1. Short notice of tomorrow’s (23rd May) TeachingEnglish series of three mini-webinars from 12:00 to 15:30 UK time on AI for inclusion https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/news-and-events/webinars/webinars-teachers/ai-inclusion-webinars Presenters from Vietnam, Greece, Spain, India and Myanmar!
Details of the TeachingEnglish programme up till the end of June here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/community/top-stories/april-june-2025-understanding-my-learners
and PDF of the calendar of training courses for teachers for 2025-26 here (and below) https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/2025-03/2025-2026_TeachingEnglish_training_course_calendar_QR.pdf
2. The International Booker Prize winner was announced on Tuesday. This year’s winner, originally written in the South Indian language Kannada, was Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhashti https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/everything-to-know-heart-lamp-winner-international-booker-prize-2025
I backed the right horse: my copy came in the post yesterday!
3. This one from The Conversation is a bit close for personal comfort, Do people really want to know their risk of getting Alzheimer’s? by Claudia Cooper https://theconversation.com/do-people-really-want-to-know-their-risk-of-getting-alzheimers-256340
4. Death in Trieste is a series of five fifteen-minute programmes for Radio 3 by Seán Williams about the real life murder in Trieste in 1768 of Johann Winckelmann, the most famous art critic of his day https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5QPk5QsmCFvJX88CndNH51c/death-in-trieste
One Wednesday between nine and ten in the morning, there lay a German gentleman in his 50s in a pool of blood, dying. What seemed like half of Trieste huddled around the poor man. He struggled to breathe for over six hours before he passed away. His thirty-something “friend” also gasped for breath, but he was now on the run: having stabbed and strangled his fellow guest in the neighbouring room, in what was said to be attempted robbery. And what was later found to have been premeditated murder.
5. And, finally, Eric Cantona at his glorious best https://youtu.be/INiT1cA_Eqk
On the evidence of this concert, though, he should probably stick to football https://youtu.be/1rPhOD57zbA
Roy Cross's Blog 