Juliette Bretan

For #ModWrite this week, how about a ModRead? Our new Eliot Studies Annual is out now. Chew on these:
- Special forum: THE ELIOT WE NEED
Higher ed is collapsing, climate crises abound. Our Prez asks: "in what contemporary struggles could we enlist Eliot as an ally?"

Thrilled that my article on Eliot’s Polish plains has been published in The T.S. Eliot Studies Annual liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...

German and Soviet pavilions in antithesis - Paris International Exposition, 1937

‘I dropped a C-bomb into Tolstoy’: one man’s quest to translate War and Peace into ‘bogan Australian’ Melbourne man Ander Louis has translated hundreds of pages of the 19th century classic line by line to include Ford Falcons, wankers and drongos “Bloody hell, Prince Vasíli, Genoa and Luca are pretty much just Napoleon’s holiday homes now,” reads the opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s seminal epic, War and Peace. It goes on to depict a 19th century St Petersburg populated by “posh wankers”, “complete drongos”, “gorgeous sheilas” and “massive pissheads”. They “talk shit”, give “zero fucks” and drink “cuppas”, and before long, soldiers start “fanging about”. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

‘I dropped a C-bomb into Tolstoy’: one man’s quest to translate War and Peace into ‘bogan Australian’

Excited to be presenting a BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature tomorrow, ‘Tango Goes East’, on the story of tango’s musical journey eastwards to Poland and beyond.

Strange-looking pierogi at Warsaw diner (very good though)

First time in a Polish home and garden shop in the U.K. (in Nottingham). With signs and announcements in Polish.

A recent purchase: handbook of central and east Europe, from 1936

Staying in apartment goals in Warsaw

Kavka pickle cocktail :)

…the Free City of Danzig?

Lángos at Selwyn college 😍

My piece in @uk.theconversation.com on language and culture in Estonia:

The famous Christmas carol inspiring Ukraine's defenders Carol of the Bells was written in Pokrovsk, a key target for advancing Russian troops in Ukraine.

Our piece from Pokrovsk in Ukraine on the famous Christmas carol inspiring Ukraine's defenders. With Jonathan Beale, Hanna Chornous, Daniel Wittenberg, Anastasia Levchenko & Imran Ali.
#Ukraine #Pokrovsk #Christmas
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Part iii:

Part ii:

The Klub Polonia addiction continues

Love the cloud moquette pattern on the London cable car

Military recycling: cannon bollard in London

A knotty railway map of Austria-Hungary, 1918

RELEASE DAY!!! It’s here at last and I am very proud of it. Immense thanks to @stanfordpress.bsky.social for supporting this project ( & check out the promotional code).

The cult of chicken paprikash continues

Mulled sloe gin 😍

Got so excited by the flurry of Polish flags on this Dutch map (but they’re the sign of long-distance hiking paths)

A year before she died (to the day), we all went cycling along the Gein in the Netherlands, from Weesp (where my parents lived & cycled in the 1980s) towards Abcoude - a landscape Piet Mondrian loved to paint. That’s how I like to think of her; cycling, content, towards Abcoude.

It’s a year today since my mum died. I wish I could write everything about her, but then I’d write forever, so I’ll leave it to this: she was the most beautiful person I have ever known.