Richard Beard

Into Being by @lilydunn.bsky.social is about the transformative power of writing memoir. It serves not only as a starter kit for those interested in writing and reading memoir, but it's also for anyone who is already writing or teaching, to expand and enhance their understanding of the art. #booksky

'This is how they train them, this is how they think life works.'

Why AI makes writers even more important than we always thought we were.

Excellent piece by @john-self.bsky.social in @ftweekend.com

Thanks Luke, that's very kind.

RB is one of my very favourite 21st century British novelists and this is a beautiful take on the memoir I’ve been losing myself in this morning:

A summer of reading Contributors to Engelsberg Ideas share the books they’ve enjoyed in the summers of their lives.

'A most original masterpiece'.

The Universal Turing Machine, as recommended in Engelsberg Ideas.

engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-sum...

Interview with Georges Perec - Richard Beard Georges, Georges Perec, is that you? No. Come on, Georges, this is the first time I’ve summoned spirits from the dead.  Would you consider giving me an interview? No. Georges, I have a Ouija board her...

Searched out an interview I did with Georges after he died. He was less convinced than I was.

richardbeard.co.uk/2025/07/21/i...

Zine page with text: ‘Put out that bloody cigarette!’ were the last words of Hector Hugh Munro, a British author who wrote under the pen name SAKI. In November 1916 while sheltering in a shell crater in France, during the Battle of the Ancre, he was killed by a German sniper.

Zine page with text: Robert Louis Stevenson, while making mayonnaise, suddenly cried out “What’s that? Do I look strange? My head, my head!” and dropped dead of a cerebral haemorrhage.

Zine page with text: Pietro Aretino, died from either a heart attack or fractured skull after laughing too much and falling off his chair on hearing a dirty joke.

Zine page with text: Bruno Schulz, murdered in revenge by a Gestapo officer after Schulz’s own Gestapo protector killed the first Gestapo officer’s “personal Jew”.

Turning my BIG BOOK OF UNFORTUNATE AUTHOR DEATHS into a zine or something, will probably make it available as a free PDF when it's done:
causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-...

That was quick. Expected a period of author disclaimers (claimers) in the Acknowledgements or before the title page. Like coffee, might soon be apparent when the Fairtrade logo is missing. (AI Free is better than Human Written, though).

Cardboard box letterpressed with the title and author

Back of box stating 80 copies were made of which 50 were available to buy. This is copy number 37.

The box opened. Inside are objects and documents and scraps of things, the ephemera of a life, each printed with one of the fragments of text that make up The Book of Disquiet.

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, translated by Margaret Jull Costa.

Published by the Half Pint Press, London, 2017.

There were only 50 copies of this made for sale (out of a total run of 80), so I thought I’d share as much of it as I can. Numbering of fragments follows the 1982 edition.

‘For man is a creature of no fixed age, a creature who has the ability to become years younger in only a few seconds ... thus putting him in reach now of one time period, now of another.’
Proust, birthday-boy, on remembering and The Universal Turing Machine.

universalturingmachine.co.uk

My new history of the World Cup, out September 4 but available for order now.

www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Histo...

All the right moves While people in the world of books, as in so many others, continue to suffer from the dull and ecologically unsound deployment of artificial intelligence, the writer Richard Beard has got on with doin...

UTM in the TLS. Contributions welcome from September.

www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...

Sounds about right.

'A man provided with paper, pencil and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.'

From 'Intelligent Machinery: A Report by A. M. Turing' (1948).

universalturingmachine.co.uk

'Playful, subversive, experimental, wise, moving and utterly human.'
Many thanks to @lilydunn.bsky.social for this generous championing of the UTM and memoir generally.

'If by the O-Level exams I was floundering, I made up for my lack of revision by cheating. It was the intelligent thing to do.' 1982, 15.

universalturingmachine.co.uk

News worth knowing.

Felix Pollak, Ginkgo

Thanks Jonathan, that's very kind.

Index your life. Take a snapshot using the letter M, for example:

Mendip Asylum 2000, 2002; Memorex C60 1981; Mickey Mouse 2000; Mishima, Yukio 2004; Montreal 2017; Montreal Olympics 1976; Monty Python 1983, and so on.

Then try to make sense of it:

universalturingmachine.co.uk

Don't readers of The New Yorker likewise converge around common words and ideas?

Anti-arms groups plan mass protests over expansion of UK nuclear deterrent Expansion decision ‘undermines democracy’ and will mobilise new generation of protesters, groups warn

Next year marks 40 years since I was arrested for trespassing by USAF at Lakenheath air base, in protest against Reagan's nukes. Sadly, a repeat may be on the cards. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

"'I think about you all the time,’ I said, and I did. I thought about us having sex together, which was basically thinking about me." (2012, 45)

universalturingmachine.co.uk

'My English education, so far, equipped me to explain under exam conditions how Britain was once top nation.' (1980, 13)

universalturingmachine.co.uk

You're welcome! Maybe have a go yourself at the UTM?

Will be interested to hear what you make of it.

Yes, this possibly, though also Turing’s hypothetical machine would one day compute everything computable. Just like all my books.

Thank you! A thousand words for each year, and a memoir is suddenly within reach ...

The Universal Turing Machine now live. Read online for free. Think about how you'd write your own.
universalturingmachine.co.uk

If you liked The Day That Went Missing or Sad Little Men, my new memoir is nothing like either of those. Coming soon.