What I’m reading

I have ordered my copy of Letters of Frank Sargeson but haven’t yet received it so am not really reading it. I have had a sneak preview, though, thanks to Graeme Lay who sent me this snippet from a 1944 letter to EP Dawson following a visit to the Tron: 

I’ve come back with a very sore chest. I think this was due to psychological causes – Hamilton – it was dreadful. I enjoyed a few days in Cambridge with my sister, but Hamilton was there all the time, like the Grey Death.

Small-town newspapers are a Very Good Thing. Our local, the Cambridge Edition, is a particularly good thing but some weeks one does sense that the staff have struggled to find enough news. They have never had to struggle as hard as the staff of the Mid Sussex Times, though – on Monday it ran a story on a shop opening a bit late one morning and even sent a photographer to document the occasion. 

After listening to MIT’s Professor Richard Lindzen my old friend Simon Carr has had a rethink about climate change. He knows as much about the science as I do but still it’s a surprise to see this in the Independent.

Space is big. We knew that, but courtesy of Open Parachute here is a vivid visual demonstration of our place in the scheme of things. Footling, basically. Also possibly makes Seti look a bit silly.