Susannah Herbert

@MForstater @hullfair I howled

Jenni Murray lit a spark that started a wildfire. It was her cancellation that led to the issue moving outside of feminist circles and coming to the attention of normies (like me!) It was an absolute insult for the BBC to have Harriet Harman on the Today Programme where she insinuated that Murray’s principled stand detracted from her feminism rather than forming an integral part of it.

The time capsule of Jenni Murray's December 2017 interview with India Willoughby, who had just joined Loose Women. "I'm a woman not a trans woman" he said Murray asks how it felt to take a place on a women’s panel show “fine…no problem whatever - my gender has always been female”. bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0…

Graceful, witty & sobering speech at the 70th anniversary @PolRoger @DuffCooperPrize from the historian Tim Bouverie. I wish I had been there, but this little film makes me feel I was...(to be enjoyed with a glass of 🍾)

@RooneyRachel I treasure Hey Girl. It's a book I read & re-read, as does the daughter.

Just need to correct a couple of points re Telegraph article. 1) I wouldn't expect any poetry collection of mine to be automatically shortlisted for CLPE (despite my 1st three having done so) but I would have hoped the CLPE would have at least acknowledged I had a 4th book out.

Congratulations to 'brilliant young historian' @TimBouverie on winning the 70th #DuffCooperPrize for the fast-paced, wide-ranging & resonant Allies At War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler. duffcooperprize.org @PolRogerEpernay @NewCollegeOx

Keith the Apocalypse Bringer is a three-year-old Anglo-Nubian goat in a field in Devon. Keith should not be underestimated. Keith has been systematically dismantling the ecosystem since approximately 7am, when he ate a bramble. This is significant because bramble is an invasive scrub species that outcompetes wildflowers, reduces biodiversity, and creates dense monoculture thicket that nothing else can use. Keith ate it. Keith does this every day. Keith does not charge for this service. 8:15am - Keith ate a thistle. Thistles are also considered invasive scrub in managed pasture. Goldfinches eat thistle seeds, but Keith's grazing will ensure the pasture remains open enough for the ground-nesting birds that can't use dense scrub. Keith has not attended a conservation workshop. Keith arrived at this conclusion by being a goat. 9:00am - Keith dismantled a section of hedge. This was less helpful. Keith does not have a perfect record. 10:30am - Keith escaped the field. He was in the road for eleven minutes. He ate a neighbour's rose. This is not being counted in Keith's environmental impact assessment. 11:00am - Keith was returned to the field. Keith regarded the farmer with the specific expression of an animal that does not recognise the concept of property. 12:00pm - Keith ate more bramble. His digestive system: four stomachs, a rumen full of specialised microorganisms, the ability to extract nutrition from lignified plant matter that would defeat any other animal on this field, is converting scrub vegetation into milk with a fat content of approximately 4.5%. The milk will become cheese. The cheese will be sold at the farm shop. The farm shop is four miles away. The cheese food miles are: four. 3:00pm - Keith produced manure. The manure will grow the grass. The grass will grow the bramble. The bramble will be eaten by Keith. This system has no inputs. It has been running since goats were domesticated approximately ten thousand years ago. Keith is not aware he is saving the planet. Keith is thinking about whether the fence on the north side has a weak point. It does. Keith found it at 4:45pm. Keith got out again.

Read @MsPollyClark

Wolves, War, Gossip, Young Victorian Poets & the Fab Four. Your non-fic reading sorted. Thanks to @DuffCooperPrize judge @aholgate my former cellmate at @thetimes (Sunday) for illuminating round-up 📚🍾

All five great nonfiction titles shortlisted for @DuffCooperPrize are on sale via @bookshop_org_UK, which supports indy bookstores. 📚📚📚uk.bookshop.org/shop/polrogerd…

Our judges highly recommend A Scandal in Königsberg by @Clarkstopher and congratulate its publisher @AllenLaneBooks on its shortlisting for the 70th @DuffCooperPrize duffcooperprize.org/portfolio-item…

Shout out for @mrianleslie & the shortlisting of his captivating take on the relationship that powered the #Beatles John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs @FaberBooks duffcooperprize.org/portfolio-item…

And three cheers for wilderness, as explored by #AdamWeymouth in his tremendous Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe @HutchHeinemann @CWAgencyUK duffcooperprize.org/portfolio-item…

Read the great non-fiction authors on our 70th anniversary shortlist. Heartiest congrats to @TimPBouverie @Clarkstopher @mrianleslie #AdamWeymouth #RichardHolmes 🍾📚🍾

On the 7th of May, 1977, the poet Philip Larkin gave Monica Jones the book 'Thorburn's Mammals' for her 55th birthday. Inside the flyleaf, he wrote: 'The little lives of earth and form, Of finding food, and keeping warm, Are not like ours, and yet A kinship lingers nonetheless: We hanker for the homeliness Of den, and hole, and set. And this identity we feel - Perhaps not right, perhaps not real - Will link us constantly; I see the rock, the clay, the chalk, The flattened grass, the swaying stalk, And it is you I see.' The poem was not published in his lifetime, but it was offered by Monica to Anthony Thwaite for the first edition of Collected Poems in 1988. Since then, it has become one of Larkin's best loved poems. Larkin usually worked over his poems for weeks and months, but just a single draft of this one exists, dated 6 May 1977 (the day before Monica's birthday), inserted as a loose sheet into the back of one of his workbooks. There are just a few minor differences to the final text. (Reference Burnett, 2014). Archibald Thorburn was an artist who specialised in paintings of wildlife. His 'Thorburn's Mammals', originally published in two volumes in 1920 and 1921, contains fifty colour prints depicting almost all the species of mammals in the British Isles. The 1974 reissue has an introduction by David Attenborough. And here are two geese, two hares, a rabbit and a mouse at the feet of St Francis, a detail of glass by Powell & Sons, 1920 at Aldborough, Norfolk. A partridge looks in from the top. Little lives.

Never underestimate the power of envy in poetry-world. @KateClanchy1 was inspiring trainee English teachers in sessions set up by @ForwardPrizes & Forward Arts Foundation. Until suddenly, she wasn't...

@HadleyFreeman Hard agree @HadleyFreeman. In Ep. 6 Monisha Rajesh says of Kate Clanchy: "She hounded me". An untrue & libellous statement wch @katierazz did not challenge. I look forward to the retraction/apology...

And this too. I really enjoyed Anatomy of a Cancellation, but I wished it had been a bit clearer about how these people operated x.com/TAFKAMacM/stat…

I’ve referenced this tweet in my column today, but it was considered too vulgar to quote in full, probably rightly. But it’s worth remembering how online bullies tweet - it’s not “criticism”, it’s hysterical, abusive bullying

At long last! @panmacmillan apologises to @KateClanchy1. Maybe others who piled in on her cancellation could follow their lead. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

@MForstater Good grief. I am both horrified (this person is a medic!?) & relieved (this case is the highwater mark, surely?)

🤯

@NiallCPoetry 💯

@ladygreenkirtle A book embosser etsy.com/uk/listing/158…

If you were a man who owned so many books you couldn’t read them all in a lifetime and you always drank out of the same mug and wore your clothes until they fell apart or your wife threw them away, what would you want for your 64th birthday? Asking for a dad

@dieworkwear Cats plural? But feeding one cat is hard. Ask my cat.

all i want is to one day own a modest sized home in a walkable neighborhood and raise money for shelter animals. wear an outfit i like, walk to the grocery store, buy some nectarines, feed cats, and live in peace. just don't understand why achieving this is so hard