Matthew Sherrington

An ‘on this day’ feature for 9 Oct, featuring Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, with a huge pic of him.

Top presidential trolling from the Oxford Times this week.

Book covers, Sweet Thames by Matthew Kneale and The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe

And two more great holiday reads, both humorous mystery thrillers. Sweet Thames set in the sewers and slums of 1849 London; and The Proof of My Innocence, set of all places in the right-wing back rooms of Liz Truss’s premiership. Yep, still hard to believe that happened.

Book covers: The Trees by Percival Everett, and The Unfolding by A.M. Homes

A couple of page-turning satires to kick the holidays off. The Trees, a ghoulish and gory revenge blood-fest, with Mississippi racists getting what’s coming to them. The Unfolding, a Bonfire of the Vanities for the MAGA era, as the white elitist American Dream falls apart, but plots its re-boot.

A manifesto I’d get behind. I mean, FFS, it’s not hard.

Book cover, The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

What an indictment of decades of US federal, state and municipal action that deliberately segregated housing, denying generations of African Americans the opportunity of social mobility, and creating the economic inequality and injustice of today. The case for reparations, right here.

Book cover, On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

Chapter headings page

Written in 2017 after Tr*mp’s first presidential win, this short manifesto is more pertinent and compelling now, than ever, as tyranny cranks through the motions.

Book cover, The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

Another wonderful move on the Vietnamese experience of war, a multi-generational epic from the pain and hunger of earlier Communist land reform and strife, through the loss and division caused by the American war.

Book cover, The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh

An extraordinary novel on the experience of The American War, as the Vietnamese call it. Brutality, horror, chaos, loss, trauma, the nostalgia of lost love. Bao Ninh was the only survivor from his unit of 500 men. His book was banned for undermining the glory of war.

Decriminalise abortion and make it a protected human right. Women’s rights are under threat from the far right. Nigel Farage just called our current abortion provisions “utterly ludicrous” – and others in power are paying attention. A vote in Parliament could ...

Nigel Farage says abortion laws are “utterly ludicrous.”
MPs are watching.
We have days to show them: the public backs abortion rights.
Join me and sign the petition now! you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/de...

Doctor describes 'total carnage' as 27 reported killed by Israeli fire at Gaza aid centre - live updates For a third day running, Palestinians have been killed while collecting aid - the IDF confirms it fired shots and is investigating.

If you’d thought what’s happening Gaza couldn’t get any worse. Israel using food and starvation as a tool of oppression, and militarising their performative humanitarian aid, killing people in the process.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv...

Absolutely. The idea of the special dialect for use in front of white people, to illustrate how marginalised people have to navigate codes to fit in, is genius. Enjoy your break - beach is looking good!

Cover of History of Modern Vietnam by Christopher Goscha

50 years since unification and Vietnam is still defined largely by the war with the US. Good to have got a broader picture of the place - a history of multiple peoples, and Viet as well as French, communist and American imperial ambitions.

Leaving France behind.

Arched bridge at Montmorillon

The Norman tower of Falaise castle

Nice few days in France.

Free speech ‘as long as it agrees with us’ ain’t free speech. It’s pretty fash, actually.

Beggars belief. I think reasons to find another home for my vote have reached tipping point.

No 10 delays child poverty strategy with tens of thousands more facing hardship Exclusive: Flagship policy put back until at least autumn amid fears cost of removing two-child benefit cap will outweigh political benefit

Oh FFS, dealing with child poverty should not be a political calculation, just the right thing to do. And what we expect of a Labour government. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

UK suspends trade talks with Israel and attacks ‘repellent’ extremism Foreign secretary, David Lammy, condemns blocking of aid trucks and calls by Israeli ministers to ‘purify Gaza’

WHAT. TOOK. YOU. SO. LONG?

I mean, 70% of the 50,000 killed in Gaza so far are women and children. Indiscriminate bombs ok, starvation not?
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Israel says it will allow 'basic amount of food into Gaza' to prevent hunger crisis Israel gave the update shortly after announcing a new ground offensive in Gaza.

Allowing minimum levels of food into Gaza to prevent a ‘starvation situation’, having blockaded all food and supplies for ten weeks, says everything about Israel’s disdain for Palestinian life.

Withholding food from a civilian population is a war crime.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Middle East crisis live: Trump says US should turn Gaza into ‘freedom zone’ as more than 90 killed in Israeli strikes US president’s reported comments in Qatar come as dozens killed in a second consecutive night of heavy bombing

A ‘freedom zone’? What, like recognising the State of Palestine? www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Book cover, Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Finished Orbital in a metal tube at 38,000 feet, somewhere over Siberia, which I guess is apt; sunlight out of the right windows, darkness the left.

Breath-taking, I thought. A gentle but compelling meditation on existence, insignificance and meaning.

Street scene, Hanoi, red flags with gold star

Street scene Hanoi, yellow and green colonial corner building, bicycle taxi and moped in foreground

50th anniversary poster in front of white building

Street scene Hanoi,

Good morning from Hanoi. Vietnam flying the flags to mark 50 years of liberation of the south, and national unification. Work trip, jammy, eh?

Forested steep river bank seen from the river; still water reflecting trees. Boat bow in lower foreground

Seized the day. Frittata and cider mid-stream in a perfect quiet spot. Saw a kingfisher, heard a nightingale.

Whereas the more heroin you get, you know, the less actual science you need … 🙄

Book cover, Black Boy by Richard Wright

Hard on its heels, Richard Wright’s moving memoir of growing up black, poor and hungry in 1920s Tennessee, and escaping the oppression of the South first in books, then on a train to Chicago. As the saying goes, survival is resistance.

Book cover, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.

‘The epic story of America’s Great Migration’. Between the 1920s and 1970s millions of black Americans moved from the southern states to the northern cities.

More accurately, they fled the violence, racism and lynching of Jim Crow segregation, to find freedom.

We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and yet 1 in 7 people in the UK are facing hunger.

This isn't right. Repost if you agree

‘The whole policy is wrong’: rebellion among Labour MPs grows over £5bn benefits cut Dozens of MPs are angry at their party, despite frantic efforts by whips and government ministers to assuage them

Having waited so long for a govt strategy for child poverty, please don’t rush it out with half-funded policy ideas as a political tactic to enable wider social welfare cuts

Our children deserve better than this

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

What I’ve learned after 40 years as the Observer’s science editor Almost as amazing as the knowledge we have gained in the past four decades is the fact that some people continue to deny the damage we are doing to our world

Fascinating, the key scientific advancements since I was at school.
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Who wants to hear a nightingale?

Of course you do. Sound on.