Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 15hEver since I first saw it, this scene has epitomised Amerlcan elegance for me. I wrote a short story about it for Radio 4 (never broadcast) and it's why I drink Gibsons even though nobody who works in a bar these days knows what they are. A perfect scene - RIP Eva Marie Saint. 1354180
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Rich Hall puts it very concisely here. (Thanks to @swansonian.bsky.social for posting the interview.) www.chortle.co.uk/interviews/2... 160
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 19/09/2026This is an excellent and moving tribute to Jeremy Thomas. I feel very lucky to have known him, and very guilty that because of me (in part) he spent so much time towards the end of his life on a project that ended up going nowhere. www.screendaily.com/features/a-h... 3426
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Authors! If you must respond to your bad reviews, do it as graciously as Oliver Hardy when Walter Winchell trashed the film 'Nothing But Trouble' in 1945. (Bookmarking this post in case I need it in November.) 410725
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Thank you so much to @stuartmaconie.bsky.social and Clare Chambers for these extremely generous comments about LESSONS IN HARMONY. Out in two months! www.penguin.co.uk/books/476261... 3301
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Using the latest in computer technology* I've generated title pages which look as though they're signed not just by me, but by Maurice Ravel and Ralph Vaughan Williams too. I've made just ten of these, and I'm distributing them at random among the other pages. *Google Image search and my printer. 2221
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Here's one of the piles I currently have to sign, representing about a third of the total. 4110
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 09/09/2026(Incidentally, signed or unsigned, the hardback book will still have these gorgeous endpapers evoking Belle Epoque Paris and pastoral England, designed by Alisha Kruse. Lovely, no?) 1140
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 09/09/2026LESSONS IN HARMONY, my novel about the friendship between Ravel and Vaughan Williams, will be published in November. This thread is for anyone who's bought, or is thinking of buying, one of the signed editions available from Waterstones or an indie bookshop. (They won't be available from Amazon.) 69628
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 30/08/2026Uncannily reminiscent of what a character in my last one, The Proof of My Innocence, says on this subject. Which reminds me, in turn, that whenever I try to satirise something, it just seems to get more and more popular. 3220
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 30/08/2026Interesting @john-self.bsky.social piece about publishing trends, including the ‘cosy’ phenomenon which no longer seems to be confined to crime. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int... 3120
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 25/08/2026Last night: The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (1970). This is on YouTube, and is a total blast. The plot is mind-blowing. The cars, fashions and Côte d'Azur locations are all to die for. Samantha Eggar great, Oliver Reed great but underused. Not sure why this isn't more famous. 4277
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 25/08/2026Latest film season at home: movies adapted from novels by Sébastien Japrisot. First off: A Very Long Engagement (2004). Strong, faithful adaptation of this intensely convoluted WW1 story, marred only by some overly whimsical directorial touches, and a botched amendment to the ending. 3131
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 21/08/2026Apparently this is the list of British films included in the booklet accompanying the British Citizenship test. Unfortunately, if familiarity with the films on this list is one of the criteria for being a British citizen I think we're going to have to deport everyone under the age of 50. 79962201
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 18/08/2026If you mean The Proof of My Innocence, um … not quite. 110
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 18/08/2026Full marks for the typo. Chef’s kiss for the reply. 81614305
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 16/08/2026I don't know if it's possible for a book about two classical composers to be less 'Amadeus-like'. Anyway, thanks to the Times for giving me a plug yesterday. 3302
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 12/08/2026Pseudonymous novelisation by John Burke - a prized item in my collection. 230
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 29/07/2026Still going through old photos and paperwork, and have now been reminded of one of the oddest events I ever did: the time I was the warm-up act for an Elvis tribute show on a Saga cruise. 7433
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 27/07/2026CELIA FREMLIN ALERT! (fao @jacquiwine.bsky.social and @andrewmale.bsky.social among others) Next Tuesday, August 2nd, at 14:00 Sky Arts are showing The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, S1 E23, 'The Lonely Hours', an adaptation of 'The Hours Before Dawn'. Starring Gena Rowlands! 5357
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 19/07/2026Scrolling through old pictures and being reminded of the time when one of my novels was an A/S Level set text and I vanity-searched Twitter to see what students were saying about it, and got a warm glow at the thought that I was inspiring a whole new generation of readers. 1023831
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 11/07/2026Has anyone ever seen one of the three sequels to Midnight Run that were made in 1994? 4123
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 10/07/2026Cover of new novel has quietly appeared online. It's a beauty, I think. www.penguin.co.uk/books/476261... 1426018
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 09/07/2026Watched The Driver's Seat (1974) last night. Such an odd film. One odd thing about it is that when Elizabeth Taylor is browsing for books at Copenhagen (?) airport, her hand reaches out for one of my favourite - but least-known - novels of the 1960s. @quantick.bsky.social @iammilliam.bsky.social 95512
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 03/07/2026To me Private Eye's take on what this place is like is far more accurate 112622
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 29/06/2026I've never actually heard this but I think it must qualify despite having its origins in a pre-existing TV character. Any comedy album that features Annie Whitehead, Jimmy Hastings, Pip Pyle and Dave Stewart has to have something going for it surely? 271
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 12/06/2026Love The Lady Vanishes? Night Train to Munich? Murder on the Orient Express? Come and see ROME EXPRESS, the film which kicked off the genre. Introduced by a conversation between me and some little-known writer called Kazuo Ishiguro. Bfi Southbank, July 21st. Book here: tinyurl.com/yh2pz72b 4314
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 05/06/2026Marvellous! I'm particularly fond of his Symphony No. Phwoar ... A fun fact, incidentally, is that Honegger was the only member of Les Six whose number Ravel had in his phone book. Here it is if you fancy giving him a call ... 160
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 05/06/2026Ha ! I'm getting Bill Pertwee vibes from Louis Durey. 250
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 04/06/2026Delighted to see that @stuartmaconie.bsky.social's prog Prom will feature Gentle Giant's On Reflection - an amazing piece of fugal writing from the great Kerry Minnear. Also that @sofasound.bsky.social will be performing. Hope it will be on TV as I left it too late to get tickets ... 11459
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 02/06/2026Book your tickets for the Rome Express, the grand-daddy of all train films, at the BFI Southbank on 21st July. Introduced by one of the world's greatest writers. (Kazuo Ishiguro, I mean. I will also be speaking.) 26315
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 01/06/2026Very much enjoying Criminal Record on Apple TV. Peter Capaldi is especially brilliant as the saturnine, morally-ambiguous detective with his famous catchphrase ... ... 'You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.' 6596
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 30/05/2026Not to be confused with the simultaneous (and imaginatively titled) 'A Collection of Stories'. 110
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 26/05/2026So, I seem to have written yet another novel. I really don’t know how this keeps happening. 3531733
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 05/05/2026AI's most spectacular inaccuracy about one of my books remains this effort from Musk's Grokipedia. (I have indeed written a book called 'Like a Fiery Elephant', but it's a biography of the experimental novelist B S Johnson.) 4244
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 01/05/2026My novel BOURNVILLE is available digitally on Amazon or (for the Bezos-phobic) Kobo for £0.99 this month. An attempt to look in a serio-comic way at issues of English national identity, WW2 mythologising, Royal family worship and other things that have brought us to the state we're currently in. 109723
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 22/04/2026This morning's book post. The English translation of Aymeric Leroy's exhaustive history of the Canterbury scene has been a long time coming (ten years in fact), but here it finally is - all 643 pages of it! 2393
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 22/04/2026Here we go again, from this morning’s Observer newsletter: 4331
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 13/04/2026Re: my last RT, I think we should all take a moment to reflect on how very bizarre it is that this chain of cafés came into being in Orban's Budapest. 1215924
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 07/04/2026Apparently this position now has to be stated, and not just assumed. 2789
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 07/04/2026Exhibit B, this guy who thinks that Armageddon is preferable to trans visibility. 2349
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 02/04/2026Almost as inspiring as ‘Maters, Taters and Grits’ by this American poet. 141
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 30/03/2026Only 99p on Kindle today: my eleventh novel, the imaginatively-named Number 11. (Which, in order to achieve better sales, I should really have called What a Carve Up 2: the Return of the Winshaws.) This is the one Ken Loach read and said he wouldn't film because 'I don't really do giant spiders'. 79631
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 24/03/2026Different from the horrible Manor Farm story, but still a symptom of changing attitudes that, back in 1965, schoolgirls setting up a brothel for the boys at a neighbouring school was considered a witty theme for a West End musical. 391
Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 18/03/2026Been going through some old books and found this historical artefact from the analogue days of book reviewing. 1620028