Jonn Elledge

2 weeks ago | jonn.substack.com | Jonn Elledge

This month’s book extract comes not from an individual, but from a collective. The Right To Roam is a group of naturalists, campaigners and artists, who since 2021 have been organising peaceful trespasses into areas of the countryside from which the public are currently excluded. One of its members, barrister Paul Powlesland, was kind enough to take me on a tour of the River Roding, near Barking, East London, last summer, and very illuminating it was too.

3 weeks ago | jonn.substack.com | Jonn Elledge

Bank holidays are always a bit weird as a freelancer. I worked on Good Friday – I had a meeting with the geography professor translating my book into Korean, which was lovely; I had a lot of looming deadlines, which were not; and I had no personal commitments that day, so hey, might as well keep things moving. I debated working again on Easter Monday, but decided that, no, deadlines or not, I needed a break, and began plotting a long lie in followed by a longer aimless walk.

4 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Jonn Elledge

Sooner or later, one of three things is going to happen. The government can accept and embrace high international student numbers. It can increase the money being paid to universities from domestic sources, either by increasing taxpayer subsidies or – if you’d prefer a plan that does not currently feel less likely than, say, war with Spain – raising fees. Alternatively, it can sit back, do nothing and watch a university go bust. As things stand, this third option is by some distance the most likely.

4 weeks ago | jonn.substack.com | Jonn Elledge

I’m sticking my head on the block here – comments like this have got me in trouble before – but until this year, the only time I’d been to Sheffield, it felt miserable as hell. In most fair sized British cities these days in my experience, the centre gleams and bustles, even if there’s a ring of decay just outside it. Sheffield, c2016, though, seemed to lack even that veneer of prosperity; visible decay and boarded up shops seemed to abound.

1 month ago | msn.com | Jonn Elledge

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