Jonathan Gibbs

Sunlight falls through windows, adding to the geometric pattern on floor. A woman is playing music. And a man listens from the shadowed bed. Painted by Emanuel de Witte, whose day is today.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

A strangely colourful background scene backdrop of the inside of the Death Star with the Millennium Falcon in the docking bay. Some Stormtroopers are firing guns.

A strangely colourful corridor inside the Death Star with R2-D2 and C3PO. Some Stormtroopers are firing guns.

An appropriately colourful scene in Mos Eisley with Luke, Han, Chewie, R2-D2, C3PO and Ben Kenobi by the Millennium Falcon. Some Stormtroopers are firing guns.

Another strangely colourful room inside the Death Star with Luke, Leia, Ben and C3PO. Some Stormtroopers are firing guns.

Star Wars Shreddies sticker backdrops ranked.

And thus I learned about the video game series based on Tarkovsky’s Stalker and its source novel.

And no, I’ve checked, it’s *not* the video game based on Stalker that you were hoping for.

Five adults (two parents, three kids) live in our house. We are very slowly watching The Sopranos, an episode a night when we’re all in together, which is rare. I tried to imagine a spreadsheet with a different show for each combination of people (min. 2) to watch. My head began to hurt.

Today at 10.30am in BBC Radio 4. I do hope you can listen.

There's still time to sign up for @shedworking.bsky.social's Personal Anthology - a dozen favourite short stories, picked and introduced.

Hitting inboxes 2pm!

Details below...

The Necks have been dominating my car stereo for weeks now, the 3 CDs of this sprawling album in constant rotation. Disquiet might end up one of my very favorites of their vast catalog before the year ends

Yet another peace plan? What's going on with leaked proposals for a new US/Russia deal

This reduced my despair levels somewhat. (Still too high tho, obvs): open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/y...

Two paperback books. On the left, a Penguin Modern Classics edition of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, with a spooky black and white photograph of a woman’s silhouette, inverted, lifting her hands in what might be fear. On the right, The Employees by Olga Raven, with a collage of dismembered mannequin limbs and hands interspersed with what looks like scraps of floral wallpaper. Both distressing, in different ways.

I really enjoyed night’s @kirkdalebooks.bsky.social Book Group discussion of The Haunting of Hill House. And here’s the next meeting’s reading, ready to go. (See how they hook you in??)

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, We review The Hunger Games on stage, Nuremberg on film and Wild Cherry on TV We review The Hunger Games on stage, Nuremberg on film and Wild Cherry on TV.

And thanks so much to @eggsbened.bsky.social for the mention of A Personal Anthology on Front Row last week. After he'd valiantly taken on Hunger Games on Stage, Nuremberg and Wild Cherry I think he deserves a little Elizabeth Taylor, don't you?

Listen here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

About - A Personal Anthology A weekly guest-editor picks and introduces a personal anthology of twelve favourite short stories. Click to read A Personal Anthology, by Jonathan Gibbs, a Substack publication with thousands of subsc...

It's Wednesday evening, and so nearly the weekend – and A Personal Anthology. This week's guest editor, picking and introducing a dozen favourite short stories, is Alex Johnson a.k.a. @shedworking.bsky.social.

Sign up to get it your inboxes this Friday!

apersonalanthology.substack.com/about

I'm baffled by Radio 3's continued insistence that its listenership need instructions on how to use the smart speaker that they (apparently) own

Those blessed words!

A statistics box from Scrivener showing a word count of 86,354.

Is that a completed first draft? Yes, I believe it is. Time to start turning it into something readable.

Have to say, that statue of Bridget Jones is pretty lifelike.

Some solid environmental policy-making in there as well.

Seconded. Absolutely wonderful book.

Excellent. Wrong theories are better than no theories.

The book *seems* to suggest you could solve the mystery by going back and reading more closely, but I don’t think you can. I think that way madness lies.

We are left as much in the situation of Mrs Montague and Albert – credulous, but deceived; ignorant and irredeemably foolish – as in that of the true hauntees. We get clues as to possible ‘reasons’ (the Crains, Eleanor’s own family) but none of it truly explains Nell’s fate. It is unresolved.

For instance, what does Theo see at the picnic? We don’t know. But we do see how the world for Eleanor turns a stark terrible black and white, like a photographic negative. We see the footprints across the grass, but not what makes them.

How about this: they are passages that definitely evoke terror, and what those characters are experiencing is horror, but we are shown the terror, not the horror. Our unease can only ever come from not quite knowing what the true horror is.

And much of the pleasure of the book comes in contrast to sheer terror: the fastidiousness of the prose, and punctuation; the comedy of the relationships introduced and played out; the suggestion that none of these characters are worth caring about, even if they might die or suffer awfully.

But then part of the scariness of Hill House is that its manifestations are not universally applied. Shocks and threats to some are not given to others. You are both inside and outside Eleanor’s head. Some of what happens you just have to accept. Jackson feels no need to convince you.

It carries its reputation as a gothic classic before it: you walk in primed for fear, and the question becomes not so much ‘Is this scary?’ as ‘Why is this scary?’ It’s not a scary book, but an unnerving one, as you see other people scared to death, while being stuck outside the experience.

Penguin Modern Classic paperback copy of Hill House with a black and white photo of a woman’s silhouette reflected in water. Also reflected in some high grass or reeds. She is wearing a full stress and has her arms half raised, as if in fear. The photograph is inverted, with her head at the bottom of the cover.

2025 Reading 62: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. A month since my last entry, a long gap due variously to illness (bad), novel writing (good), reading something else that I’ve now probably abandoned. This re-read for the Kirkdale Bookshop book group.

Featuring the Personal Anthology debuts of:

Colette de Curzon
Peter Ho Davies
KM Elkes (@kmelkes.bsky.social)
Robert Holdstock

So congrats to them!

A Personal Anthology Writers, critics and others dream-edit a personal anthology of their favourite short stories

I've updated the apersonalanthology.com website with @iancritchley.bsky.social's selection – his pick of and introduction to a dozen favourite short stories.

Check them out here, along with nearly 3,500 other short story recommendations!

“‘John. May I point out to once more that I *myself* have had messages from nuns walled up alive? Do you think I am telling you a fib, John? Or do you suppose that a nun would deliberately *pretend* to have been walled up alive when she was not?’”