Inky Fool

I am moving to Substack.

While I was researching Rhyme & Reason (available in all good and goodish bookshops), I came across a little anecdote that tells us something Terribly Important (I think) about history.

A fortnight ago, in a little break from launching Rhyme and Reason, I took a young lady for a walk in a woods, and returned with a muddy left knee and a fiancée.

People like to release animals.

Distinctly tropical I recently discovered that the Seychelles were named after Jean Moreau de Séchelles, a Frenchman, who never set his gallic, garlicky, eyes upon the islands that bear his name.

More maligned than malignant I've been writing a new book: a short, simple, light-hearted history of English poetry.

I've a written a new book.

Start with something simple.

Today is the first of May, or that's what Shakespeare thought, as did all proper Englishmen.

It is of immense importance to absolutely everyone that The Illustrated Etymologicon is now published, out, in the shops, for sale, and begging to be bought.

I've done another little video essay with the splendid people at Little White Lies.

Pancallism is the belief that everything is beautiful, or at least everything that exists, which is quite a lot of things.

Today is, of course, the 74th anniversary of the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting.

The week is a curious thing: the division of our lives into a revolving, unfinishing cycles of seven days.

The nomenclature of England is a foggy thing, cunningly designed to confuse foreigners, who will wonder, in their simple foreign way, why they're consuming a Devonshire cream tea in Devon, why an earl's wife is a countess, why Nottingham had a sheriff, and

The original logo There's a website where you can buy an Apple Macintosh for 40p.

The Italian for a butterfly is a farfalla, and so the pasta that looks like a butterfly is called farfalle.

Tall?

I have, in my solitude, taken up playing the violin.

For some reason unknown to me vaccines have been much in the news of late.