1. Here’s two ways of saying the same thing about How Living Abroad Helps You Develop a Clearer Sense of Self: one a Harvard Business Review article https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-living-abroad-helps-you-develop-a-clearer-sense-of-self and the other a favourite Philip Larkin poem of mine that many of you will have seen me shoehorn into at least one talk, The Importance of Elsewhere – PDF below

2. Alison James from the University of Winchester has made her engaging and idiosyncratic new book, The Value of Play in HE: A Study, freely available here https://engagingimagination.com/the-value-of-play-in-he-a-study-free-book/ PDF below. She explicitly advises against just reading the abstract, which she calls Gazillions: PDF below just in case you choose not to follow her advice!

3. Two pieces from The Conversation:

Princess Diana: why her death 25 years ago has sparked so many conspiracy theories from Sarah Bennett https://theconversation.com/princess-diana-why-her-death-25-years-ago-has-sparked-so-many-conspiracy-theories-189088

Five myths about Shakespeare’s contribution to the English language from Jonathan Culpeper and Mathew Gillings https://theconversation.com/five-myths-about-shakespeares-contribution-to-the-english-language-189402

4. Two obituaries of Mikhail Gorbachev:

the first by Rodric Braithwaite, who was UK ambassador in Moscow at just the right time, from 1988 to 1992, for The Spectator https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-humanity-of-mikhail-gorbachev

the second by Jonathan Steele for The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/30/mikhail-gorbachev-obituary  

5. And, finally, a very splendid white moose: https://twitter.com/gabriele_corno/status/1559108395801759745?s=21&t=Yctl4_6_BLt_AcpFzSlyTQ