An old hardcover of the delightfully twisted Celia Dale’s THE INNOCENT PARTY arrived in the mail today.

What Heidi said. Alice Munro, one of the absolute best at the short story.

Congratulations to all involved in That They May Face The Rising Sun in passing the significant milestone of €500K at the box office after three weeks on release. Still playing everywhere.

So pleased to have interviewed Paul Weller for the latest Mojo, not least because we got to talk about the relative merits of Lee vs Wrangler 60s denim jackets - you know, the important stuff.

If you liked the Thom Bell 'Ready Or Not' comp on Kent, then you're going to love this. Deniece Williams, Nancy Wilson, Phyllis Hyman, plus of course Delfonics, Stylistics et al. Out in two weeks, Pre-order here: acerecords.co.uk/thom-bell-didn…

Research!

While opera receives a state subsidy of £65m approx., the annual cost to the UK taxpayer of policing football matches is around £48m. Clearly this represents a funding gap. Please note, I have been unable to establish the cost of policing opera houses during important fixtures.

1972 paperback about the Manson family.

Interesting piece but many so assumptions about how and why we remember the past (always in the contemporary!), how museums are not the only or even best holders of difficult memory, and the issue of museums being private rather than state-run in terms of ensuring longevity.

'This is a grim story of what can happen when a nation fails to take ownership of a central part of its own history: the threat of renewed oblivion always awaits.'
Fintan O'Toole The Irish Times
re: how Ireland's Great Hunger Museum Quinnipiac University 'disappeared into a limbo of oblivion'

I got to interview the great Anne Enright this evening as part of the Booker Winners series National Library of Ireland
We talked The Gathering; big Irish families; language; readings & audiobooks; and lots of good writingy stuff.
Thanks to Alan Hayes : Arlen House, Sinéad McCoole, & all at the library.

New Record Store Day Podcast.
Wall Of Voodoo founding member Stan Ridway regales us with tales of wild Los Angeles.

And we take a funky walk to 1970s Detroit with to celebrate the music of the Westbound Records label.

Wherever you get podcasts or here bit.ly/RSDPODCAST

New Backlisted Podcast! Book recommendation, from A Void to Zardoz. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ backlisted.fm/episodes/211-b…

Each time Jenny Offill rereads Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway,” published on this day in 1925, “some forgotten facet of the story comes to light, and the feeling is always that of having blurred past something that was right in front of me,” she writes. nyer.cm/3PhCdse

Very cool find at the thrift store today : the screenplays of the British Sci-Fi series from the 60s, 'UFO'.

Remembering fantasy author L. Frank Baum, born today in 1856 and best remembered for his Wonderful Wizard of Oz series. That's him in the middle of the photo, back in 1908.
'I shall take the heart, for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.'

The Wind and the Lion (1975)
Dir. John Milius
Candice Bergen & Sean Connery

Alvin Purple is a 1973 Australian sex comedy film starring Graeme Blundell. It became the most commercially successful Australian film released to that time, breaking the box office record previously set by Michael Powell's feature They're a Weird Mob (1966). #PopCulture

THANK YOU. That is another wildly overlooked component of the South's political realignment. A lot of generationally democratic vote left the South after World War II, and a lot of northern Republican vote moved to the Sunbelt from the 1950s onward. -OS