A column I wrote for the Guardian on scarecrows last summer.
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