The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything

Articles

The Weight of the World

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

For perhaps a decade it’d be easy. The period in which I lived with someone who breathed Radio 4 in the way most of us breathe air blended seamlessly into the period when all you needed to know what was happening in the world was to be on the internet. I didn’t need to go looking for the news. I’d just kind of know it. Among the many side effects of the death of Twitter and its mutation into X is that this is no longer true.
Some great (awful) fires

1 week ago | jonn.substack.com | Jonn Elledge

Quick note before we begin: this is your last chance to get 5% off an annual sub and a free paperback of my (Sunday Times bestselling!) book, A History of the World in47 Borders. In all honesty, I meant to close this offer weeks ago and keep forgetting, which means periodically realising I need to order more books and feeling very slightly annoyed about it. Anyway, I’ll keep it open til Monday, ish. Get in while you can:Enough of that. This went to paying subs back in February.
The Price of Shame

1 week ago | jonn.substack.com | Jonn Elledge

A quick promotional note before we begin. On Wednesday 11 June, there’s an Oh God, What Now? liveshow in Soho, where Dorian, Ros and I will be joined by Marcus Brigstocke to talk about ~the news~. I’m not saying that Marcus and I are definitely going to take control of the stage and do a guerrilla Paper Cuts. I’m just not saying that we’re not. Tickets here.
Rhiannon Garth Jones on lessons from Rome - and why they’re bad

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

Happy weekend, everybody, Jonn here. This is one of those occasional guest posts I publish when a friend has a book out and I suspect that a not inconsiderate number of you would enjoy it. This time, it’s the turn of the historian Rhiannon Garth Jones, whose book All Roads Lead to Rome was published on Thursday. Subhadra Das, author of Uncivilised: Ten Lies That Made The West, described the book as "Authoritative and engaging.
The Empty Homes Delusion

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

This week’s politics-tinged section goes on a bit, so I’m messing with my usual running order. First up, here’s something from the part of my brain that throws up random questions that start with, “Hey, I wonder why-”1One of the strangest things about England, and oh my there are a lot of those to choose from, is its choice of national animal. A lion guards a bridge at Hampton Court Palace; there are four surrounding Nelson in Trafalgar Square.
Things Can’t Only Get Better

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

I am not, at time of writing, in a good place. I say that partly because I’m ill again, with what feels suspiciously like a relapse of whatever godawful gastro thing I had a couple of weeks ago, and the recurrence is vastly more unnerving than the illness itself. More than that, while I have a pretty lovely life by any sensible standard of freelance journalism life1, it remains an inescapable fact that if I don’t work I don’t get paid. Being too ill to think, let alone work, is thus a problem.
Some noteworthy nicknames for Rus’ and Russian monarchs

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

Familiar headline? That’s because this one went to paying subs back in February. This time, though, there’s no paywall. Huzzah!I’ve been watching The Great, whichis great (DYSWIDT), andhas had me googling random bits of Russian history, even though its maker Hulu describes it as “anti-historical” and the opening credits describe the show as “An Occasionally True Story” or, on one occasion, “An Almost Entirely Untrue Story”.
Crossing the Rubicon

1 month ago | jonn.substack.com | Jonn Elledge

Any society requires a bunch of unspoken rules to function: codes of behaviour which aren’t laws and which aren’t enforced through anything more than other people’s judgement, but which are nonetheless understood to be Not The Done Thing. You don’t push in front of queues. You do let people out at junctions.
How to measure an apocalypse

1 month ago | jonn.substack.com | Jonn Elledge

This went to paying subscribers back in but, given the week’s British political news, felt oddly relevant right now. Want to make sure you’re not missing anything?
Elections, Elections Everywhere

1 month ago | jonn.substack.com | Jonn Elledge

So, with the spring election season in full swing, let’s check in on the state of play. In Canada (don’t worry, I’m not going to dwell) the result of Monday’s contest was somehow both the thrilling blow out we’d all been waiting for, and also oddly underwhelming. Yes, the Liberals won a fourth term that seemed inconceivable when the year began, and did it so convincingly that the networks called the result not long after 10pm Ottawa time. Yes, Conservative leader Pierre Pollievre lost his own seat.