David James

@Moseleyfans @MoseleyRugbyFC Lack of interest?! I thought it was thriving! Every week there were lively discussions of matches, team selection, national league issues etc. And it was a great way to catch up with match videos etc. A very retrograde step imo - surely we need every means to generate support?

@Pimhill @MoseleyRugbyFC Closed due to lack of interest.

Moseley Matters - 10th October 2025 - mailchi.mp/dc01167199d8/p…

Then standing on Sword beach

Then scratching the surface of the Caen Memorial Museum - which is excellent btw …

Quite a last day in France - first trying to find the tomb of Gregory of Tours in Tours…

@MarinaHyde Interesting to read your piece alongside Jonathan Freedland’s - surely his point is right - Labour need to be far better at the narrative than they are - only Wes seems to talking about achievements in line with values. They desperately need an Alistair Campbell.

@johnhaffenden @j_amesmarriott I’m sorry TE no longer appears at Hay: one of the most entertaining speakers: “When one thinks of the history of cultural relations from Boadicea to Bruce Forsyth …”. Someone then spoke of Bruce’s ideological journey from the Palladium to The Price Is Right: hilarious…

@j_amesmarriott Love the way TSE looks like a handyman who’s come to fix a picture - which of course he did.

Loved this book: "Postmodern culture has little affection for ‘hierarchies’ but the act of discrimination is a regular feature of everyday social life ... Why should we pass judgements on rock bands and football teams but not on poetry?"

In Our Time - Thomas Middleton - BBC Sounds Excellent IOT on Middleton. I found an old BBC radio version of A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (Richard Briers, Hugh Paddick, Sian Phillips). Hugely enjoyable. Why isn’t this play (and others) revived more often?! bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…

OK - I get why Leavis says it doesn’t deserve its place of pre-eminence in Conrad’s works, but Lord Jim is an astonishingly powerful and astonishingly contemporary study of male identity. Right up there with the best of Conrad imo.

Weren’t those Penguin Classics covers wonderful! I do miss them. The subsequent versions have never quite matched the old ones - 70’s and 80’s IMO - but this may well be a sign of age ofc … Does anyone share my enthusiasm?!

But I do struggle with Nostromo - possibly the greatest novel of the C20th century according to Walter Allen - but for me not succeeding overall, despite some wonderful things. I formed this view in 1979 and rereading has not changed that view - eg compare Decoud and Axel Heist

This is even better - Razumov, Ziemianitch, Miss Haldin - superb. Up there with Dostoyevsky IMHU…

Continuing my reading of Conrad - not sure I agree with Leavis’s assessment that it’s one of Conrad’s supreme masterpieces - but it’s very good.

And for my money the depiction of the storm in the novella - as well as the profound moral implication of the work - is superior to Typhoon.

I would certainly concur with Jocelyn Baines that ‘Heyst is perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the most complex, character that Conrad created’. And Leavis (gnomically) that ‘it answers most nearly to the stock notion of his genius’.

I didn’t think it was Laura’s role to produce headlines for the Daily Mail … have I misunderstood something? bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

“Outrage” - amongst whom? Oh - it’s the Daily Mail …

I’ve always regarded Conrad as a bit - well - foreign - but this has caused me to concur with Leavis’s judgment that he is “among the very greatest novelists in the language - or in any language.” It’s an astonishing read.

Just realised how annoyed I am at the Tory suggestion that the country may be “sleepwalking” into a Labour government. I couldn’t feel more awake and alert to the options facing the country. This allegation of somnambulism is typically condescending and insulting.