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Richard V. Hirst

@richardvhirst.bsky.social
624 followers 225 following 555 posts

Another writer you've never heard of / books with Confingo and Dead Ink / runs Levenshulme Old Library richardvhirst.co.uk

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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 18h
Couple of interesting details in A.N. Wilson's Substack from earlier in the week on Jeffrey Archer. One a quite funny claim that he didn't really actually write his books, the other straightforwardly accusing him of... murder. anwilson.substack.com/p/jeffrey-ar...
Almost everything about Archer was fraudulent. His editor at Hodder and Stoughton, Richard Cohen, told me that his ‘books’ would arrive in the form of a few exercise books full of semi-literate scrawls. Cohen employed a team of English graduates to write the books. Archer had a good idea for plots but was all but incapable of writing. When he died, his editor at HarperCollins spoke of the number of times he tolerated his books being ‘edited’. Evidently, he had learnt to write since leaving Cohen, but it sounds as if what others would call editing others would call rewriting.

As for Coghlan, the story is much, much sadder. Archer and the Fragrant Chemist continued to live in the Old Vicarage at Grantchester and to be beloved by Tory Grandees. It had been clear that Coghlan was telling the truth at the libel trial. She told the jury that he had a spotty back, and a decent judge would at that moment have asked Archer to take his shirt off. Archer, and the Establishment, were determined to silence her and when a few thousand used notes in an envelope did not work, she mysteriously died in a car crash. I have no doubt in my mind that Archer was responsible for meddling with the brakes. He was a bad, bad man. Michael Crick asked, ‘The big puzzle is not how Archer gets away with it time and again, but why he is allowed to’.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Am listening to this and, while it's nice to hear MES again and there's actually some good music in there, it is sadly an abomination as many predicted - Ed Blaney, who appears to have songwriting credits throughout, has even turned at least one of the tracks into a duet between himself and MES.
Cover of Post Script by "The Fall"
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Went to see Vashti Bunyan and found myself assailed by emotions. Don't think I've ever been basically in tears for *most* of a gig.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Am in full agreement - the Fall were always great but imho the last 15 or so years are the actual golden period.
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Amy Lord @tenpennydreams.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Had some exciting post today - my copies of Brutalist Ghost Stories arrived from @confingopublishing.bsky.social featuring my story 'Employee of the Month.' If you fancy some uncanny fiction as the nights draw in, the book will be out 15 October, you can pre-order now 👻 www.confingopublishing.uk
Two copies of book Brutalist Ghost stories are stacked on a shelf, one face out, against a row of red books Contents page from Brutalist Ghost stories
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Very much the Lotus Flower of its day.
youtu.be
The Monkees - Daddy's Song (HD 1968)
YouTube video by ☮️FolkRock60s70s☮️
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
My kids were dead excited about this but, annoyingly, it's being screened way too late on a school night to make it work. Obvs it's annoying when people are all 'durrgh it's a kids show!' but ya know - kids do like Doctor Who!
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Oh man, 70 Up - what an incredible, unreplicateable piece of television. Although I think my favourite moment was a clip from the original show right at the end. 'We took our children to an adventure playground...' - smash cut to a wasteland strewn with jagged scraps of rubbish. #thesixties
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Don't want to sound like a knob or anything but one of my projects is now highlighted on the Arts Council website as an example of powerful hyperlocal storytelling. www.artscouncil.org.uk/digital-arts
Screenshot of Arts Council England’s Digital Arts website, showing You Are Here featured among its case studies. The project is highlighted with a photograph of a green space in Manchester and the heading ‘The power of hyperlocal storytelling’.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Talk about burying the lede.
Pamela Vander said: “They’re selling it as ‘the final album’ so people will think Mark made it on his deathbed, but none of it [vocally] was made after New Facts Emerge [2017]. I have Mark’s actual last recordings – he was working on a cover of Madonna’s Material Girl – but by the time of his death he had made the decision that New Facts Emerge was the final album, made by the longest-lasting lineup of the Fall, who were with Mark for 10 years. So I don’t think anyone else should override a decision he made when he was alive.”
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Buy my black and red books. richardvhirst.co.uk/books
Hand holding up copies of Brutalist Ghost Stories and Writing the Real, two paperbacks in a black and red palette. The background is an untidy bookshelf.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I've started a Substack with the first part of an essay on the ghost story: what makes a good one good, why certain techniques recur and what writers - even non ghostly ones - can learn from them. Subscribe if this - and stuff like this - is your thing. richardvhirst.substack.com/p/anatomy-of...
richardvhirst.substack.com
Anatomy of a Ghost Story (part one)
Let’s all write a ghost story!
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Hard to tell if I'm just being nostalgic for the 90s but I definitely think it was better when the subcultures going mainstream were stuff like grunge and irony in cartoons, rather than apocalypse prepping and violent nationalism.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Stephanie Cole! Loved Waiting for God, loved Cabin Pressure, loved Soldiering On, but probably loved most of all that she was in one my favourite bits of recent-ish TV.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
These little Alan Ahlberg poems for kids might also be the most incisive dissection of suburban masculinity I've read.
I am the ghost of Uncle Bill
If I hadn’t died I’d be here still.
I miss the wife, I miss the cat
And I wish they’d buried me in my hat
For the wind blows through you
When you’re a ghost.
Yes, I reckon I miss my hat the most.I am the ghost of Uncle Joe
We may have to die but we don’t have to go.
I miss my mates and my cup of tea
And watching football on TV
Liverpool – nil, West Brom – three.
I miss the Queen and the Union Jack
And I wish they’d buried me in my mac
For the damp goes through you
When you’re a ghost.
Yes, I fancy I miss my mac the most.I am the ghost of Uncle Ben
I’d rather be back in my home again.
I’ve got things to do, like painting the fence
Who thought of dying, it makes no sense.
I miss my mower, I miss my drill
I never did fix that windowsill.
I miss my dog – he was only a pup –
And I do wish they’d buried me standing up
For I feel so idle just lying here
Month after month and year after year.
It’s the waste of it all I hate the most.
Yes, life’s a dead loss . . .
    when you end up a ghost.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
"Please explain why you are applying for this funding and what you plan to spend the grant on."
Screenshot of a spooky clown Ferris wheel garden ornament which costs £450 but looks badass
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Pretty much every day I think about the time when Amazon sent William Shatner into space for a laugh and he came back sounding like Nick Cave's newsletter.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Showaddywaddy: It's time to respond to the Houthis with lethal force.
Screenshot of Telegraph story with the headline "The Proclaimers: The trans lobby are truth phobic" along with a photo of The Proclaimers wearing coats and looking grumpy.
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Gareth E. Rees @garetherees.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Published today - my selfish, self-centred, self-obsessed essay 'The Ink Prisoner' in 'Writing The Real', edited by @dancoxon.bsky.social & @richardvhirst.bsky.social for @deadinkbooks.bsky.social deadinkbooks.com/products/wri...
deadinkbooks.com
Writing the Real — ed. Dan Coxon & Richard V. Hirst (Pre-Order)
Pre-Order. Publishing 10/09/26 What does it mean to write about the real world? The creative nonfiction writer faces a daunting task. They must sculpt their experiences into captivating narratives, en...
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Andrew Chapman @chapmanbookman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Hats off to @deadinkbooks.bsky.social for this book I’m now devouring: deadinkbooks.com/products/wri... - worth it for @garetherees.bsky.social’s ‘The Ink Prisoner’ alone.
deadinkbooks.com
Writing the Real — ed. Dan Coxon & Richard V. Hirst (Pre-Order)
Pre-Order. Publishing 10/09/26 What does it mean to write about the real world? The creative nonfiction writer faces a daunting task. They must sculpt their experiences into captivating narratives, en...
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
There's a subreddit where people share video clips which would fit into an Adam Curtis documentary - some are a bit off but when they hit they really do hit.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Not sure why but I'm taken aback by the fey non-response to the balaclava protests. It's an OCG being... let off? It's like the overton window is being nudged along in real time. V glad we made Arrivals - feels endlessly odd to me that the actual voices/stories of migrants don't get much airtime.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Obviously I'd heard this was a good novel but no one had told me how Aickman-esque it is. A rather passive and baffled Englishman in a dilapidated hotel governed by rules he doesn't quite understand, weird behaviour everyone else seems to think normal, everywhere rot, mould and cats.
Troubles by JG Farrell
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Hey! This is me! Immensely proud of this book which features incredible short stories by David and others, each of which takes a track on David Bowie's Low as its title and inspiration. Tales of madness and the abyss, but also intrepid fantasias inner exploration. 👨‍🎤
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David Hayden @seventydys.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
In 2022 Richard V Hirst edited a collection of short stories inspired by David Bowie's Low with a great contributor list inc Dima Alzayat, Anne Billson, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Jen Calleja, Wendy Erskine & Preti Taneja. My story was Breaking Glass. www.confingopublishing.uk/product-page...
Waiting for the Gift: short stories inspired by David Bowie's album Low, edited by Richard V Hirst. Contributors: Dima Alzayat, Anne Billson, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Jen Calleja, Ruby Cowling, Wendy Erskine, Keeley Forsyth, David Hayden, Zoë McLean, Adam Marek, Preti Taneja, Melissa Wan and Hugo Wilcken.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
When you shuffle a pack of cards it's overwhelmingly likely that the sequence of cards you end up with has never existed before. Even if a billion people had been shuffling a billion decks of cards every second since the Big Bang, we'd have covered less than 0.5% of possible deck orders by now.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
If you could line up your ancestors - your parent holding a grandparent's hand, them holding a great grandparent's hand etc - you’d only have to walk the length of a bowling lane before reaching someone from Tudor times.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Here's a weird thing I noticed in Tanzania. British people pronounce Tanzania in a way that emphasises the 'nia', unlike the way we pronounce the names of other countries which end with those letters - Romania, Albania etc. But everyone in Africa says Tanzania in that way - Tan-ZAY-nee-ya. Weird.
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Adam Farrer @adamjfarrer.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I have a piece on writing about home in this collection of craft essays about creative non-fiction, out next week from @deadinkbooks.bsky.social Pre-order it, which is the same thing as ordering it, just extra keen. deadinkbooks.com/products/wri...
A copy of ‘Writing the Real - Essays on Crafting Creative Non-Fiction’ resting on a selection of scattered books written by or featuring the work of Adam Farrer.
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
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Katie Mather @katiematherkm.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
My friend has edited a book of ghost stories I think a LOT of you will be interested in. Brutalist Ghost Stories | confingo share.google/foaSjvPko08R...
share.google
Brutalist Ghost Stories | confingo
From universities and theatres to car parks and substations, brutalist architecture is found throughout Britain. Its mysterious buildings brood on our skylines, haunting our towns and cities with thei...
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Happy new Thorn day to all who celebrate. youtu.be/GuxvpslnLy4?...
youtu.be
La Pernette
YouTube video by The Thorn - Topic
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
FFS
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danielnothing.bsky.social @danielnothing.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Let's just hear her voice right now. ***“Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow" - Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris performing on The Dolly Parton Show (1976) ***
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Spotted this eye-catching chicken shawarma stall in Stone Town and I've been trying to work out who this is alongside Cristiano Ronaldo and a schawarma.
Sign reading 'Alibaba Chicken Schawarma - WE ARE THE FIRST AND THE BEST THEY JUST FOLLOW IN OUR SHADE' alongside a faded image of a schawarma wrap, Cristiano Ronaldo and what looks like someone from the late nineteenth century Close up of the schawarma wrap, Cristiano Ronaldo and the mystery man, a bearded, stern faced man wearing what looks like it might be a Matador's jacket
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Comma Press @commapress.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
STARTING THIS FRIDAY! ⌛🎟️ Join us at @levyoldlibrary.bsky.social for the start of our Worldbuilding short story course with @davidhartley.bsky.social - Let's build worlds together! 🎟️ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/worldbuild... 📧 george.forster(at)commapress.co.uk for a discounted ticket
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Dan Coxon @dancoxon.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Another unboxing video! This time for WRITING THE REAL, the brand-new collection of essays on crafting Creative Non-Fiction, coming 10 September from Dead Ink. Grab a copy below - and keep it real... deadinkbooks.com/products/wri...
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Kirsty Isla Thomas @kirstyislathomas.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Brutalist architecture and ghost stories?! YES PLEASE!! Preordered! Also, an old friend of mine, Rachael Fulton, has a story in this!! Yey!!
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David Gaffney @ggaffa.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I am so excited to be part of this new anthology ‘We live among ruins, surrounded by places built for a future that never arrived.’ Brutalist Ghost Stories is an anthology inspired by Britain's brutalist buildings and landscapes. pre-order your copy here www.confingopublishing.uk/product-page...
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Thom @thisthom.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Really, really excited to be part of this. 17 ghost stories connected to brutalist architecture. Check out, #BrutalistGhostStories, edited by the brilliant @richardvhirst.bsky.social, available for preorder @confingopublishing.bsky.social right now. #BookSky #WritingCommunity #WritersOfBlueSky
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Amy Lord @tenpennydreams.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Book news! New ghost story coming 15 October in this collection from @confingopublishing.bsky.social, inspired by Britain's concrete landscapes www.confingopublishing.uk/product-page...
Brutalist Ghost Stories 17 original ghost stories inspired by Britain's concrete landscape
15th October 2026 Confingo Publishing
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
New book! Coming this autumn, Brutalist Ghost Stories - 17 brand new ghost stories inspired by brutalist buildings and structures from across the UK. Featuring Daisy Johnson, Naomi Booth, Jeremy Dyson and many others. Pre-order now and it's a mere £9. www.confingopublishing.uk/product-page...
Brutalist Ghost Stories edited by Richard V. Hirst published by Confingo on 15th October
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Smooth Dunk @smoothdunk2.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
The British Media Vs. Plagiarism
4 panel comic

Panel 1: 
British Journalists are relaxing on lilos in the sea. Someone on the shore yells “Hey Guys! An academic got accused of plagiarism”

Panel 2: 
One of the journalists sticks out their tongue and says “Pffft. Wake me when there’s a real story”

Panel 3: 
Person on shore “He was black”

Panel 4: 
The sea explodes as a tidal wave of British Journalists erupt into the air, manic and desperate to report on this now vital for some reason piece of news
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Am in Africa, of all places, and smashed through this in about four days - and probably currently know more about early twentieth century Icelandic socioeconomics and sheep farming practices, of all things, than most UK summer holiday dads.
Independent People by Halldor Laxness
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Thom @thisthom.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I'm really excited about this collection... It's a great concept with a raft of stellar writers. Check out the launch event if you happen to be in the North West.
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Tracy King @tracyking.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Lovely to receive a hard copy in the post, part of a very brilliant series of essay books from @deadinkbooks.bsky.social - my essay is about the challenges and responsibilities of writing about the dead.
Writing the Real, a book of essays by memoirists. The cover is black with an orange highlight.A photo of the first page of the essay Memoir Mori by Tracy King

'His mother's death was very upsetting, Joe said, though not as traumatic as his father's. But I have to admit here that when he told me this story, my first, awful thought was: good material.' - The Wife, Meg Wolitzer
I first knew my father's death was good material when, not unlike Meg Wolitzer's character Joan Castleman in The Wife, someone else made the observation. I was eighteen years old. my father had been dead for six years, and I had never talked about it. I became a drama student instead, because all my feel-inge were coming out in funny places and I needed somewhere to direct them. A year into the course, a BTEC in Performing Anata now-losed college campus in the middle ofa Birming-Ham council estate, 1 inal amided in my tutor the circum-canes and fects of my ly hers death. He had died violendy and cruelly, and - as was evident in my telling - dramatically. It had been raining that night. It was getting dark. My father had
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I have two books coming out later this year, one of which hasn't actually been officially announced yet, but tickets for the launch event in Manchester are here 👐 manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/events/bruta...
manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk
Brutalist Ghost Stories: Jenn Ashworth, David Gaffney, Beth Barker & Nicholas Royle | Manchester Literature Festival
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Pamela Vander, Mark E Smith's partner, did an AMA on Reddit earlier which had some fascinating details for any latter day Fallologists. Love the idea of MES sat at home scoffing trotters while listening to the Escape From New York soundtrack.
Mark E Smith loves setting off massive fireworksMark E Smith liked eating trotters and bone marrowMark E Smith loved rainMark E Smith loved the Escape from New York soundtrack
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Richard V. Hirst @richardvhirst.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Maybe if we pretend the cat cartoon is offensive rather than crap he'll stop...?
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