Tara

Oak leaves with hoar frost

Hoar Frost

Forms when the air is still and cold, usually on clear winter nights. Water vapour in the air condenses on solid surfaces, and as the surface temperature drops below 0°C, ice crystals form.

Origin is old English for old grey hair

Adam Smyth · Slice It Up: Gutenberg’s Great Invention Gutenberg remains unknowable: an implied but not a felt presence. This is true for all but a small number of 15th-...

‘Gutenberg seems to have had a habit of falling out with people.’

Adam Smyth (@adamwithbooks.bsky.social) on a biography of the printer told through his books.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I’ve been playing Rosalía’s Lux on a loop since it was released. But that switch on the album from ‘Berghain’ to ‘La Perla’ is utterly divine and I am unashamedly and repetitively luxuriating in it.

If a man said what Megyn Kelly said, you would assume he was a trafficker.

This young lady is wise beyond her years, but she is still a “child”and she would like a word…

'Victoria Station, 1918: The Green Cross Corps (Women's Reserve Ambulance), Guiding Soldiers on Leave' (1919) by Clare Atwood

(Imperial War Museums)

Bar’s open!
Cheers all x

Friday

'Camden Town, London' (1940) by Priscilla Ann Siebert

(Dresden State Art Collections)

Linocut by Lisa Benson
‘Long Shadows’
Size 30.5 x 40.5cm
lisabensonart.co.uk

Preparing for the new era of inspection: what school leaders should know now The risk of the shallow paddle

Deep dives are out.
A broader “shallow paddle” approach is in.

That means less subject-level triangulation — and more pressure on leaders to show how every part of the school connects.

I’ve written about what this shift means and how to prepare:
🔗 open.substack.com/pub/enserm/p...

The future of knowledge is yours to protect. #Wikipedia25

Donate now ➡️ donate.wikipedia25.org

Wayland's Smithy, c1900+, before the stones at the front were installed. Thanks to Stephen Ashwin for this picture, photo from Henry Taunt (Getty).

As the Miller sold his tale: The Land in Winter heads the Booker shortlistees’ sales

ICYMI: Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter is by far the Booker Prize 2025’s leader at the tills heading into tonight’s ceremony, having generated over half of the six-strong contenders’ unit-sales during the shortlist period, and 45% of the sextet’s value 👇

Good morning. This week's theme is London at War.
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'London and Wartime: Nocturne' (1918) by Sir Claude Francis Barry

(Private collection)

'A Zeppelin Raid, 8 October 1915', Camden by John Fraser

(National Maritime Museum)

Ruskin Spear's portrait is of Sir Robin Darwin, the great-grandson of Charles Darwin who as principal in the 1950s made the Royal College of Art a leading force in arts education and changed the image and fortunes of the Royal Academy. He was also a fine landscape painter.

Photograph of the cover of The Anthony Bourdain Reader edited by Kim Witherspoon

There’s not a day goes past that I don’t miss Tony Bourdain, great man, great friend, great writer. Nothing can make up for the loss of him, of course, but it’s wonderful to hear his voice live from the page in the compellingly brilliant Anthony Bourdain Reader edited by Kim Witherspoon.

‘I have a theory that people tend to have a life-long favorite colour, and that their home and car will eventually be that colour.’
Photographer Christopher Hall.

according to the liberation newspaper, documents dating back to a 2014 inspection by the French National Agency for the Security of Computer Systems reported a staggering detail: "the password of the louvre's video surveillance server was simply " louvre. "

the password to the louvre surveillance server was "louvre"

www.thesocialpost.it/2025/11/02/f...

Anyway, we need some joy, so here's the Egyptian foreign minister being given a Lego Pyramid by the Danish foreign minister.

A photograph of the London Underground taken by Bert Hardy in 1952. #london #londonunderground

Three geese in a flock
one flew east
one flew west
one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
#BookSky #FilmSky

'The Crown', Islington (2025) by Sarah Lundblad
sarahbethlundblad.art

'Man Reading.' (1904) John Singer Sargent's portraits balance looseness and definition, what might be called Old Master-casual;
faces and hands rendered just tightly enough to stay alive. The sitter is Nicola d'Inverno, Sargent's Italian valet and a frequent model.

This week's theme was London Nights 🌙

Take a look at the timeline over the last week for full details of these and the rest of the featured pieces.

Jon Day · Gloomth: Haunted Houses Haunted house stories tend to end in one of two ways: either the family flees, or the ghosts are soothed, and everyone...

‘Before Walpole, ghosts in English literature tended to haunt people, or generic geographic locations: crossroads, bridges, graveyards. After him, they came inside, haunting domestic spaces.’

Jon Day on things that go bump in the night.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christopher Walken, Christopher Lee & Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe’s classic moody-broody poem “The Raven,” none is more fun than The Simpsons’, in which Lisa Simpson’s intro transitions into the reading voice of James Earl Jones and the slapstick int...

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christopher Walken, Christopher Lee & Vincent Price www.openculture.com/2025/10/edga...

The Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire, a highly under appreciated Neolithic/Bronze Age monument. These very much deserve to be better known #rollrightstones #rollrights #prehistoricmonument #henge #stonehenge

shot through windows. a busy outdoor cafe scene with a waiter threading his way through the patrons

Waiter, Paris, Saul Leiter, 1959

The tip is the top-notch wellbeing strategy. There should be INSET dedicated to it.