Ian Hunt

The war on Iran is already upending the Middle East. Look to the Gulf states to see how | Nesrine Malik Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE are finding their carefully projected image of stability has been blown away, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

The war on Iran is already upending the Middle East. Look to the Gulf states to see how | Nesrine Malik

Rod Mengham's writing (poetry, essays) is one of the writers I always come back to. Glad to see he is writing a bit for Apollo.

M. NourbeSe Philip, 'To whom it may concern', with the striking sign off 'Cornwall, England, 1983'. #poetry

/ there are good models for rural council housing from the past that are still relevant: e.g. Tayler & Green. But what the buildings look like is only part of a good outcome. Free bus travel for the young and cheap bus travel for everyone else is needed not the grind of 'viability'. #SocialHousing

/ and look for leasing nearby land as allotments to take pressure off the SSSI and give new residents diff ways of inhabiting the place & mixing with exisiting residents. Wishlists are easy -- but look at how bad and anti-social most of new riverside housing is in Rochester! New models are needed.

/ but I don't know the site . . . and have unpopular views! Where there is a chance to build, housing should be densifed and socialised (timber laminate as structure) as a way to keep as much land unsealed as possible. I wd also open up definition of 'developer' to co-housing, etc /

Careful reporting on a development in the #Medway area nr sensitive ecology (& nightingales). I don't see 25% defined by Homes England as 'affordable' as much of a concession, given the acute need for #housing, & wd like to see low-rise (3-4 storeys) as default building type /

Philip Guston, “Cherries,” 1976

Mu Qi, “Six Persimmons,” 13th century

Wondering, under the tumult of my usual breezy wrongheadedness, whether Philip Guston knew of the thirteenth century monk and painter Mu Qi’s “Six Persimmons” when he painted the 1976 “Cherries.”

A singularly dismaying report -- but I saw recently a campaign poster about the health effects of wood-burning stoves on the back of a London bus. So council/ local government confidence to challenge these vexatious legal threats is not entirely exhausted.

The woodburning stove industry has been lawyering up against council public health campaigns.

That book is in my C19 TBR queue. I am never going to read very much Trollope, but I will that one.

Might be a long wait for a Sunday night version of The Inheritors, the book WG thought much better. I am holding out for it, having happened to have read it recently (overcoming decades of reluctance).

Open University U-Turns on ‘Ancient Palestine’ Ban In December, the Open University told UK Lawyers for Israel it would stop using the term ‘ancient Palestine’ in teaching materials. Following a public outcry, the university now says the term isn't ac...

Important, detailed coverage of commitments made by the OU to UKLFI regarding the use of the term ‘ancient Palestine’ in learning materials. Still lots of ambiguities & no public retraction, defence of the term or internal investigation, but some softening perhaps.🤔

novaramedia.com/2026/03/03/o...

I have a bad conscience about this one. He's an old pal and there are two (or two and a half) novels by him I need to read first. (But then I also have a research tbr pile whose fortunes I guard jealously.)

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi | The dry and the wet burn together ‘The dry and the wet burn together’ is a Persian expression invoked when a fire spreads without discrimination. Once...

“If Trump’s intention was to remove Khamenei from the political landscape, he may instead have fixed him in it, recast in the eyes of his devotees as a figure of sacrifice rather than failure.”

Among the bookshops I'd like to visit again, Five Leaves in Nottingham. The associated publisher issues these books too, as I start moving towards a sustained read-through of #DHLawrence #UKbookshops #Nottingham

We are pleased to join 85 organisations in writing to the Prime Minister calling on him to increase climate finance and to fairly tax the wealthiest and largest polluters in our society to pay for climate action at home and overseas.

Read the letter: can-uk.org/wp-content/u...

#climatefinance

A film still showing a close up of feet standing embedded in the dry earth of crop rows where small seedlings are springing forth into the bright sunlight.

“I was conscious of the ease with which renderings of the landscape can so easily become bucolic or romanticised – the trope of the simple rural ways of living that obscures the continual displacement and expropriation of land in the interests of capital.”

Wekend voting, how interesting! It looks like a great idea. #democracy

5 petalled small whiteflowers growing from small rosettes of divided leaves

Stag's-horn Saxifrage. It's the time when small white flowers are found aplenty in rough urban ground. These are edge of car park / station platform, Chatham. Late or early for #wildflowerhour #kentwildlife #botany

It is a gap. I found myself looking up the Recall of MPs legislation and guidelines, optimistically, but it won't stretch to this particularly ugly situation.

"Let us administer the poison so that Reform doesn't get to" is morally wrong, politically disastrous, and totally ineffective.

In a world of political football where 'political courage' only means beating up the vulnerable - never caring for them - every minority group is fair game.

Cover of The Cry of Winnie Mandela (Ayebia Clarke) by Njabulo Ndeble -- library copy -- the book is still in print from the publisher

February #reading
Emily Gee: Hostel, House and Chambers: accommodating the Victorian and Edwardian working woman, 2025
Dorothy Richardson: Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb, 1915-17
Ousmane Sembène: The Money-Order with White Genesis, 1965
Njabulo Ndebele: The Cry of Winnie Mandela, 2003

February #reading
Emily Gee: Hostel, House and Chambers: accommodating the Victorian and Edwardian working woman, 2025
Dorothy Richardson: Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb, 1915-17
Ousmane Sembène: The Money-Order with White Genesis, 1965
Njabulo Ndebele: The Cry of Winnie Mandela, 2003

This paragraph appears, slightly altered and with additions, in The Cry of Winnie Mandela (for the librarian: pp 85-6 in the Ayebia Clarke edition, 2003).

Is Conflict in the Horn of Africa Unavoidable? Ideas matter. And it's high time key players in the Horn (politicians, academics, journalists, analysts, and military strategists) chose to escape the pro-war shackles of geography and history.

Governments in the Horn must be careful not to play host to conflicts arising from rivalries on the other side of the Red Sea.

open.substack.com/pub/kenopalo...

It is clear now that the Omani foreign minister's sudden media blitz last night was an attempt to shame the United States by putting into the public record how readily Iran was prepared to reach a deal.

James Butler | Just Voting In her victory speech, Hannah Spencer argued that working people were being ‘bled dry’ in a country that works to...

‘All traditional parties were beaten by two insurgents taking 70 per cent of the vote. A wide field of plausible competitors under first past the post will make the next general election difficult to predict. ’

@piercepenniless.bsky.social on the Greens’ victory.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

Yes! really grateful to all who contributed in different ways, the conversations, the organising, the face-to-face level of political life and change.

I couldn't be there on Thursday - voting day - but was knocking on doors on Wednesday, and a couple of days the previous week: feeling the passion for change from Hannah, from all the volunteers, and many of the residents, really made "Hope feel normal again"!
Let's turn the country Green!