reluctant returning ex-pat.
Despite - or perhaps because of - being thoroughly godless, I have always been fascinated by books about people struggling with faith and this is an excellent one. In a tonal sweet spot between Iris Murdoch and Barbara Pym, with a portrait of life in 50s London adding (a mostly grey) colour.
I love Rumer Godden. This is a bit less barmy than usual for her, but it’s an intriguing twist on a coming of age story, wrapped around another genre, with an increasingly reliable narrator, and full of evocative descriptions of a lush, lazy rural French summer.
One hilariously consistent aspect of populism, everywhere it rears its ugly head, is that it combines ostentatious fuck your feelings offensiveness with a hair-trigger sense of whiny victimhood whenever remotely challenged.
Their stupidity and arrogance is almost as offensive as their overt corruption. They have all the subtlety of Alan Partridge with his Rover Vitesse.
It’s a tiny role in his huge repertoire but I’ve always loved his gentle and well-meaning prison guard in LIFE OF BRIAN (who, according to the credits, has the perfect name of Nisus Wettus).
Also, shout out to Faber fiction designs of the 1980s, possibly my favourite ever book jacket theme (tied with the woodcut versions of the New Penguin Shakespeare line). Look at these beauties (and, by happy coincidence, each of these books is an absolute banger).
What an incredible book this is; barely two hundred pages but rich and subtle and powerful. Does anyone write self-deluding narrators better than Ishiguro? My compliments to the Whitbread judges for 1986.
I’ve always enjoyed Monica Dickens, but this is the best of her books I’ve read by a long stretch. An astoundingly rich and fluid panoramic portrait of a shabby North London suburb in the throes of post-war change. Far more brutal and hard-nosed than I’d expected, but shot through with compassion.
I am reading this, having been vaguely aware of Spycatcher as a kid but having no real comprehension of it. The key takeaway so far is that absolutely everyone involved on all sides are jaw-droppingly awful people. Liars, crooks and cheats to a man and woman (the latter principally being Thatcher).
The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale is absolutely fascinating; its detailed account of a child who murdered his mother is a jumping off point for a portrait of late Victorian England which, as ever, shows that humanity and society are remarkably consistent.
Durdle Door may be a key location in PROJECT HAIL MARY, but for me it will always be where my brother rowed my six year old self to an island and then gleefully stranded me, requiring a paternal rescue. Grace and Rocky forged a closer relationship across a galaxy than Rory and I ever managed.
I genuinely think I might die of excitement between now and tomorrow night. (That said, for all my love of them, I do wish Neil and Chris would end their association with the noxious Frances Barber.)
Me getting ready to unfollow anyone on Instagram who posts the Potter trailer. (I unfortunately know a lot of people working on the show so it’s going to be carnage.)
I appreciate that one look at this curtain call photo from Patrick Page’s Instagram tells you which show he’s currently in. It might not be a great play, but it’s certainly memorable.