Alan Davey

It is absurd to say that I feel I am not yet grown up. I am not laying claim to perpetual youth (though 89 is something of a surprise), and youth I was never much aware of when I had it. What I mean is, there has never come a time when I could be thought to have acquired dignity, common sense, still less worldly wisdom, qualities that supposedly come with age and get lost with age, too. One doesn't look for common sense from someone over 90.

counts. When I enter a room full of people (these days a rarity) I am 16. Except in the even more rare occasion of entering a room of 16-year-olds, when I am 90. I have the credentials but I don't seem to have the baggage. Once upon a time, I think I imagined age itself as an eminence, years were a plinth, it had prospects even if the end was clouded in mist. A virtue of age is that it emancipates one from class. The old are in a class of their own. It also bestows a privilege of plain speaking.

Alan Bennett on feeling 16 when you are 90

Dark red cat, white face and paws, curled up, looking at viewer.

‘I love cats because I love my home. And because bit by bit they become its visible soul.’

✍️ Jean Cocteau
🖼️ Edwin Landseer, Tabby Cat
#BookWormSat #LandseerPaintings

Starting to feel like spring. Almost jackets not coats today. #Venice

Nöfn Íslendinga Í Nöfnum Íslendinga er fjallað um sex þúsund íslensk mannanöfn – nöfn sem Íslendingar hafa borið í aldanna rás og allt til nútímans. Bókin er er jöfnum höndum fræðirit og uppflettirit sem kom áður út ...

Not a lot of us Judiths in Iceland... mannanofn.arnastofnun.is/nafn/3361

Samira Ahmed, Susan Smith, Malcolm Press

Excellent closing panel for our @britishacademy.bsky.social conference with @samiraahmeduk.bsky.social, Susan J Smith & Malcolm Press (UUK President) thinking about narratives on higher education. Malcolm says you need to take seriously the concerns of your critics, but not talk yourself into a hole

Brilliant. An expat im Dubai has a startling revelation, by @stephencollins.bsky.social

Lord Vallance

Big day ahead as we have our annual @britishacademy.bsky.social sector conference including a keynote from Science Minister Lord Vallance.

I’ll be chairing a panel with Philip Augar, Shirley Pearce, Vivienne Stern & Adam Tickell on what we can learn from all those reviews of HE.

Stay tuned!

SHAPE Conference 2026 The British Academy's annual SHAPE conference will be held in London on 4 March 2026.

The Arts and Humanities Alliance is proud to sponsor the 2026 @britishacademy.bsky.social SHAPE conference. Our session is Myth busting for the public with @ritagardner.bsky.social @jennyrichards.bsky.social & @sebgordon1.bsky.social
Chair @emmacayley.bsky.social www.eventbrite.com/e/shape-conf...

Old Norse Wordle 26-03-03
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onp.ku.dk/z2

Ha!
Wordle 1.718 3/6

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Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey:

"Tax exiles like Isabel Oakeshott and washed up old footballers who mock ordinary people who stay in the UK and pay our taxes... As we protect them, it's only right for tax exiles to start paying taxes to fund our armed forces, just like the rest of us".

There's a couple of cracking offers on throughout March. If you're in the UK you can pick up the Kindle edition of "The Magus of Sicily" for just 99p. And for those of you in the US, "The Angels of Venice" is 99c.

Happy reading!

Colin Murphy: British Labour’s descent to by-election humiliation started with Tony Blair’s landslide As Keir Starmer’s Labour hits a humiliating new low, coming third in a by-election for what had previously been a safe seat, there is a clear point of origin for the decline of Labour — Tony Blair.

More great coverage of my new book on the Blair years, this time in the Irish Independent! Lots of coverage in Ireland, and I'll be doing more coverage there this week. Reflective, thoughtful. www.independent.ie/opinion/anal...

British International Research Institutes Advancing the arts, humanities and social sciences through international research

Good to hear Prof Ali Ansari the chair of the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) on the World at One just now giving analysis on the fast moving situation in Iran. BIPS is one of several British International Research Institutes we support
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/internationa...

The kids grow up so fast!
The first person to trust me to supervise her PhD has officially submitted, and I couldn't be prouder! Congratulations Juliane😊

The National Year of Reading celebrates the ‘joy’ of books. But let’s not forget they can also be deeply troubling, too | Charlotte Higgins Encounters with great art can be absorbing, unsettling and even painful. How has this been tamed into ‘reading for pleasure’, asks Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... my friend Charlotte here on why reading for “pleasure” is NOT the be all and end all of reading. With a shout out for non fiction too which hasn’t got too much of a look in during this year of reading.

My new friend Louis. #Caturday

Seat tonight in Helsinki has a good view of the organ. Hearing AION by Anna Þorvaldsdottir and the Rite of Spring by Helsinki Phil. Despite the weather I am fond of Helsinki.

Mine definitely do. Adobe Acrobat keeps asking "this is a long document, would you like me to summarize it?" No, Adobe, because it's a ****ing MUSICAL SCORE.

The main argument against PDFs is that they bamboozle AI LLMs. Transferring everything to PDFs …..

The war against PDFs is heating up Will the file type survive the AI revolution?

I like PDFs. Leave PDFs alone.

The war against PDFs is heating up
economist.com/business/202...
from The Economist

Really useful assessment [ie dismantling] of #Reform ‘illegal #migrant #return policy’ 36mins in @evanhd.bsky.social with Alan Manning, former chair of Migration Advisory Committee. Worth listening in my view. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

🥳’History repeats the old conceits..’ a
proper humanities education would bring to mind Augustus and his laws against adultery and encouraging childbirth. The princeps in the bedchamber was never a good look. (Lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus/Papia Poppaea and Lex Julia de adulteriis..)

Did better than in the NYT version…

Old Norse Wordle 26-02-24
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onp.ku.dk/z2

Yesterday’s #Wordle: kyrra (vb.): 37 cits, e.g. // ‘sidan kyrddi sioen’ (Frið in AM 510 4°) onp.ku.dk/o46900 #OldNorse

That was annoying ….Wordle 1.711 6/6

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Generation gap Gen Z Millennials Living situation At home with their parents at age 23 1 23% Rental accommodation 21% 39% Own their own home 5% 1 17% Not yet gained independence because they could not afford to move out 23% Were living with parents to save for a deposit 17% Did not want to leave the family home yet 12% Partners and family Had a romantic partner by age 23 54% Lived with their partner 17% 40%* 68%

Gen Z (this group born 2000-02) are hitting ‘growing up’ milestones later than Millennials (this set 1989-90) partly as they can’t afford to move out from their parents. (Data from two separate longitudinal studies)
www.thetimes.com/article/8ff2...

Illegal migrant in small boat stopped from entering sovereign territory without a permit.

A war foretold: how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans and why nobody believed them Drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries, this exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans ...

Absolutely amazing piece by @shaunwalker7.bsky.social on what we now know about the period running up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s a rich piece worth reading in full, but here a few bits that are striking 🧵
www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

I am sick, so sick of trying to introduce reason, detail, order and actual analysis into talk about Higher Ed - now dominated by total BS, lurid fiction and, let's face it, lies. This is my view right now, I'm off to enjoy it, do what you want.