Helen Lewis

1/ At 17 weeks pregnant, Emily Waldorf was suddenly faced with a life-threatening situation: Her baby’s foot was dipping out of her cervix. Doctors told her the longer her cervix stayed open, the higher her risk of infection. They knew how to treat her. There was one issue…🧵

Terry Pratchett, one of England’s funniest writers, is in danger of being lost to history, @helenlewis writes: theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/…

Very good piece on the awful logic of the Peckham planning decision propviews.co.uk/blog/a-great-d…

If you haven't read @helenlewis on the right's new fascination with masculinity, do so. It helps explain this theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/…

This is diabolically disgraceful, to put it lightly. There is absolutely nothing in this horrific case that suggests a “limited understanding of consent.” These girls were threatened at knife point, raped, and filmed — and that footage then shared /🧵1

@thinkingshivers @MindMechanical @pupperpowell One writing tip that many people find useful is to read their work aloud. Your ear is a better editor than your eye. I bump on that exposition sentence about Roland Garros etc because the sub-clauses sound like written prose, not speech.

@MindMechanical @pupperpowell The context is that this is the narrator giving his testimony to a judge. This is a brief expository aside, addressing the judge directly, and it follows a brief demonstration of her carelessness.

I submitted a draft of my short story to Claude for copy editing. Sometimes he’ll suggest a re-write of a particular sentence. My version: “She was just a rich girl, with a carelessness about her that could only come from being born into privilege.” Claude’s suggestion: “She was just a rich girl, careless in the way only privilege allows.” It's a matter of taste, but I personally think Claude's version is better. It's saying the same thing but more deftly. But when I swap his sentence in then plug the paragraph into Pangram, it goes from being high confidence that it's human to low confidence that it's human. If I keep doing this, will it start to read like AI slop? If I keep doing this, is it even my writing anymore? So I'm keeping my version, the one I think is worse, and I'm disquieted by the fact that there could be a better version of this story that I now need to specifically avoid.

I find it extremely offensive for a start. I lived nearby for years and do not find it squalid. Have you read the decision? Do you know on what grounds the application was refused? Heritage grounds. Squalid is a very strong word. I worked behind the scenes to defend this on heritage grounds. This is not about being anti development. I am not at all but your assessment leaves me startled.

@Brahmski @JonahDispatch Your god has apparently deserted you: youtube.com/watch?v=l8C6Q9…

In any case, Helen Lewis is the absolute worst. I couldn’t get through her interview with @JonahDispatch. That voice, the horrible grating tone. At least thank g-d it wasn’t on video

@EllieCumbo It's going to be a lot harder to shift any private flats now than it was in 2024.

@EllieCumbo The minutes cite "uncertainty around the availability of GLA grant funding, not securing planning permission as soon as was hoped, build cost increases, regulatory changes, sales values remaining flat, and sale rates decreasing". All of which sound plausible to me...

Bio bought four properties in Gambia since becoming first lady, and has use of the presidential palace. Meanwhile, there are 18,000 people on Southwark's housing waiting list. Someone is living in a B&B so this family can keep a pied a terre in London. occrp.org/en/investigati…

@helendennis80 Makes sense. FWIW I live in Lewisham and our town centre has switched from low-rise to multiple new tower blocks in the last decade, and it’s worked out fine.

@helenlewis These are fair challenges. I'm not a Cllr anymore but I expect comms was pitched for local audience who have been living & breathing this for the last 3 years.

@EllieCumbo I don’t think this is a “great day for Peckham”. I think it’s a sad day, because zero affordable homes will be built. (I also have more sympathy for developers than most people in Labour, because their costs have gone up so much in recent years.)

@EllieCumbo As I said to Helen, my point was about the comms on here, which presented this as a victory against development. I don’t think that’s the right tone to strike given the depth of the crisis.

@helendennis80 Regardless of the wider picture, I found the council and councillors’ posts tone-deaf. None of the Twitter comms around this have explained the site issues. (And all of these homes would have been affordable to *someone*.)

@helenlewis Not really. Southwark has one of best housing delivery records in London, largest council house-builder in the country & completed the most social rent homes of any local authority in London last year. You can't accuse Southwark of hating new homes - this is v. site specific.

@JonahDispatch @norootcause Another case of Helen Blindness in the wild. Please give generously and we can end this terrible affliction.

@norootcause @helenlewis Wrong Helen

Had a great time talking with @helenlewis on The Remnant. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

@MatthewJDalby @Kilted_Sailor There’s a fear that cases like this will be “weaponised” to destroy support for social housing. I always think this is a bad argument. Cases like this probably do dent support for social housing. The answer is to stop them happening, not hope the right never publicises them.

@Kilted_Sailor @helenlewis Acknowledging that even one case like this is wrong risks opening the floodgates.

@alexmassie IMO, it's of Troy Mirren DeWitt Fielding Hunt Keller Baxendale Sharman Gurley Brown McCrory Oyeyemi Lederer Joyce Andrews Lewis Duncan

@helenlewis I feel Troy wants to have a word here. No disrespect, like.

I’m not sure the world needed a final, definitive ranking of Helens, but kudos to this chap for stepping up anyway.