Matt Haig

I don’t say this lightly but this is one of the funniest films I have ever seen and my goodness we need comedy right now. It is warm and endearing and bittersweet and British. Tim Key is superb. Tom Basden is superb. Carey Mulligan is superb. It has echoes of other things - if you want to be crude about it this is Local Hero meets Inside Llewyn Davis - but far, far funnier. I don’t think I have laughed more in a cinema since, I don’t know, Elf or something. But British awkward laughter. And you cry too. And what I really love about it is that in its own quiet way it really gets to the heart of a lot of things - and how our annoying personality traits are really just masks for pain. It’s a film that makes you want to give people the benefit of the doubt more. To try and see their backstory. And you kind of sense the sad back story all along and you know where it is going but that is part of its charm. (And I can’t complain about knowing where the plot is going - see all my books!) The reviews are all good but all four star which is wrong and I think mistaken reserve and a kind of sense that a film this lowkey can’t be five stars. But if we have silly things like star systems I would give this five stars. Yes it is not a perfect film but the good bits - and there are lots- are exquisite. A future small scale classic. If you want a lovely evening at the cinema I would go and see it.

Dear Keir Starmer, Please don’t sign us up to another futile foreign war. As Noam Chomsky said ‘the world doesn’t need new heroes, it needs new ideas’. War is an old idea. It doesn’t make us safer. Have the intelligence not to follow the worst American president in history into his worst mistake.

We let beauty pass us by and hold onto pain. Imagine if happiness left scars the way pain did. I am making an effort to mark happiness. I was happy today. It was lovely. I hope you had a moment of that too.

I’m not talking about ignoring valid critiques and constructive criticisms. I am talking about the bad faith snarks or trollish commentary from people whose opinion you would not agree on in other contexts. Don’t let them raise your self-loathing from the ground.

BOOKS Here is a pile of books. I always see pictures of book piles and I envy the grit and stamina it takes to put a pile of books together. The top three are rereads. Partial rereads. I just take them off the shelf when I am writing because these three women sharpen my brain like no other writers alive. Nah. Sharpen is the wrong word. They fuel clarity. They wipe the mist off the windows. A Waiter in Paris is about a man who was a waiter in Paris talking about being a waiter in Paris. It puts you off being a waiter in Paris. Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor is a fantastic novel. Just really brave storytelling from concept to characterisation. And it melts into glorious science fiction. With robots. The Traitors Circle by Jonathan Freedland is a true story of secret Nazi rebels against Hitler. It is a tense story in a classic way, filled with ever expanding layers of intrigue. John and Paul is a fab book about the fab two. It’s the best Beatles book ever written. Seriously it is amazing. A story of tender masculinity and a complicated friendship that ends, obviously, when John is murdered. Devi Sridhar gives a great overview of health science. Jodie Harsh’s memoir about being a DJ and 00’s party animal is a lot of fun. Even though she is writing about NOT THAT LONG AGO it feels like another lifetime ago, for good and bad, and was a fun witness to the scuzz and glitz of London club and celeb culture. Rereading Rick Rubin’s books on creativity because I saw him in a restaurant in Ibiza a month ago and didn’t dare say hello. The bottom three are niche and very me. An exquisite graphic novel of Sophie’s World. The letters of Einstein and fellow genius Max Born which is the best podcast you will ever read. And a history of rollercoasters. Because I love rollercoasters.