The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything
Newsletter (Digital)
So, I don't want to seem like the online media cliché that I so obviously am here, but welcome to my Substack.
Paying subscribers get a weekly newsletter, every Wednesday at around 4pm, generally composed of the following things:
A brief commentary on the week’s top existential terrors (a.k.a. the news);
A links round-up: infrastructure news, animal videos, memes and anything else that provides comfort to the mildly nerdy and extremely online;
An long-ish article about something extremely nerdy, most likely in the realms of transport, history, geography or language;
A short-ish article concerning the map of the week: you can probably guess what this covers.
Free subscribers get to read some of the weekly newsletter, before the paywall comes slamming down just as they’re getting into it. They also get a weekly email, generally on a Saturday, containing a single article: sometimes that’ll be something new (in which case, paying subscribers will receive it, too; only fair); more often than not it’s something from the paywalled archive, now released to the wider world.
Becoming a paying subscriber isn’t expensive – it’s £4 a month, or £40 a year, so substantially less than £1 a week; bargain! But, if for whatever reason you can’t afford that (unemployed, under-employed, penniless student and so forth) just email me and ask for a free subscription, and you can have one, no questions asked.
I hope the newsletter brings you joy – or, at the very least, that it doesn’t make your life any worse. Source
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesExistential questions
There’s a trope I’ve spotted in a lot of epic sci-fi or fantasy series over the years, which haunts me because of my sneaking suspicion it might be profound. It’s a sort of double-tracked plot, in which the characters and the world they inhabit face two apparently existential crises at once. One is a power struggle which, if lost, would mean the destruction of our protagonists and all they hold dear.
Some British railway stations whose names write cheques they can’t cash
Although 31 Inventions That Built Our World, my history of the urban world, isn’t officially out for another five days, copies are already beginning to appear in the wild. What more excuse do I need to give you two city-flavoured things I wrote back in May? Want more? You know what to do. There’s a special offer on, look: First up: Pineapple Road, Birmingham. Not tropical. Rose Grove, Burnley. Not sylvan. Bermuda Park. Serves an industrial estate in Nuneaton. Winnersh Triangle.
Everyone Is Talking About This
Patricia Lockwood’s 2021 novel No One Is Talking About This concerns “the portal”: a fully realised alternate dimension, with its own language and stories, villains and celebrities. To most people – most normal people – the portal is neither visible nor, even if encountered, relevant. To those who venture too far inside it, though, the portal can start to seem all consuming: a place of community and opportunity, yes, but also a source of life-ruining obsession.
Some unwritten rules of English
This went to paying subscribers in May. Don’t miss out, special offer, etc: To be absolutely clear about that headline, I don’t mean the English: what follows is not a load of nonsense about warm beer, coded insults and queuing. No, I mean English. The language. Nearly a decade ago now, a BBC journalist went viral with a paragraph from someone else’s book, which seems faintly unsporting but reach is reach.
Ancient Forces
The Soho Society dates from 1972, when it was founded to defend the heart of London’s West End from the sinister forces then threatening its character. The greatest threats to Soho at the time involved a wave of new offices, which is the sort of thing that seems pretty much inevitable in the city-central business districts of advanced service economies; and the growth of the sex trade, which doesn’t.
The Life and Death of the Streetcar City
It is now less than three weeks until the publication of 31 Inventions That Built Our World, my history of all the things that gave us modern urban life. To celebrate that – and also, frankly, to address the fact I’ve been so busy that subscription numbers have wobbled a bit, and oh god – right now you can get 31% off annual subscriptions to this very newsletter. Here’s something that paying subscribers got to read in April. I’ll explain its origins after you’ve read it.
Drought conditions
The best part of the railway from London to Cornwall comes just south of Exeter. On the train’s left-hand side, the estuary of the River Exe widens out gradually until, suddenly, there it is: through the resort town of Dawlish, the line runs just metres from the sea, so close that on a rough day the spray will coat the windows. This is of course delightful.
Atomic priests and self-replicating cars
Yesterday, just over 22 months after a flash of inspiration on the third floor of Waterstones Piccadilly, I walked into a basement room in Blackfriars to be greeted by this: It’s not officially released until 27 August – though history suggests it might start popping up on shelves a little sooner than that – but nonetheless: the book exists. I have a copy right now. You can order yours here. Since that’s put me in a tremendously good mood, here’s a special offer.
Urban Hymns
Before we begin, thanks to those of you who came to hear me talk about the new book at the Rock Oyster festival last Sunday. Apologies that, despite what certain newsletters may have suggested, early copies were not, in fact, available. Mistakes were made; it’s important not to point fingers.1 Excitingly, there is now an entire schedule of events for this autumn, at which books definitely will be available, with more dates being finalised even as I type.
Over The Wall
The Irish writer Frank O’Conner once told a story about how, when he and his boyhood friends came to a wall they could not climb over, they’d remove their caps and throw them over, leaving them with no choice but to work out how to follow. I first heard this story on an episode of The West Wing, but it turns out its pedigree is rather better: JFK used it about the space programme in a speech in San Antonio, Texas, on 21 November 1963.