As John Self rightly pointed out in an earlier comment, John Sutherland writes well for The Guardian on books, despite being an apparently controversial choice for Chair of the Booker panel this year. Here’s his article in today’s paper. There…

From the BBC News Site – I picked this up from the MSDN Student Flash blog (unfortunatley not as exciting as it sounds…) Blogs are increasingly being used by academics and students. Until a few months ago, the attention paid…

The Google Blog reveals that Google are now offering a video search: Soon there will be. Google Video is a new product that enables you to search an index of transcripts from recent TV programs. It’s just an early-stage beta…

The Oscar nominations are out – see here.

Picked up Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood in Ottaker’s for £1 (!) this lunchtime. I was tipped off by HoneyPotts on Palimpsest. The Guardian have a good profile of Murakami here. I’ll quote the whole thing, as it’s a good read…

Apologies for messing people around – if many people are out there reading this – but I have changed the URL of this blog to rather than having it in the /blog subdirectory. I have included an automatic forwarder…

I have finally finished work on the Scrutiny Handbook. I got my final draft copy back today from the Head of Department, and once I have amended things in line with his comments, we will be ready to go to…

Interesting page on the use of blogs by MPs: A lot of the people that you reach via a weblog will post comments on a weblog of their own and link to you in the process. Some weblogs have an…

The Campaign to save Wells Hospital has a website here.

This looks like it would be an interesting read, and a very good review. I’ve emphasised one important part for me. Do the right thing For once, here is some advice that Conservatives might find useful. David Cameron on Kieron…

The Rotters’ Club is being screened on BBC 2 on Wednesday at 9.00pm. It has been adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais and stars the godawful Sarah Lancashire. Here’s the interview with Coe from the BBC site: What…

I registered for Yahoo! for the first time today, largely for the Calendar function which is attached to the E-Mail page. It came out very well in a recent PCPlus review of Calendaring software. The E-Mail addy I got was…

On this post I wondered what I should call this blog. I’ve stuck with The Closed Circle – from the recent Jonathan Coe novel – which was the name of my previous Blogger effort. It is, at least, suitably vague.…

From Saturday’s Guardian: When he died in 2001, WG Sebald left behind a remarkable, unpublished account of his travels in Corsica. In a vivid extract from this final unfinished work, he explores the island’s ancient forests – and recalls a…

Great profile of Ian McEwan in The Observer today. His early work conjured up a neo-gothic world of pornography, infanticide and incest. Today he is a much-loved member of the establishment – and his new novel is certain to be…

From the BBC Football site: Brighton 0-0 Nottm Forest Paul Gerrard’s first-half penalty save earned Nottingham Forest a point in their relegation tussle with Brighton. Gerrard brought down Leon Knight after 10 minutes but pulled off a stunning one-handed stop…

I have 6 Gmail invites spare, if anyone is interested.

A tough one today. I understand that Megson is likely to play 3-5-2 again, with Wes Morgan and Andy Reid back from injury: Gerrard; Doig, Morgan, Dawson; Louis-Jean, Derry, Reid, Commons, Rogers; King, Taylor. Hopefully he won’t be playing David…

Melissa at Boris Johnson’s blog pointed out this article on the BBC News site: “A large part of the attraction of the internet is that it goes below the radar,” he said. “Generally it’s more difficult for the government to…

Burning Bush brandishes Dostoevsky Given the Biblical language in which George Bush and his speechwriters are steeped, it is not surprising that the US president should invoke the imagery of fire, writes James Meek One of the models of American…