1. The International Booker Prize is perhaps a little more genuinely international nowadays, but it still has some way to go, with nine of the thirteen books on this year’s longlist from Europe: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-international-booker-prize-2026-longlist

Cross quibbles apart, it’s an interesting list!

2. Here’s a gift article from The New York Times by Alex Marshall, How a New Yorker Put Poetry on the London Underground https://tinyurl.com/bpavm5k

One evening about 40 years ago, Judith Chernaik was taking part in a reading of “As You Like It” when she had a flash of inspiration that would go on to improve the lives of millions of harried commuters. In Shakespeare’s comedy, the lovesick Orlando hangs odes to a woman called Rosalind onto trees in the forest of Arden. Orlando’s verse is deliberately bad. “From the east to western Ind / No jewel is like Rosalind,” starts one. Still, that scene gave Chernaik a thought: Why not put poems in the Underground, London’s busy subway system? Chernaik, an expatriate New Yorker, said in a recent interview that she couldn’t quite explain the thought. The London subway, after all, “is so different from a pastoral scene.”

3. I do so hope the science that underpins this Guardian article by Andrew Gregory, Reading and writing can lower dementia risk by almost 40%, study suggests, is sound! https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/11/reading-writing-lower-dementia-risk-study-finds

Sounder, possibly, than The Guardian’s choice of illustration?

4. Another thoughtful piece on teaching and learning from Substack, this one by Joel Kenyon: Stand Still, Narrate and Stop: Small Classroom Changes with Big Impacts https://joel120193.substack.com/p/stand-still-narrate-and-stop-small

I find myself returning to my PGCE years often. They were a trial by fire. A mix of the inspiring and the outright absurd. For example, I was once given a stopwatch in a lesson and was told that I was not allowed to talk for more than 2 minutes. The less time I spoke for, the better. I was told to make lessons interactive, so I purchased (with my own money), lentils, dried peas, and rice. I gave students masks of different bird masks along with tweezers, forceps, or nothing at all. Once, during feedback, I was told the pupils were asking too many questions. The advice was then to give the pupils a plastic coin, and this was the only question they were allowed to ask. All of this was terrible advice.

5. And, finally and magnificently, The Abbey Library of St Gallen https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20260202-inside-switzerlands-extraordinary-medieval-library