Larkin included today, as I’m visiting friends who live near Hull on the way home to Cambridge.

1. Two tools for teaching and modelling vocabulary in the early years from Lauren Grocott of EEF (the Education Endowment Foundation) https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/early-years/two-tools-for-teaching-and-modelling-vocabulary-in-the-early-years

Lots more ideas for developing language and communication skills in the EEF Early Years Evidence Store here https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/early-years/evidence-store/communication-and-language?approach=teaching-and-modelling-vocabulary

2. An extraordinarily wide-ranging – imperialism, India, spies, seafarers, paganism, the polis, Cook, Colombia, mathematics, motherhood, wealth and warfare – two-part Books of the Year from History Today

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/books-year-2024-part-1

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/books-year-2024-part-2

3. Two pieces from BOLD:

Nurturing joyful lifelong learners in underprivileged communities, an interview with Nayla Zreik Fahed of the NGO Lebanese Alternative Learning (whose task can only have become much more difficult since October 1^st, when the interview took place) https://boldscience.org/nurturing-joyful-lifelong-learners-in-underprivileged-communities/

When teachers believe in their students’ capabilities, those students learn more, an interview with Beatriz Cardoso from Laboratório de Educação (Labedu) in Brazil https://boldscience.org/when-teachers-believe-in-their-students-capabilities-those-students-learn-more/

4. Hacks on Tap is a podcast by two American political commentators, David Axelrod & Mike Murphy. Here’s their latest episode, reflecting on Donald Trump’s re-election, Pardon Politics (with Chris Christie) https://www.hacksontap.com/episodes/pardon-politics-with-chris-christie You need to be a little bit of a US politics nerd …

This week, Axe and (John) Heilemann are joined by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie! The Hacks dive into Christie’s unique insights as Donald Trump’s former Transition Team Chairman to explore what a second Trump term might look like: which cabinet picks are likely to stick, and which ones are simply Trump’s way of flipping the bird. Plus, the guys unpack the Hunter Biden pardon drama and ask Christie for his thoughts on the Kushner ambassadorship—an ironic twist, given their history.

5. And, finally, as I’m not far from Hull tonight, here’s an episode of The Philip Larkin Society podcast, Tiny In All That Air, which includes readings by, amongst others, Alan Johnson, Andrew Motion and Blake Morrison of all the poems in Larkin’s last collection, High Windows https://tinyurl.com/ysr63spt The readings start 21 minutes in.

Here’s Larkin himself reading the title poem https://youtu.be/NcLNHNyzVcU which you can compare with the reading for the podcast by Martin Jennings, the creator of the John Betjeman statue at St Pancras and the Larkin one at Hull Station.

You can find the text of High Windows (the poem) here https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48417/high-windows – in many ways an extraordinary poem for a ‘respectable’ university librarian to have published in 1974.

And as bonus, Larkin reading one of my favourite poems of his, Aubade https://youtu.be/IDr_SRhJs80 Text here https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48422/aubade-56d229a6e2f07