Caro

Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion by Michelle Dean – review Dean’s group biography of female writers who dared speak their mind is a great and worthy project

'Sharp women everywhere, I tell you: be pointy and proud.' One of my favourite Rachel Cooke reviews (there are so many to choose from). She was especially good at writing about group biography, having written one herself (Her Brilliant Career). What a fantastic critic she was, a one-off.

I loved her writing. Didn’t know her at all, but sat at the next table in a restaurant a couple of years ago and told her how much I admired her work as I left. I’m glad I did.

This is such dreadful news: Rachel Cooke was a marvellous, funny, intelligent writer. I was wondering where she was only yesterday, searching to find her most recent article: on losing her appetite…

Oh no! I was wondering why I’d not seen any of her writing recently. She was marvellous

That looks so good!

Hope those carbs beat the insomnia.

Here: leftover dal with curry leaves on toast with fried eggs liberally daubed with black bean rayu. Also pressure cooked flowering sprouts.

Sliced apples with honey for pudding, I think.

Aieeeeee! Wincing in sympathy

Big bowl of bean soup + a couple of crackers and Colston Bassett. Two vg figs and a little bit of ginger cake. All very autumnal.

(Friends to stay)

Big fillet steam-roasted chalk stream trout; home-grown potatoes cooked in PC; nutmeggy spinach. Then pears poached in some wine I found at the back of the cupboard w ginger & saffron; little browned butter biscuits

Attorneys General
Courts Martial
Poets Laureate
Bodies Politic
Balls Bearing
Yorkies Duo

those distant liverbirds

Liverpool?

Wigmore Hall family concerts?

And made of polyester/acetate! But the cut’s lovely

The 7 October attacks changed what it means to be Jewish in Britain The war in Gaza has exposed a level of anti-Semitism I didn’t realise was there

"I hear again and again that the Israelis – the Jews – had it coming. Knowing allusions to Jewish influence, Jewish power. Stereotypes of Jewish cruelty."

Written before today's attack on a Manchester synagogue. It's the kind of piece I never thought I'd write.

www.newstatesman.com/internationa...

Best thing ever from the V&A stores today: on the front of Margret Mason’s 1660 sampler are clothed “boxer” figures (little men holding gifts, acorns here). Turn the sampler over and the men look much the same but are completely naked!

It has! Thank you for dealing with it so promptly

Definitely not picking up my feeds after closure. iOS

I should delete the app and re-download it?

I’ve unpinned a couple of broken feeds but my feeds still aren’t loading. Fingers crossed for the fix…

'If garden tools really count as weaponry, I’m in command... Since when were secateurs ‘a bladed weapon in a public space’?

observer.co.uk/style/garden...

To answer this would be to reveal too much about the mild chaos of my whim- and weather-driven food buying process…

I like shredded, boiled fast, lots of butter, pepper, caraway seeds. One of my favourite things. But I’ll devote one of those cabbages to a wedge+roast

Fine - though there’s always the gloop fear lurking

*definitely* caraway. Second best use, after Madeira cake.

if there’s one vegetable dish I can’t abide…

Making face as your post reminds me that I had forgotten about the two cabbages in the fridge…

www.ft.com/content/ca4a...