Today has been very largely ‘guest edited’ by Maja Mandekić, most welcome after an exhausting weekend spent with inexhaustible little Mateo!
1. A piece by Shelley Galpin for The Conversation about one of my favourite novels, Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy’s ‘Jude the Obscure’ criticised university elitism – it still rings true today https://theconversation.com/thomas-hardys-jude-the-obscure-criticised-university-elitism-it-still-rings-true-today-266009
The novel opens with a young Jude being introduced to the idea of a university education, as his beloved schoolteacher leaves him for the dreaming spires of Oxford (called Christminster in the novel). Gazing at the “mirage” of the cityscape on the horizon and captivated by the idea of this “beautiful city”, Jude is immediately cautioned by his guardian that it “is a place much too good for you”.
This piece on Jude is part of a series of articles in The Conversation, Articles on Rethinking the Classics https://theconversation.com/topics/rethinking-the-classics-156235. The most recent article in the series, by Emma Linford, is entitled, ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens is an early exploration of ‘romance fraud’ https://theconversation.com/great-expectations-by-charles-dickens-is-an-early-exploration-of-romance-fraud-241820
2. How easy is it to change your accent? is a piece for the BBC Future site by Sophie Hardach https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20260501-how-easy-is-it-to-change-your-accent Lots of good links in the article but not – not that I can find, at least – to the promised “two recorded practice samples below, for those of you who wish to join in”.
Jennifer Scapetis-Tycer, a dialect coach, is smiling at me from my computer screen as she prepares me for my first-ever attempt at acting. “You’re an American office worker who lives in Cincinnati,” she says, “and you’re coming home and you’ve got armfuls of shopping, and you have to get everyone’s attention because you want people to put the shopping away.” (…) “Interestingly enough, the very best predictor of whether you would be good at [imitating accents] is the tongue twister task,” Myers says. People who were able to move their mouth very, very quickly to copy the rapid-fire sound of the tongue twister, also did well in the accent-imitation task. “It seems there is something about agility”, or how skilful you are in moving your mouth to produce speech, that helps with accent imitation, she says.
I lost my Yorkshire accent very early in life after my first term at boarding school in Kent – literally a world away from Richmond, Yorkshire – had included fight after fight with fellow pupils making fun of my accent. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
3. Two videos from/with David Hockney from the Louisiana Channel, an excellent non-profit website based at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark: The World is Beautiful https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/david-hockney-the-world-is-beautiful and I Am Not an iPad Artist https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/david-hockney-i-am-not-ipad-artist plus one from Elif Shafak, Advice to the Young https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/elif-shafakadvice-to-the-young
With Louisiana Channel as a platform, Louisiana provides culture to the Internet, extending beyond the museum’s own events. The Louisiana team produces videos about art and culture on an ongoing basis. New videos are posted at the site every week. Louisiana Channel contributes to the permanent development of the museum as a cultural platform, expressing a desire to sharpen the understanding of the importance of culture and the arts. We see Louisiana Channel as an integral part of a museum for the 21st century, capable of engaging a new generation in our cultural heritage, in an intelligent present and an ambitious future.
4. I thought this was a good piece for Tribune by Daniele G. Palmer, Mass for the Migrant Workers https://tribunemag.co.uk/2026/03/mass-for-the-migrant-workers – you should get at least one article for free, I think.
Few pilgrims visit St Katharine Cree, a church in the City of London, one block east of The Gherkin, with no parish and no fixed congregation. Some drop by to inspect a model of the RMS Lancastria, others come to ring its six bells; a few wander in simply because it survived both the Great Fire and the Blitz. But those who remain — often for hours, sometimes for whole days — are here for none of that. When the bells fall quiet, you can hear a burst of ‘¡Lucha y no te rindas!’, and, just above eye level, a red banner that interrupts the Jacobean woodwork: a clenched fist and three downward-angled arrows edged with the words ‘Independent Workers Union’. In the final months of the Covid-19 pandemic, St Katharine Cree began a relationship with the cleaners’ branch of the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB). It started with English classes and, soon after, with Spanish-language masses – many members are Latin American and identify as Christian. As these ties deepened, the church took on the rhythms of union life. Eucharistic services were planned around branch assemblies; names on the church’s English for Speakers of Other Languages registers quietly matched those on the membership roster; and the volunteer cook, once accustomed to turnip soup and summer melon gazpacho, found himself buried in mountains of chicken and rice, empanadas and arepas, and, at Easter, guaguas de pan, a traditional Ecuadorian sweet bread.
5. Encouragingly for people of my age, Arts and cultural engagement ‘linked to slower pace of biological ageing’ from The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/12/arts-cultural-engagement-linked-slower-pace-biological-ageing-ucl-research
Those who take part in artistic pursuits the most often slow the pace of their biological ageing the most. Under one of the study’s methods of assessment, those who did so at least weekly slowed their ageing process by 4%, while monthly engagement led to it slowing by 3%. Similarly, another of the tests showed that those who undertook an arts activity at least once a week were on average a year younger biologically than those who rarely engaged in such pursuits. Those who exercised once a week were only six months younger by that measure.
6. And, finally, Sonny Rollins died yesterday at the grand old age of 95. Here’s a set from his prime in 1980 https://youtu.be/QWE83meaNME
Roy Cross's Blog 