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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 14h

Very sorry to read this: a truly brilliant historian and a very kind person, exceptionally generous with his time for so senior a scholar.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 15h

Dipped into twitter to sample response to Carson Nobel. Rote culture war execrations based on little to no familiarity with the work. They also seem to have invented a fascinating-repulsive new figure, the subliterate literary influencer/grifter. Anyway, here's part of the sublime Isaiah sequence.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

& it seems to me rhetorically useful and striking to demonstrate that in pursuing this, the US places itself in a category with states it regards as global pariahs!

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That the US had popular lynchings (& culprits let off through currently fashionable jury nullification), only decisively abolished execution of minors in 2005 (Roper), and which *nonetheless* long ago decided the state turning execution into public spectacle was wrong: these are all important facts!

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I do think the manoeuvre is typical of a bad form of left thinking: a cherished liberal myth about a good state or institution is shown to be at best a partial truth (fine!) but is then the basis for a maximalist rejection of any distinction between flawed institution and its worse alternatives.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

ON POLITICS @lrb.co.uk I ask @leaypi.bsky.social: what does it mean to be a 'politically committed' writer? A lightning sharp tour through propaganda, realism, socialist memoirs, 'accessibility' vs the avant garde, Platonic 'theatrocracy', + MORE! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

podcasts.apple.com

On Politics: What is political writing?

Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · October 8 · 57m

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

podcasts.apple.com

On Politics: What is political writing?

Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · October 8 · 57m

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Yes. On the other hand, statements like this do make me think of her as being somewhere in the family. (Paris Review i/v.)

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It can sometimes seem like stating the obvious that the Trump regime does things that are evil, but this is evil. There's not another word for it. It is so corrosive and degrading that it will permanently disfigure the society which permits it. It is sheer barbarism.

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Which includes this completely bonkers graph, tracking support for net zero policies from the major parties. Look at those Tories!!

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

P.S. -- in an act of moronic self-harm, the BBC has scrapped Thinking Allowed and Free Thinking, two gems which were pretty cheap to run. Still, I'm glad we can pay Dave whatever colossal amount to bollock on about agentive iPlayer and its Las Vegas mode. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

BBC to cut raft of Radio 4 programmes including You and Yours

The corporation said it would be investing in a new consumer programme, while announcing more cuts.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This isn't entirely the Corporation's fault. A DCMS Secretary worth the brief, and who understood the bearing media has on cohesion and political common sense, would be thinking about these questions in the context of a new financial settlement and organisational autonomy. Unfortunately...

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Somewhere at the root of this should be the question: what can the BBC do that nobody else can? Instead, the question seems to be: what can the BBC do to offer the same thing as everybody else?

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

"It looks like you're trying to radicalise yourself into blowing up speed cameras. Can I serve you a selection of Today Programme clips to nurse your grievances?"

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

And, you know, it might be that in a world characterised by mistrust and outright deception, a rediscovery of Reithian virtues now reinforced by a sense of independence from government might actually be a winning news formula.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I dunno man, maybe you could concentrate on producing good and interesting things people want to watch rather than trying to out-banal the lowest common denominator crap hosed at us everywhere else? (And make using BBC Sounds a less excruciating experience?) deadline.com/2026/10/bbc-...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 08/10/2026

On the podcast: is it still possible for writers to have political agency in a culture that instantly commodifies ideas? @leaypi.bsky.social joins @piercepenniless.bsky.social to explore the possibilities for enlightened resistance in today’s public sphere. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

podcasts.apple.com

On Politics: What is political writing?

Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 8 October · 57min

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Her other Archer line, also delivered with absolutely perfect timing, was after being told not to give him the oxygen of publicity: "I'm not that happy with him having the oxygen of oxygen, actually."

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Linda Smith's absolutely perfect line about Archer being released from prison "into the cryogenic embrace of Mary"is permanently etched in my mind.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

!!! yes it does rather give 'her he hated as the hissing snake'

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Alice Goodman @revdalicegoodman.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Yes! (What Milton does with meter is always interesting).

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I also like "no-one elected you", when, famously, in fact...

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Oliver Rivers @maxrothbarth.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Hujar right in both counts. Hujar is a great artist and Mapplethorpe’s work is forgettable kitsch. From Em Hogan’s review of The Wonderful World that Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek in @lrb.co.uk

(It's striking that, among the many names in Durbin's book, Robert Mapplethorpe is not mentioned, even though he and Hujar knew each other and disliked each other's work. Mapplethorpe said that Hujar's photographs made him 'cringe', while Hujar was scathing about Mapplethorpe's superficial 'art look' and the fact that he didn't make his own prints.)

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

'How many local models has the Pope?'

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Such a strange text: its weirdly annealed and eroded meter, its despair, its admiration of violence – and its troubled sub-surface awareness of the (literally) obscene heap of the dead.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Studying Samson – which is effectively a praise poem for a suicide bomber – a few years post-9/11 and in the lees of the global war on terror was quite something though. '... and heroic'ly hath finished / A life heroic.'

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

(I'd actually junk the whole thing except the Mutabilitie cantos, which really are wonderful.)

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I had to read all of The Faerie Queene and Milton (PL/PR/Samson) over the long vacation before second year, which is a recipe for some pretty strange dreams. I've never been able to shake the sense of Spenser as shut up in a tower in Ireland, hallucinating wildly as atrocities pile up around him.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Takes a lot to make me feel for the Greek government, but being at the sharp end of the Trump global protection racket will do it.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The rest of the piece is an extended whine that the designated progressive party attracts people with progressive beliefs. This is also a widespread complaint in that same coterie.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Think it's important to grasp that when people like Ovenden use phrases like "rapidly medicalised layabouts" they get a little thrill like they're daring to break taboos, but actually they're repeating the tiresome but orthodox belief of their coterie. (Cf his treatment of Diane Abbott.)

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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A former staff member of Tony Blair Institute said they had serious concerns that this was “very much trading money for access”, but was instructed by a colleague not to describe it that way. ‘They were saying you have to be really careful not to make it seem as if they’re paying money for access’😬

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I had a great time speaking with @will-davies.bsky.social this week, as we tried to answer the question: what’s the point of intellectuals? What’s their - our? - relationship to politics? And why do so many political thinkers find intellectuals a bit… worrying? podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/o...

podcasts.apple.com

On Politics: What happened to the intellectual?

Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 23 September · 1hr 7min

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Something interesting here: success of local projects (e.g., @londoncentric.media @millmedia.bsky.social) suggests strong appetite for deeply reported local news. Yet BBC withdrawing (even further) from the space.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Largest classical music festival in the world, and an extraordinary achievement of British culture - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Proms

en.wikipedia.org

BBC Proms - Wikipedia

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

(The absence of comparable formative institutions like ENA also matters in the C20th - Oxbridge quite different. Also quite hard for me to imagine a French equivalent of the John Carey position in I&M, at least when it was written.)

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yes, one route we didn't pursue as we might have done was national comparison. The absence of a comparable moment in Britain seems an important part of the story to me. (Stefan Collini's book on the claim that Britain doesn't have intellectuals also helpful.)

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 25/09/2026

Post-episode discussion from James @piercepenniless.bsky.social: bsky.app/profile/pier...

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yes that's right - I actually did mean to bring up the distinction but we just didn't get to it! Had we another hour...!

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yes: much of my enjoyment comes from the ROH's (as was) subsidised tickets for young people. The fault isn't with the companies - it's that successive governments have viewed them as an embarrassing encumbrance rather than an globally respected industry.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

There’s no bright note to end on here, except that in all the noise there is some signal; there is also a real appetite for thought and orientation, and a dissatisfaction with tech nihilism, especially because things are changing (technologically, politically) so very quickly.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

(I am cautious about over-optimistic assessments of the revival of the DSA in the US, or the brief efflorescences of popular political activity, as signs of return. I think the conditions are sufficiently different that the mass parties of the C20th and their ways of life aren't returning.)

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yet the other options are also less than lovely: American platform tech and audience metrics, or the very vocal feedback of a self-selected chunk of ultra-invested consumers, are poor substitutes for political organisations as such.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

But the end of the mass parties leaves would-be political intellectuals of the left in a more difficult position. Sometimes this is solved by a political nostalgism - always refounding, rebuilding, pining for better days but ultimately just talking to each other. Denial: not just a river in Egypt.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

(In practice many intellectuals chafed against the *actually existing* party, which was often stultifying, oppressive and doctrinaire. The party requirement for western Stalinists to nod along with moral atrocity also prompted many breaks, but also much mutilation of the intellect.)

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The other important strand here is Gramsci, for whom the party (ideally) acts as a disciplining force for individual intellectuals, a mediating entity between mass and individual, and a kind of collective, strategic intellectual in its own right.

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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

(This is actually moral and political nihilism.)

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