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Newsletters: good ones to subscribe to -

Since you’re on this page, you may well already subscribe to my Fortnightly. If not, here’s the free sign-up (with some recent editions).

Newsletters are good ways to receive ideas, links, articles and tips from someone interesting, pushed to you, rather than having to hunt around, happen to come across something on Twitter, or rely on a chance encounter. The pleasure of a good one is if you come away from it with even one interesting thing. That’s what I hope happens with the Fortnightly. So here are some I subscribe to, and recommend.

Books, reading

  • Arden Shakespeare: from Bloomsbury, this opens up interesting books, performances and more.

  • Bookmarks from the Guardian and the Observer.

  • Dramatic Personae from Hailey Bachrach sends you intelligent essays on Shakespeare’s characters, one at a time.

  • Five Books: a superb site with a massive number of recommendations from experts.

  • Line by Line: this new Substack sets up an excellent podcast in which Tom Sutcliffe examines three extracts with two guests. During each discussion Sutcliffe reveals who wrote the pieces.

  • New York Times Books: high quality material, naturally.

  • Poetry Foundation: lots of interesting material from this Chicago organisation.

  • Story Club by George Saunders is fantastic, continuing on from his brilliant book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. There is no better writer today on how fiction works.

Education, teaching

  • Andrew Campbell’s English Teacher Weekly provides us with plenty of interesting links and ideas.

  • Barbara Oakley: Cheery Friday Greetings from Professor Oakley, one of the best minds in the educational world.

  • Dialogic Learning Weekly from Tom Barrett in Australia has good things on leadership, schools, teaching and more.

  • Diverse Educators, founded by Bennie Kara and Hannah Wilson, helpfully gathers material and courses on all aspects of diversity in education (website here).

  • Jonathan Firth’s Memory and Metacognition Updates is a crisply written and very clear Substack - well-worth teachers’ attention.

  • Mary Myatt: helpful links and ideas from one of the most measured minds in the teaching world.

  • Ollie Lovell: Teacher Ollie’s Takeaways has now crossed the 100 edition threshold, and is a fine gathering of useful blog posts and resources on learning.

  • Peps Mccrea’s Snacks is ‘a weekly 5-min email for evidence hungry teachers’ by one of the most precise writers on education.

  • Marc Watkins is one of the most interesting and nuanced writers about Generative AI in ‘Rhetorica’.

Thinking

  • Alan Jacobs wrote two books I recommend (he’s written more): How to Think and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. His ‘more-or-less weekly newsletter’ Snakes and Ladders is always a pleasure.

  • Arts and Letters Daily has been around for a long time, and is just as good as ever, providing links to and about books, articles of interest and more. The newsletter sends out regular highlights, but do check the site itself.

  • Austin Kleon: the author and illustrator sends out snappy weekly newsletters with rabbit-hole-type links.

  • Farnam Street’s Sunday Brain Food gathers things from Shane Parrish’s formidable stable on thinking, decision-making, leadership and more. ‘Actionable ideas and insights you can use at work and home.’

  • Ian Leslie’s The Ruffian Substack is consistently readable, and sensible, on current affairs and public life (such as this analysis of the football Super League disaster).

  • Krista Tippett’s On Being Project is capacious, including the superb Poetry Unbound series from Pádraig Ó Tuama. The Pause Newsletter every Sunday points the way.

Other

  • Art UK is the online home of every public collection in the UK. Lots of excellent things here.