To begin / to finish reading

I’ve been reminded that these books were on my intended list:

Aubrey’s Brief Lives
Medieval Bodies: Life, Death & Art in the Middle Ages
The Big Bow Mystery
... and I must finish Devil-Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688.

(I’m relieved to find I have read most of the books on the aforementioned list.)

2026 books, Gwen John, and the Brontë sisters

Patrick Branwell Brontë, circa 1834
The Observer’s list of nonfiction books to read in 2026.

Similarly but more broadly, The Times on the 58 books to look out for in 2026.

Gwen John has a new retrospective in Cardiff.

In March, the National Portrait Gallery has a lunchtime talk on the Brontës.

The London Art Fair begins next week.

I have been thinking how unfair it is to complain about famous dead diarists having written gloomy and/or cutting things in their diaries. Where else should they have confided their spite, misanthropy and miseries? Writing these things in their solitary private diaries is surely the most conscionable way.

For Woolf it was a walk

For Mantel it was showers, for Woolf it was a walk, for Christie, a bath and a pile of apples. Whatever it is that removes you temporarily from your writing and allows your brain to re-set: do it. Then return to the page as quickly as you can and start writing.

—Writing Rituals of Hilary Mantel