iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Mysteries of global shipping. On the horizon is the Maersk Iowa, 50,000 tonnes, nine days out of Norfolk, Va, en route to Antwerp. Going round in circles off Torquay…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

How do street trees stay green when rainwater can’t reach their roots through paving and tarmac? One answer: leaky water mains, especially at night when water use falls and mains pressure builds up… 1/2

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A lunch at Founders Hall in the City. The Founders Company motto, “God the only founder”, reminds me of the marvellous epitaph to a printer in Bury St Edmund’s: “Like a worn out type he is returned to the founder, in hopes of being recast in a better and more perfect mould…”

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

New angle on an old friend. The New River Company’s mock-baronial 1850s pumping station in Green Lanes, Stoke Newington (now the Castle Climbing Centre) seen from the newly-opened (and very welcome) path along the south side of the East Reservoir…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

On this evidence, The Digger isn’t channelling anything from 2003-6, but rather the immortal Dr Strangelove from 1964. Though Cruise wears his prosthetics less convincingly than Sellers…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Beyond chuffed that one of my oldest friends, Paul Mayhew-Archer, got a standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival after the premiere of his Parkinson’s rom com Onwards and Sideways. Pictured here with director John Madden, stars Laura Linney and Rhys Ifans. Great reviews too. UK release 7 Nov…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Outside Tate Britain this afternoon: some of the 270 crews rowing over 26 miles up the Thames from Millwall to Richmond. It’s called the Great River Race, it happens every year and I’d never heard of it. London Marathon meets Boat Race. Looks like bloody hard work…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Sad news. One of London’s oldest and most radical fringe theatres is closing after 50 years and the loss of its Arts Council grant. Many happy memories of extraordinary productions at its old home, upstairs at the Prince Albert pub in Notting Hill Gate… www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/s...

theguardian.com

‘This is not sustainable’: London’s Gate theatre to close after nearly 50 years

Formerly based above a Notting Hill pub, the theatre earned a reputation for radical plays with new talent yet had a 100% loss of Arts Council England funding in 2022

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer. Drawn from his seat in the Royal Court stalls on the first night in 1957 by the brilliant Quentin Blake for a Punch review. How on earth did he do it: in the dark, not knowing what was coming next…? At Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Mavericks is out in paperback today. A pocket-sized format for the story of a pocket-sized battle, and five remarkable, eccentric, reckless and enigmatic mavericks who fought in it…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Kew Gardens. Henry Moore. A noble lion. If you look very, very closely you can see, between the two halves of the Moore sculpture, Syon House across the river, topped by a lion. Until 1874 the lion, emblem of the Dukes of Northumberland, graced their grand house in the Strand…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

OK. You all say I should keep my paper OS maps (no battery needed, good for decorating the walls). But what about all these travel guides, some 30 years old…?

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Acquired second hand c 1970, my Roget’s Thesaurus has given excellent service. But online thesauruses are legion; the paper version seems unnecessary, so it’s off to be recycled. Now: should the treasured bookshelves of Ordnance Survey paper maps go the same way…?

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

After 23 years, the Higham family Golden Jag has finally reached the end of the road. Even the most beautifully engineered motor can’t go on for ever, and I can’t go on spending thousands to repair a car we can never trust to start when we need it…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

TV presenter Bill Oddie dies at 85. Sad news. In younger days a wonderful comic performer, in later life a passionate enthusiast for birds and nature, but also sometimes difficult and cantankerous. Not many people give so much pleasure to so many for so long…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Start your week with 3’ 06” of pure joy, and the best argument I’ve yet come across for AI. How many of these do you recognise? Sound up and watch to the end: it keeps getting better. With tgsnks to @santorim87@bsky.social.com youtube.com/watch?v=tXhn...

youtube.com

MAMBO DE STENDHAL !!. ¡Los cuadros cobran vida! (IA Music Video) 🕺🔥

YouTube video by jjpique55

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Swing bridges, Kennet and Avon canal, Wilts. Where did number two go wrong…?

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

A reminder: you have until tomorrow (Fri) to take advantage of Waterstone’s generosity. My book Mavericks: Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One is “Beautifully written” (Louis de Bernieres), “Wildly exciting” (Kate Adie), “Cinematic” (The Times)…

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Reposted by Nick Higham

Brian Groom @groomb.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

The first water carried from Thirlmere in the Lake District via an 83-mile aqueduct gushed from a specially built fountain in Albert Square, Manchester, as thousands watched in October 1894.

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

My book Mavericks. “Beautifully written” (Louis de Bernieres), “Wildly exciting” (Kate Adie), “Cinematic” (The Times) — and coming soon in paperback. What’s more, those nice people at Waterstones will let you have it cheap if you pre-order this week…!

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Ed Stourton obituary: Today presenter known as Posh Ed. Sad news. A great broadcaster who exuded old-fashioned gravitas and authority. (That voice!) Also a very nice man. Radio 4 Today should never have sacked him… www.thetimes.com/article/dfd3...

thetimes.com

Ed Stourton obituary: Today presenter known as Posh Ed

Robust broadcaster whose cut-glass enunciation proved to be his undoing at the BBC

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Pencil sharpener alley and enormous lodge, Knepp Rewilding, Sussex. The beavers have been beavering away…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

At Amberley Industrial Museum in Sussex. Where virtually every interior smells strongly of petrol. Thank heavens for the smoking ban…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

A nice touch at the National Army Museum, where the images of men and women on the loo doors are shown saluting…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Welsh National War Memorial, Alexandra Park, Cardiff. Architect Ninian Comper, sculptor H A Pegram, tulips Cardiff City Parks Dept. It is church architect Comper’s only secular work…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Art of Laundry. The Provençal painter Laurent Mattio (1892-1965) was renowned for the “striking intensity” and vibrancy of his colours. He based his paintings on detailed drawings which he then worked up in the studio in oils, often thick impasto, or transparent watercolour washes…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Ghost pubs in London’s East End: wonderfully atmospheric pictures from the 1990s… spitalfieldslife.com/2026/03/14/a...

spitalfieldslife.com

Anthony Cairns’ East End Pubs | Spitalfields Life

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Our flowering cherry is approaching peak blossom. It’s not there yet, but the rough winds are shaking it so badly it’s already losing drifts of petals, so I’m posting the pic today in case this is as good as it gets…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

At the Aldeburgh Literature Festival. Every session sold out within hours of going on sale. I have given around 90 lectures linked to my books: yesterday’s in Aldeburgh was the first to an absolutely full house. (They were a great audience, too…)

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

In Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Terminus of the first undersea cable between the UK and the Netherlands, laid in 1922. Aldeburgh is still an important terminus for subsea telecoms…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Art of Laundry. Matti Annala (Finland, 1898-1958). Doing Laundry. Beyond his dates and nationality I can find no other information about Annala. (Via FB/A world of washing/Isabel Amaral Lapa Vasques…)

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

York station. Not the magnificent affair familiar today, astride that great curve on the East Coast mainline, but the old station, 1841, just inside the city walls. Built for George Hudson, the colossus of the railroads, three times Lord Mayor of York, MP, and the first great Victorian fraudster…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Former ice cream factory, Fetter Lane, York. Now residential. More on its history and conversion, the Capaldi family, alleged Mafia links etc here: yorkstories.co.uk/buildings/capaldi-factory-fetter-lane/

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

My reading ahead of next month’s Oxford Literary Festival. Some excellent books here, and some stimulating interviews and discussions to look forward to — plus an illustrated talk on my own recent effort, Mavericks. Programme details here: oxfordliteraryfestival.org/about/brochure

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Art of Laundry. Alfred Hitchcock by Chiara Samugheo, 1970 (via FB/Luli Primavera…)

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

All Hallows, Gospel Oak — impressive but unfinished late Victorian church by James Brooks (1825-1901) who also designed a house for himself just round the corner from me in Stoke Newington. All Hallows was meant to have vaulting, but the money presumably ran out…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Art of Laundry. London University from Old Gower Mews (1835) by George Sidney Shepherd (1784-1862), an English watercolourist and topographical artist. The new London Uni (later University College, London) opened its doors in 1828 but was derided in some quarters as “the Cockney University”…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Art of Laundry. By Franz Charlet (1862-1928), a Belgian impressionist who spent several years in Morocco in the 1880s but settled permanently in Brussels in 1890, where he painted genre scenes and landscapes… via FB/A world of washing/Rita M Sjöholm

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Art of Laundry. Wash Day by Patrick Leonard (1918-2005). Leonard spent his career as an art teacher in Dublin. His pictures of 20thC Irish life are unexpectedly colourful — almost as colourful as the paintings he made on his holidays in Greece, Spain and the Algarve… via FB/A world of washing

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

The last para of this. By me in the current TLS, in a correspondence about Pedantry…

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Reposted by Nick Higham

Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I wish you everything you hope for in 2026. Thank you for the conversations over the last year. This is Christopher Nevinson's 'Among the London Searchlights,' painted from a hot air balloon tethered above London Bridge in 1916.

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Art of Laundry/Via FB/A world of washing/Isabel Amaral Lapa Vasques. Carlos Bonvalot. Interior 1918. Bonvalot (1893-1934) was a Portuguese realist painter most of whose work depicts Cascais, where he lived…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

To the Turner & Constable show at Tate Britain, where they have both Turner’s unfinished 1795 watercolour of the York Buildings Waterworks, and Constable’s huge oil sketch of the 1817 Opening of Waterloo Bridge, in which the works’ distinctive watertower also appears…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Gabriella Benzi. Charles J. Shore, Menton Washerwomen, 1881. Shore (1840-1915) was an amateur artist and 3rd Baron Teignmouth. Many of his watercolours are of Menton…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

The crocheted Christmas puddings atop the railings along St Helens Wharf have been joined this year by snowmen and robins, the work of Abingdon’s answer to Banksy. What next for 2026 from the mystery knitter…?

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

Boxing Day, Abingdon. Unfeasibly spectacular 17thC County Hall, large Xmas tree and MG owners’ rally in the market square, half a mile from the works where the cars were made until 1980…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

And a very merry Art of Laundry Christmas to all…

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Nick Higham @highamnews.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Let Les Mis look to its laurels…

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