1. Meet Berta Ruck. You won’t regret it. It’s 1970, she’s 92, and she’s talking about being a young woman in Victorian Britain. (By this point, she’s a prolific romantic novelist, having published more than 90 books.) From 1:35: 2. I went to hear the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips talk about, among other things, giving up, which is the subject of his latest book. (Extracts from On Giving Up in The Guardian here and LRB here.