Peter Ormerod

It's an honour to have my book reviewed by the great Simon Critchley in today's @guardian And as for the review itself, it's beyond anything I could have dreamed of

I know I'm probably the only remaining combatant in the Southgate Wars but still

Amazing, looking back, how much flak Southgate got for picking squads that were basically this one

@FootballCliches *Astounded* by the number of people who aren't getting the reference here. Astounded and disappointed

Four out of six English clubs dumped out of the Champions League last 16 by an aggregate score of 28-11. In the immortal words of Alan Hansen and Jimmy Hill, on this very day, 30 years ago:

I was going to pick out a quote from this but I can't because it's all just so good

@MadsDavies They do a good job with their variety of music, I think. And Pray As You Go got me very into the monks of Keur Moussa!

This was the music on Pray as you Go on Monday. The Kyiv Chamber Choir singing The Creed. “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” youtube.com/watch?v=_HOEkp…

He's one of the greats of football broadcasting - and more importantly, a really good man. All power and strength to him

@WalkerMarcus Pretty sure they've published other stories too. This was written by an East Midlands reporter for one of their local news sections.

I’m glad there’s nothing else going on in the world that the national broadcaster can stop the presses to bring us an urgent update on a hiring decision by an estate agent in the Midlands. Any cats stuck up trees? Any builders not finished a project on time?

Looking for interviewee! I'm hoping to speak to someone who has come to consider themself a "cultural Christian"- appreciating the civilisational and moral inheritance of Christianity without affirming belief in God. madeleine(at)churchtimes.co.uk

@davidsenra @pmarca What an extraordinary display of ignorance and philistinism

Great men of history had little to no introspection. The personality that builds empires is not the same personality that sits around quietly questioning itself. @pmarca and I discuss what we both noticed but no one talks about: David: You don't have any levels of introspection? Marc: Yes, zero. As little as possible. David: Why? Marc: Move forward. Go! I found people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past. It's a real problem and it's a problem at work and it's a problem at home. David: So I've read 400 biographies of history’s greatest entrepreneurs and someone asked me what the most surprising thing I’ve learned from this was [and I answered] they have little or zero introspection. Sam Walton didn't wake up thinking about his internal self. He just woke up and was like: I like building Walmart. I'm going to keep building Walmart. I'm going to make more Walmarts. And he just kept doing it over and over again. Marc: If you go back 400 years ago it never would've occurred to anybody to be introspective. All of the modern conceptions around introspection and therapy, and all the things that kind of result from that are, a kind of a manufacture of the 1910s, 1920s. Great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff. The individual runs and does all these things and builds things and builds empires and builds companies and builds technology. And then this kind of this kind of guilt based whammy kind of showed up from Europe. A lot of it from Vienna in 1910, 1920s, Freud and all that entire movement. And kind of turned all that inward and basically said, okay, now we need to basically second guess the individual. We need to criticize the individual. The individual needs to self criticize. The individual needs to feel guilt, needs to look backwards, needs to dwell in the past. It never resonated with me.

@rfh21 @derekclarksport Yes, the main problem was the choice of name - not just for champions and not really a league

@EntsPeter @derekclarksport It’s odd that as the European Cup it was distinct - a cup for league champions. But once renamed the Champions League, it then became very important that the big brands were there as often as possible, hence the extra places for the big leagues and loads more money.

When the Champions League consisted of actual champions. Those were the days.

@DavidBowieGlam Thanks for sharing this! The whole thing is great but the Christianity stuff is particularly fascinating for me at least

This is fantastic! It’s over 20 mins long so can’t post the video on X. #DavidBowie instagram.com/reel/DV3uyHTim…

The whole thing is great but Bowie demanding answers from Bono and BB King about Christ is quite something

It was such a pleasure to be invited to speak about my book at St Mark's in Leamington - it's a really important place for me (and for many others, I'm sure). Great questions from the reverend vicar and the audience. The video has just been published - see the link below

(Obvs interested in other thoughts and theories too of course)

So I reckon it's sort of magical realism filtered through something like quantum theory. A bit like the worlds of His Dark Materials. It's such a great series!

I might have gone off on one completely here, and maybe I'm late to this and others have come up with the same theory, but I have thoughts about Small Prophets and the clue is in this picture from the final episode

@Nina_Power_ Thank you - I think I was wrong

We need to defend liberal values (e.g. free speech, women's rights, gay rights) against those who would illberally remove them (whether Fabian or Islamist). The discussion about whether and how much Britain is or should be Christian and our pagan past can wait, e.g. we need to defend the possibility of having that discussion first, as liberals.

We can have the paganism, Christianity, liberalism discussion...later, but in the meantime, we are all of these things, and we are not, and never have been, and never shall be, anything else. Stop the experiment.