Ann Kennedy Smith

On tonight's BBC Front Row: Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow on A House Of Dynamite and the strange days of modern America, Kiran Desai, the decline in university humanities course & we remember Jilly Cooper 715PM R4 or link after: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Anyone else going Cambridge people?

Literary prizes are a cheap distraction from the true purpose of reading great books, which is making people who haven't read them feel bad about themselves

And here is that episode, on Imogen by Jilly Cooper, with guests Daisy Buchanan and Ian Patterson. In Jilly’s own words, “it was all such terrific fun”. RIP. www.backlisted.fm/episodes/84-...

RIP lovely Jilly Cooper, the only subject of a @backlisted.bsky.social episode to write us all thank you letters afterwards. ❤️

Best titles of autobiographies?

Starting with:

- Vic Reeves, Me: Moir
- Dennis Waterman, Reminder (thanks @whenisbirths.bsky.social)
- AA Gill, Pour Me
- Gene Simmons, Kiss and Make-Up
- Julian Clary, A Young Man's Passage

Photograph: Lottie, our young brown spaniel, sits in a field close to my work studio. The slope of Meldon Hill is behind her, with the rise of open moorland beyond.

In the aftermath of the weekend's storms, it's a bright and beautiful day here on Dartmoor. Following my dog through the autumn hills, I am reminded of all that is good in the world; and all that is worth the long work of preserving.

Beautiful, Terri!

Rachel Charlton-Dailey‘s book is a groundbreaking history of 100 years of disability activism in the UK. 1 in 5 people in the UK are disabled yet disability activism remains overlooked in history books, media, and politics. Blending investigative journalism, social history and a call to action the book looks at protest – from disabled suffragettes to debates about genetic screening. This powerful, timely book shows how often disabled people, and their allies, have fought and won, and the need to keep fighting.

SHEFFIELD (and West Yorks.) I will be at Off The Shelf Festival talking about my book Ramping Up Rights and the ongoing fight for disability rights on October 19th with my amazing pal Laura Elliott (@tinywriterlaura.bsky.social). It's a Sunday lunchtime, but I promise it'll be worth it.

'But Winnie decided that "no woman (it is not my business to consider a man’s life) has any excuse for living a life that is not worth living".' A sad & ultimately inspiring essay by @akennedysmith.bsky.social on 19th-century women's education, female solidarity & the importance of good teachers.

Thank you Emily! Victoria Glendinning's slim biography of Winnie Seebohm is wonderful.

Amazed to discover that this poem was singled out for praise by the poet Douglas Oliver in 1970: 'This five-year-old from West Suffolk has said all that needs to be said about his breakfast. Peter Hazel's poem offers a slice of experience as warm as breakfast toast...' 1/2

I am at a lecture and the speaker keeps saying ‘as far back as the nineties’ and I‘m like

A life worth living Winnie Seebohm and the marvellous Mrs Marshall

I wrote about this moving biography of Winnie Seebohm, who fought to have the right to study at Cambridge in 1885. ‘Do not be misled into thinking that because it is history it has nothing to do with you' Victoria Glendinning writes. '1885 is yesterday. It is probably tomorrow too.’

Colin Burrow · World-Beating Buster-Upper: Muriel Spark’s Wickedness The characteristic flavour of Spark’s writing was that of a Catholic ironist, for whom the terrible and the laughable...

‘Muriel Spark wanted to be the inventor of the world while knowing that she was its creature, which gave her a good – and perhaps, from the viewpoint of those around her, excessive – supply of the egoism that all writers need.’

Colin Burrow in the new issue, online now
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In this lecture, Catherine Clarke will re-visit the question of what makes history radical, asking what kind of radical history we need in our public life and contemporary context today. In particular, she’ll explore ways in which popular history – trade publishing for a wide public audience – has the capacity to be radical, drawing on experiences and examples from her own new book A History of England in 25 Poems (Penguin Allen Lane, September 2025). Catherine’s lecture will move towards a manifesto for how research-led, scholarship-driven popular history can and does make necessary, vital public interventions – from opening inclusive conversations and confronting the rise of AI, to modelling radical empathy and imagination.

I'm hugely honoured and very excited to be giving this year's Historical Research #Lecture at @ihr.bsky.social, on 'Can popular #history be radical? Historical research and writing for the #public'. Tuesday 4 November, all welcome. More info in AltText. Book here: www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Mary was also one of the signatories supporting the first women candidates contesting local elections in Cambridge in 1908. In those days you had to be a property owner - which ruled out any married woman. lostcambridge.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/j... Julia Kennedy & Rosamund Philpott stood.

Thanks Antony - always grateful for any extra information about Mary. She was a quiet force to be reckoned with on behalf of women!

How to use a library Mary Paley Marshall, political economist, author and librarian

As the new academic year starts here in Cambridge, my thoughts turn towards libraries... I wrote about the extraordinary Mary Paley Marshall, who co-founded the Marshall Library of Economics in 1925, and worked there until her 90s.

Really enjoyed this, and it might even tempt me back to Murdoch (the process began with the excellent group bio, Metaphysical Animals – which isn't about her novels at all).

The writer's bookshelf: Dennis Duncan Eight questions about writers, books, and reading…

I really enjoyed answering @mathewlyons.bsky.social's questions about my favourite books, which brought out patterns I hadn't noticed in the things I like. I'd recommend to anyone having a think about how you'd answer. open.substack.com/pub/mathewly...

This! 👇💙👇💙

So pleased to hear that!

Intriguing, would love to hear more

Good to be in touch, Sarah – enjoyed your talk at the UL when you were Munby fellow.

the Milly-Molly-Mandy-to-Mrs Miniver pipeline

Charleston — Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: Artists, Lovers, Outsiders Explore the lives and work of the 'Two Roberts'

I'm curating a show about the Two Roberts for Charleston in Lewes. Currently unwrapping artworks being loaned to us by incredibly generous individuals and institutions - it's like Christmas! 'Artists, Lovers, Outsiders' opens Oct 15: www.charleston.org.uk/exhibition/r...

Just arrived from the printers.

The Book of Bogs began as a community response & has grown beyond the Walshaw Moor into a wider celebration & campaign for bogs & other peatland ecologies.

This was the most brilliant crowdfunded project, with over 40 contributions from artists & poets.

OUT NOW.

the booker prize judges make a lot of fuss about having to read 153 books. but assuming an average weight of 750g per book, that comes in at 115kg of literature - or just under the weight of a single adult male ostrich

It's MRS MINIVER by Jan Struther, which was first published in the UK in 1940 and began life as a light-hearted newspaper column in the Times. It took on a a very different form as a Hollywood movie starring Greer Garson in 1942.