Roland Bates

Villanelle for War Your betters want to go to war, you see, And only scum-pig-people would speak out, Why do you hate your country, aren't you free? The broadsheet editorials agree, And clever Sensibles lend it their clout, Your betters want to go to war, you see, If I should die think only this of me, No war in foreign fields I'd ever doubt, Why do you hate your country, aren't you free? The best of us, like Churchill, Cromwell, me, Know mighty shock & awe will win the bout, Your betters want to go to war, you see, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Akrotiri, We'll launch defence-offensives, flights, and scout, Why do you hate your country, aren't you free? And now it's time for action, never flee! Or put it to a Parliamentary vote, Your betters want to go to war, you see, Why do you hate your country, aren't you free?

Villanelle for War

Paging @dorianlynskey.bsky.social. !Urgent call for @dorianlynskey.bsky.social !

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I am a bit hesitant around fiction which is specifically Second World War but maybe I should cane the Sword of Honour trilogy

Melancholy goose. Celan. Dodgy reading lamp.

I can say this publicly now - connected to this piece - it always disappointed me how rarely Monkey Cage had more than one female panellist - in my final series I think only 2 out of 7 episodes had more than one female guest - I pushed for many years but ultimately failed and now I’m gone

I remember hearing Decline and Fall on the radio when I was a kid, hearing my mum laughing, and me not understanding why it was funny..

New LEGO set for our times

Yes I haven't read much yet and I expect to find the religious content quite alien! He knows how to do a sentence though.

Correction. Orwell never said this. He did however, warn that: "political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” (That's Politics and the English Language, one of my favorite essays)

Spain’s MEP Irene Montero speaking to reporters

Irene Montero: No woman has ever been freed by American bombs or illegal aggression — Not in Syria. Not in Iraq. Not in Afghanistan. It will not happen in Iran either

When they want to sell their oil wars, their wars for profit, their imperial wars — they hide behind women’s rights to justify them

They deserve Dubai and Dubai deserves them

Mark Twain's brother was called Orion. Isn't that cool?

An early effort by Samuel Langhorne Clemens?

Markwayne isn't a proper name for anything, even a piece of wood you just found.

I had a teacher in about 1980 who read Scoop out loud to us. I enjoyed bits of it but I was too young to understand what the point was! My dad loved The Loved One (yeah typical)

Man with respiratory disease...
Man adjudicating football decisions...

Goodnight from the 400 bus to London, where Joan Gale is aware certain passengers seem to disappear without ever getting off. Goodnight from Charlie Merrick, worried he hasn’t done enough to prevent his sins from being recorded in the Bone Angel’s Book of Reckonings. Goodnight from Hookland.

a man in a tuxedo and bow tie is sitting in front of a window with his eyes closed . ALT: a man in a tuxedo and bow tie is sitting in front of a window with his eyes closed .

Keep it in the family

I was gutted to overhear parents mentioning that they had obtained their WBD tokens at McDonald's. Turns out McD's have been major sponsors for at least three years. My vegan Kolleague was not impressed. More fool me for not noticing until now! I'm loving it

I think I might be a fanatic though. I am on meds for high blood pressure

I'm in no position to comment!

Lunatics.

Duke Ellington advertising Olivetti typewriters, 1969

Gertrude Stein hanging out with the Cone sisters.

This photograph.

MEAULNES! MEAULNES!

Anthony Blanche and 4 empty brandy alexanders

Down ze little red lane zey go

Writing Back to Guy and Harriet Pringle It wasn’t all geography, colonialism, and the erasure of the traces of the "receded Ottoman Empire,” as Manning puts it in the book, that I learned from Fortunes of War. It also taught me a lot about ...

themillions.com/2018/05/writ... this is one of the things I most enjoyed writing