Lins Rumbold

Me too. It’s a genuine pleasure to read.

International Women’s Day 2026: Women EICs at the Bylines Network This International Women’s Day, the Bylines Network invites you to celebrate the women who make the Network what it is

Things may have improved, but we still have a long way to go, It is not that long ago that women were not allowed to open their own bank accounts or take on a job without their husbands permission. This ingrained prejudice is still present in people’s minds.
@jolk.bsky.social @bylines.scot
2/ #IWD

I don’t think it’ll be too much longer before he can bake on his own!

Pretty sure everything he bakes will have chocolate, Biscoff, or both in, mind 😆

6 chocolate cupcakes sitting on a cooling rack. They’re iced with swirls of chocolate buttercream and dotted with milk and white chocolate chips. We used a star shape icing tip to avoid the cupcakes looking like poos. No one wants to eat a cake that looks like one of those.

Young Mr R loves baking. So we made some chocolate cupcakes today. I then asked if he wanted to ice them. He said yes. So we made chocolate buttercream as well.

Considering it must be at least 10 years since I made any kind of icing, I think we did good 😄

Churchill has retrospectively been turned into a cartoon like superhero who could do no wrong and who we all owe a debt of gratitude forever.

The gold standard of leadership.

A man of supreme wit and gifted with statesmanship unrivalled by any other

It's far more complicated and interesting 1/3

Alex is getting grumpy in Book 2. He’s just told his US Air Force counterpart he has neither the time nor the crayons to explain something to him 🙈🤣😬

These two have *history* …

#AmWriting #WritingCommunity

A 500 piece jigsaw puzzle on green felt, partly done. The edges are complete, and so is the large Hawker Hurricane in the foreground. Also complete are three smaller Hurricanes … but not much else of the British countryside scene.

Young Mr R occasionally enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles with us. This is the first 500 piece one we’ve started.

I find myself going to it for a few minutes, adding a couple of bits, then going back to whatever I was doing. Clearly my brain is tuned for recognising Hurricanes and very little else 😂

Me holding the hardback edition of Canberra: The Greatest Multi-Role Aircraft of the Cold War, Volume 1, by Ken Delve and John Sheehan. Two Canberras in flight adorn the cover.

It’s been a good writing day. Not only have I written more of the 1950s plot (and developed a deep dislike of Tom, one of the other Canberra pilots), I enjoyed reading some of this brilliant book. Definitely recommend this one if you’re interested in anything EE Canberra related.

#Writing #Author

One of the most disgusting, brutal and unpunished child‑abuse networks in the world…

And the usual voices who claim to care about ‘women and girls’ have nothing to say.

We see you.

Another Epstein to Bannon text from May 2019 predicts Boris Johnson’s leadership victory - and then enigmatically refers to a ‘Peter’ making contact with an ‘Eric’ about the turbulence. Any clues which Peter or Eric? There aren’t that many in this political sphere

Our important work at Kent Council to spend £600k on a car park to provide free parking for Reform councillors while staff have to pay, is all part of our 'We don't give a shit about anyone but ourselves' policy.

I’ve FINALLY got the beginning of Book 2 into a state I’m happy with 🙌🏻

Part of me is panicking that the word count has dropped with all the recent edits.

The other part is glad the rest can now be written from a solid start. So I guess it’s progress 🫠

#writers #authors

Fleet Air Arm Legends: Fairey Swordfish | at Mortons Books Fleet Air Arm Legends: Fairey Swordfish | at Mortons Books

Anyway, here’s the book www.mortonsbooks.co.uk/book/fleet-a...

Digital artwork of a Fairey Swordfish biplane attacking the battleship Bismarck. POV is behind and below the Swordfish, showing the torpedo slumg beneath the fuselage, with Bismarck sailing away and to the left, roughly parallel to the course of the Swordfish, while streams of flak tracer shoot all around the aircraft. Above is thick cloud which the aircraft has just emerged from

Annoyance time

This artwork by Piotr Forkasiewicz was created for the cover of my Fairey Swordfish book from Mortons. We decided on the composition after studying all the accounts from the aircrews involved and photos of the op

But whenever it is posted online, people decry it as inaccurate…

We've spent ten years being proved right about all the things the loudest, biggest voices in the UK media insisted, often obnoxiously, we were wrong about. The real kicker is that there's no consolation whatsoever in being correct. Brexit, Putin, Johnson, Truss, Trump, Twitter, Netanyahu etc etc...

It’s been frustrating, but equally I’ve had to recognise this is how my brain works.

Some people are happy with multiple projects and ideas going at the same time. I’m not. (Nothing wrong with either, and neither is objectively “better”; the world needs people of all types.)

Lesson learned: my writing brain cannot focus on two different projects at once. I’ve been pushing to get a short story done (for an anthology later this year). That has taken up ALL my writing run time for the last 6 weeks.

Despite itching to get on with Book 2, I just couldn’t switch tracks 😖

This notion of 'politics as drama or entertainment', and then the chase for audience numbers, rather than 'how our society is structured' is where things went wrong at the BBC.

If you have any doubt that Farage is the British pro-consul for Trump’s Dark Empire, read this story about the rehabilitated Putin stooge Manafort

BBC report at a headline level that Grok will now not make sexually exploitative images any more. An actual reporter comes on and explains that it will do no such thing, and will just make the images invisible in the UK. These are two very, very different things.

You cannot back Donald Trump and support Ukraine. Trump has helped Putin by starving Ukraine of air defense (which the Russians understand). Trump is helping Putin freeze Ukrainian cities, turn off Ukrainian lights and, ultimately, kill Ukrainians.
And he has been doing this for almost one year.

Given all the other recent Conservative defections he's accepted, "I've always thought Robert Jenrick was a fraud" reads more like a recommendation than a criticism

TSR2 XR222 in the hall at IWM Duxford. Concorde’s tail can be seen over TSR2’s wing.

Last but certainly not least, my favourite “what if”, TSR2 😍

I can’t explain my fascination with this aircraft, but I make a beeline for it every time.

I need to get to Cosford to see XR220 this year.

We have to feature some warbirds - Boeing B-17G Sally B and Catalina Miss Pick Up in winter maintenance, and Hurricane R4118 looking fabulous as ever.

Front view of a Tornado in the Air & Space hall at Duxford. It’s kind of dumped there, tbh.

A Westland Lysander. I believe this aircraft used to hang from the ceiling, but it’s now on the ground.

Rear 3/4 view of the raspberry ripple Gloster Javelin. I always feel for the Javelin. It looks like it should have been a lot better than it was.

Rear view of the Vickers VC-10 outside against a wintry sky. I do like the VC-10.

A few pics from a New Year’s trip to IWM Duxford 😄

It’s fair to say things are being reorganised there at the moment. Here we have a Tornado, a Lysander, raspberry ripple Javelin, and the VC-10

If I wanted to permanently cripple NATO, divide the USA and help Russia and China, I could think of nothing better than the US using military force to seize Greenland.

This is not exercising freedom of speech. This is misogynistic intimidation.

When Terrorism Went Global: Plane Hijackings and Violence in the 1970s Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on YouTubeListen on Amazon MusicListen on Podcast AddictBecome a Patron!In the 1970s, a network of radical extremists terrorised the West wit

The episode is now here! coldwarconversations.com/episode437/

The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s

Great chat with @jasonburke2.bsky.social about his new book The #Revolutionists | The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s | It's Baillie Gifford Shortlisted!

Episode coming soon. Buy the book & support @ColdWarPod here uk.bookshop.org/a/1549/97818...

@penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social