Peter Ross
@peteralanross.bsky.social
Author of Upon A White Horse: Journeys In Ancient Britain & Ireland. Also, Steeple Chasing: Around Britain By Church, & A Tomb With A View: The Stories & Glories of Graveyards. Substack: https://smallfinds.substack.com
Pinned
Why Paris Designed Its Peculiarly Popular Grand Graveyards to Evoke a Celebration of Life Amid All the Death
Cemeteries that inspired parks serve as unlikely tourist attractions in the City of Light and prove that the end of the line is just the start of a new story
www.smithsonianmag.com
I'm pleased to have won a Lowell Thomas award from the Society of American Travel Writers. It's for my story, written for the Smithsonian magazine, on the historic cemeteries of Paris. I loved writing this. You can read it here, if you like. www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/why-p...
#NowPlaying The autumn sounds continue …
October 8, 2026 at 7:55 AM
#NowPlaying The autumn sounds continue …
#NowPlaying So great to be able to play these autumn records again.
October 7, 2026 at 7:46 AM
#NowPlaying So great to be able to play these autumn records again.
I'm pleased to have won a Lowell Thomas award from the Society of American Travel Writers. It's for my story, written for the Smithsonian magazine, on the historic cemeteries of Paris. I loved writing this. You can read it here, if you like. www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/why-p...
Why Paris Designed Its Peculiarly Popular Grand Graveyards to Evoke a Celebration of Life Amid All the Death
Cemeteries that inspired parks serve as unlikely tourist attractions in the City of Light and prove that the end of the line is just the start of a new story
www.smithsonianmag.com
October 6, 2026 at 7:43 PM
I'm pleased to have won a Lowell Thomas award from the Society of American Travel Writers. It's for my story, written for the Smithsonian magazine, on the historic cemeteries of Paris. I loved writing this. You can read it here, if you like. www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/why-p...
Reposted by Peter Ross
Or 'The Downward Spiral' by NIN?
October 4, 2026 at 10:02 AM
Or 'The Downward Spiral' by NIN?
Reposted by Peter Ross
But have you considered ‘Apocalypse ‘91. The Enemy Strikes Black’?
October 4, 2026 at 9:59 AM
But have you considered ‘Apocalypse ‘91. The Enemy Strikes Black’?
Reposted by Peter Ross
I'll hazard some reasons: brisk and sunny while still cosy and warm, Drake's natural romantic melancholy leavened by an optimistic mood, lusciously hazy string arrangements like a big gulp from a hot mug. Putting it on myself now, cheers
October 4, 2026 at 9:20 AM
I'll hazard some reasons: brisk and sunny while still cosy and warm, Drake's natural romantic melancholy leavened by an optimistic mood, lusciously hazy string arrangements like a big gulp from a hot mug. Putting it on myself now, cheers
Reposted by Peter Ross
"We are now almost as far from the Troubles as the Troubles lasted. But the wounds caused by 30 years of sectarian violence run simultaneously deep & close to the surface & are easily reinfected by bad faith actors with malign agendas." My column on Drumcree. www.heraldscotland.com/politics/vie...
I saw Drumcree burn in 1999. What’s happening in Portadown now worries me as much
Dani Garavelli on why the latest Drumcree dispute in Northern Ireland raises fresh concerns about anti-immigration division, extremism and community relations.
www.heraldscotland.com
October 4, 2026 at 9:03 AM
"We are now almost as far from the Troubles as the Troubles lasted. But the wounds caused by 30 years of sectarian violence run simultaneously deep & close to the surface & are easily reinfected by bad faith actors with malign agendas." My column on Drumcree. www.heraldscotland.com/politics/vie...
I can’t say why Bryter Later is the best Sunday morning album, but it surely is.
October 4, 2026 at 9:06 AM
I can’t say why Bryter Later is the best Sunday morning album, but it surely is.
Reposted by Peter Ross
In Steeple Chasing, @peteralanross.bsky.social reports a churchwarden telling him “When we have school parties we have to walk on quickly when we get to this bit” – and Peter says she’s “jolly”, but “has a confrontational power undimmed by age”
October 3, 2026 at 11:39 AM
In Steeple Chasing, @peteralanross.bsky.social reports a churchwarden telling him “When we have school parties we have to walk on quickly when we get to this bit” – and Peter says she’s “jolly”, but “has a confrontational power undimmed by age”
Charity shop find!
October 2, 2026 at 4:53 PM
Charity shop find!
Reposted by Peter Ross
I reviewed the exhibition on fairy painter Richard Dadd at
@royalacademyarts.bsky.social: drfrancisyoung.com/2026/10/01/e... 🧚♀️
@royalacademyarts.bsky.social: drfrancisyoung.com/2026/10/01/e... 🧚♀️
Exhibition review: Richard Dadd Beyond Bedlam
The Royal Academy’s exhibition on the painter Richard Dadd (1817–1886) runs until 25 October, so there is still time to see it. Dadd is most famous as a fairy painter, as well as for being confined…
drfrancisyoung.com
October 1, 2026 at 12:22 PM
I reviewed the exhibition on fairy painter Richard Dadd at
@royalacademyarts.bsky.social: drfrancisyoung.com/2026/10/01/e... 🧚♀️
@royalacademyarts.bsky.social: drfrancisyoung.com/2026/10/01/e... 🧚♀️
Reposted by Peter Ross
Reread the last chapter of The Writing Life tonight & God, the way Rahm’s plane is sky painting & AD’s words are flying, & it feels like they are spinning out of control, tho’ her work is nothing but control, albeit with just enough risk that she could, at any moment, plummet into nothingness.
September 29, 2026 at 9:06 PM
Reread the last chapter of The Writing Life tonight & God, the way Rahm’s plane is sky painting & AD’s words are flying, & it feels like they are spinning out of control, tho’ her work is nothing but control, albeit with just enough risk that she could, at any moment, plummet into nothingness.
Reposted by Peter Ross
PS please enjoy Taco at said stones a couple of weeks ago.
September 30, 2026 at 5:12 PM
PS please enjoy Taco at said stones a couple of weeks ago.
Reposted by Peter Ross
What a great album cover. The Sighthill Stones being lowered into place. Spinal Tap meets Apocalypse Now.
30 years of Mogwai (and @rockactionrecords.scot!), one definitive comp...several discs.
Happy Tears: 13 hits and 13 extra tracks of remixes, rarities, live and previously unreleased music.
Monorail exclusive signed screenprint edition: monorailmusic.com/products/mog...
Happy Tears: 13 hits and 13 extra tracks of remixes, rarities, live and previously unreleased music.
Monorail exclusive signed screenprint edition: monorailmusic.com/products/mog...
September 30, 2026 at 4:05 PM
What a great album cover. The Sighthill Stones being lowered into place. Spinal Tap meets Apocalypse Now.
Reposted by Peter Ross
Lovecraft & M. R. James could only dream of writing a sentence like this.
September 30, 2026 at 3:56 PM
Lovecraft & M. R. James could only dream of writing a sentence like this.
New nickname just dropped
September 29, 2026 at 1:32 PM
New nickname just dropped
Reposted by Peter Ross
I reviewed @profdarryljones.bsky.social's new biography of M. R. James. Long-awaited by fans, and surely the most important book about MRJ yet to appear this century: drfrancisyoung.com/2026/09/28/r... 📚👻📜
Review: ‘For the Dead Remember: The Life of M. R. James’ by Darryl Jones
Darryl Jones, For the Dead Remember: The Life of M. R. James (Oxford University Press, 2026), 437pp. M. R. James did not make it easy for anyone to write his biography. He introduced this difficult…
drfrancisyoung.com
September 28, 2026 at 1:45 PM
I reviewed @profdarryljones.bsky.social's new biography of M. R. James. Long-awaited by fans, and surely the most important book about MRJ yet to appear this century: drfrancisyoung.com/2026/09/28/r... 📚👻📜
Reposted by Peter Ross
Priests think they know everything. We all told the vicar only ill could come from exposing the old Doom painting in the church. If the Guflobem comes out of the wall and devours him, it will be his own fault. Things are covered up for a purpose. He ought to know that. – Amy Scurfield #VOH
September 22, 2026 at 10:05 AM
Priests think they know everything. We all told the vicar only ill could come from exposing the old Doom painting in the church. If the Guflobem comes out of the wall and devours him, it will be his own fault. Things are covered up for a purpose. He ought to know that. – Amy Scurfield #VOH
Reposted by Peter Ross
"Blame the people who hate the small boats. Blame the people who need the small boats as without them whom would they hate? Blame the people who are disappointed by Reform’s small boats tracker cos there are no longer enough small boats to keep their outrage tanks topped up." My bit on Piddington.
Oh come on, Piddington’s ‘independence’ to stop migrants is a national embarrassment
A GENERATION or so ago, the village of Piddington in Oxfordshire would have been prime Barbara Pym territory: a place of jam and Jerusalem, of…
www.heraldscotland.com
September 20, 2026 at 8:04 AM
"Blame the people who hate the small boats. Blame the people who need the small boats as without them whom would they hate? Blame the people who are disappointed by Reform’s small boats tracker cos there are no longer enough small boats to keep their outrage tanks topped up." My bit on Piddington.
Reposted by Peter Ross
"In front of the sarcophagus, Valentino gave a Roman salute, made the sign of the cross and wrote ‘Ti voglio bene’ (‘I love you’) in the visitors’ book." I visited Predappio on Mussolini's birthday & wrote about it, and the rise of Italy's far right, for the @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Dani Garavelli · Diary: Cult of Mussolini
A couple of days before I arrived in Predappio, I read that Hitler’s birthplace in Austria had been compulsorily...
www.lrb.co.uk
September 17, 2026 at 7:55 AM
"In front of the sarcophagus, Valentino gave a Roman salute, made the sign of the cross and wrote ‘Ti voglio bene’ (‘I love you’) in the visitors’ book." I visited Predappio on Mussolini's birthday & wrote about it, and the rise of Italy's far right, for the @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Rhythm is the engine of this writing.
Annie Dillard, what a writer. I mean, here's the opening of Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, as a little thread: "I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I’d half-awaken.
September 17, 2026 at 11:04 AM
Rhythm is the engine of this writing.
Annie Dillard, what a writer. I mean, here's the opening of Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, as a little thread: "I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I’d half-awaken.
September 16, 2026 at 5:36 PM
Annie Dillard, what a writer. I mean, here's the opening of Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, as a little thread: "I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I’d half-awaken.
Reposted by Peter Ross
Predappio - the town where Mussolini was born & where his remains lie - is a grotesque neo_Fascist fever dream. I visited during his birthday commemorations & wrote on what its willingness to exploit his memory says about the country, and the rise of its far-right. In the latest @lrb.co.uk
Dani Garavelli · Diary: Cult of Mussolini
A couple of days before I arrived in Predappio, I read that Hitler’s birthplace in Austria had been compulsorily...
www.lrb.co.uk
September 16, 2026 at 1:26 PM
Predappio - the town where Mussolini was born & where his remains lie - is a grotesque neo_Fascist fever dream. I visited during his birthday commemorations & wrote on what its willingness to exploit his memory says about the country, and the rise of its far-right. In the latest @lrb.co.uk