hobbsbagley.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

In the midst of today’s banal ambition and flash, Brendel stood separate as a superb reminder of what it is to be gracious, humane, urbane while showing us, who enjoyed his performances, just how enchanting Beethoven and Schubert (among many others) could truly be.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

One of the finest musicians has passed. A long life of exquisite genius; a pianist from the gods and for us mortals - Alfred Brendel. bbc.com/news/article...

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It’s publication day for Thomas More: A Life and Death in Tudor England with Michael Joseph @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social! Pop by your local bookshop or order now - uk.bookshop.org/a/12264/9781...

submitted 23 days ago • 10 comments

Freud to Zweig: “Anyone turning biographer, commits himself to lies, to concealment, to hypocrisy, to flattery, and even to hiding his own lack of understanding, for biographical truth is not to be had, and even if it were it couldn’t be used.” (letter 5/31, 1936). h/t Detlev Claussen.

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

In which I review, and for the most part admire, Michael Braddick's new life of Christopher Hill for @prospectmagazine.co.uk. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/6984...

submitted 45 days ago • 1 comment

I’m very pleased to be serving on the international advisory council of this important, ambitious, and highly original experiment in the re-making of global history: uhgi.org

submitted 47 days ago • 1 comment

In case you were unable to be in Philadelphia last week, here is the excellent discussion on the Bard by @rhodrilewis.bsky.social with Emily Wilson. youtube.com/watch?v=OM4L...

submitted 50 days ago • 0 comments

Excellent to see, courtesy of the excellent people at the special collections library of @brynmawrcollege.bsky.social, the original announcement for the lectures that became The Sense of an Ending. (Am impressed both by the Larkin and the 8.30pm start time.)

submitted 54 days ago • 1 comment

Out now: What is ‘ancient history’? Why it is much bigger and more important than we might think, how generations of scholars have dismembered it, how we can do it justice – and why ‘Classics’ has run its course: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

submitted 60 days ago • 3 comments

@timothysnyder.bsky.social I am quite confident there is substantial evidence why a particular judge in Louisiana is adjudicating this case (and many others). Look at this report: tracreports.org/immigration/...

submitted 64 days ago • 0 comments

Vital observations from the farsighted mind of Thomas Piketty. @thomaspiketty.bsky.social www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty...

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

Europe must support the reform of IMF and World Bank in order to move away from the current censitary system and give countries like Brazil, India and South Africa their rightful place. www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty...

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

Perceptive, eloquent and a fine reader of so much fine literature. Thankful for her sharing her readings with us lessers. Perry’s redolent introduction is a beautiful epitaph.

submitted 74 days ago • 0 comments

The Harmonia Mundi - Pichon version is perfect for the immortal Bach.

submitted 74 days ago • 0 comments

Is El Salvador Trump’s Gulag?

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The return of Schutzhaft to another fascist state - Trump’s America. @anneapplebaum.bsky.social @timothysnyder.bsky.social @marcishore.bsky.social encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/a...

submitted 80 days ago • 0 comments

Très fier d’avoir participé au palmarès Télérama des meilleurs romans du XXIe siècle et de l’avoir commenté. Le résultat est magnifique : 2666, Austerlitz, La Fin de l’homme rouge…

submitted 80 days ago • 2 comments

At Kafka’s grave this afternoon, deeply moved, rereading Metamorphosis. This wonderful, terrifying text which repays countless revisits and infinite interpretations. Thank you, Franz.

submitted 81 days ago • 1 comment

I have always loved this section of Derek Walcott’s poem - Volcano.

submitted 85 days ago • 0 comments

The luminous Seneca, in his essay “On Leisure” (Moral Essays), ventured this radical claim: “Our thought bursts through the ramparts of the sky, and is not content to know what has been revealed.” h/t Andrew Hui

submitted 85 days ago • 0 comments

This new work (arriving in May USA/June UK) by the brilliant and urbane William Marx @williammarx.bsky.social press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

submitted 85 days ago • 0 comments

How stunning: an inscribed (to fellow writer Ernst Weiss) copy of Kafka’s debut, Betrachtung, has turned up at a research library in Gotha…

submitted 91 days ago • 1 comment

An intro to Silent Catastrophes, the new Sebald volume of his crritical essays, by @vertigoterry.bsky.social sebald.wordpress.com/2025/03/22/s...

submitted 91 days ago • 1 comment

Jaw dropping ignorance. Witkoff knows nothing. Has no knowledge of the violence that Russians have used to suppress Ukrainians in Occupied Ukraine

submitted 91 days ago • 202 comments

I know this is 17 years old but this book by @naomiaklein.bsky.social is simply important right now and a clear bellwether re: USA (and maybe globally) economic chaos. Needs to be read!

submitted 96 days ago • 0 comments

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

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‘We remember as true things that never even happened’: Julian Barnes on memory and changing his mind Available March 18th #JulianBarnes

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments

“That was his luggage” (opening page of Dag Solstad’s Novel 11, Book 18)

submitted 98 days ago • 2 comments

Shoulda won the Nobel - vale Dag Solstad swedenherald.com/article/the-...

submitted 98 days ago • 1 comment

everyone says you have to write first in order to edit, that editing something is easier than starting from a blank page, so just get the words down and edit later it's a lie: editing is harder

submitted 100 days ago • 4 comments

Virality - the bane of social media. What is its catalyst? Instantaneity. Take the time to think!

submitted 102 days ago • 0 comments

In the 1790s a London woman named Eliza Denyer developed a modest reputation as a restorer of medieval manuscripts. She was forgotten by scholars and, in one case, her restorations were deliberately replaced by a man’s. I recovered her story & tracked all her known work here: tinyurl.com/2ktztx2e

submitted 104 days ago • 17 comments