She arrived for their date with a burn on her cheek. She said it was because she’d been feeling tired all day and made the error of napping against the door of her log burner. He told her not to worry. “I’m not remotely worried,” she said. “I’
It seems there’s always a planned chapter I end up leaving out of one of my books - sometimes because I go cold on an idea but more often because it simply ends up not feeling like the right fit for that particular universe. I spent almost a decade intending
Cows were like, ‘What are you doing in our field?’ and I was like, ‘Well, it’s actually a public footpath. It says so over there, on a sign.’ And cows were like, ‘We don’t do signs.’ And I was like, ‘Well, if you want extra evidence, it’s
Apologies: I changed email sending domains a couple of weeks ago and I've since discovered that, due to a glitch in the changeover (hopefully all sorted now), only a smallish percentage of subscribers received my latest essay on Saturday. It's quite a hefty one which I
The full version of today's essay, which is about a hot dry summer, the books I've been reading during it, a little-known French film from 1996, and what we mistake for knowledge in 2026, is for paying subscribers only. If you'd like to
My mum, Jo, who has illustrated the inside of many of my books, has just very generously sent me a lovely package of handmade bookmarks (see above), featuring several of her linocut illustrations. I'm making these available exclusively on a first-come-first-served basis with the pile