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Jonathan Coe

@jonathancoe.bsky.social

14K followers 920 following 700 posts

Writer. New novel is THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE. Previous titles include WHAT A CARVE UP!, THE ROTTERS' CLUB, MIDDLE ENGLAND, MR WILDER AND ME ... https://linktr.ee/coelinks

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 19d

Updated tour itinerary, with three November dates added in the south of France.

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 2h

Makes sense

Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 2h

And this is why I am not anticipating a phone call from the Nobel Prize committee this morning.

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 2h

This morning I turned on my phone only to find that it had changed my user name to Shirley, and when I tried to enter a simple Google query it came out as "Do you like gladiator movies?"

Then I realised it was in Airplane! mode.

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Reposted by Jonathan Coe

stuartmaconie.bsky.social @stuartmaconie.bsky.social · 20h

I know Handsworth well. I love it. The Soho Road is one of the most vibrant streets in the world. I was attached to the library there for a writing project last year and I wrote a whole chunk about it in my book Hope And Glory. Read it if you get a chance

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 22h

Thanks - and how nice now to be the owner of that review copy! Didn’t he call it a ‘timid experiment’?

Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 22h

TLS or Sunday Times or Obs I think - the review is quoted in my biog.

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 22h

I do like it a lot but these days I prefer Small World which I find less schematic and much funnier - for me that's David's masterpiece.

Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 22h

... in that Lodge took the central device of switching between different forms but had a sense of how to adapt it for the mass readership BSJ had craved but never found. 2/2

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 22h

Thank you! I actually think the missing link is David Lodge. Talking about David at an event in B'ham recently, I realised what a large and direct debt Changing Places owes to BSJ's Travelling People (which he'd definitely read) ... 1/2

Nick Black @fuzzynick.bsky.social · 23h

Very interesting Q&A. Re formal & structural games, I felt - especially with TPOMI - that you've pulled off the play & experimentalism that BS Johnson was doing but, unlike him - maybe because of your 'slightly vulgar populist streak' 😉 - have succeeded in selling that (and your books) to readers.

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 1d

Well, my selection would be equally wilful as these are my two favourites and apparently they're not liked much by Bley purists.

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 1d

Tickets for my event at the Bewdley Festival on Saturday are selling like hot cakes.*

*(During the notorious hot cake slump of 1857.)

Bewdley Festival Ticket Booking | Bewdley Festival Ticket Booking,

events.bewdleyfestival.org.uk

Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 1d

In which I talk about three of my favourite books - including one by @katebeaton.bsky.social

Jonathan Coe on his favourite, wildly funny, fantastical novel

The Rotters’ Club author recommends Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, an amazing graphic memoir and a forgotten classic by Rosamond Lehmann

www.thetimes.com

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 1d

In which I talk about anxiety as a motivating force, never being considered for the Booker, and an early novel that's become problematic.

Jonathan Coe: ‘I have a fascination with the right’

The author on keeping his liberal instincts in check, his love of breaking the literary fourth wall, and not fitting comfortably into the world

observer.co.uk

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Reposted by Jonathan Coe

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 2d

To make a very obvious point, this is the second Nigel Farage takeover of the Conservative party. Twice he has made what were once relatively niche and hard-right opinions – leaving the EU and effectively ending asylum in the UK - the default view for Tory MPs.

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 1d

Wilfully esoteric selection.

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 4d

Encountering the strange mixture of sadness and riotous absurdity at the heart of this show at the age of 15 changed my life.

This is a wonderful and nuanced assessment, almost fifty years later.

Madeleine Brettingham @littlemaddles.bsky.social · 6d

"The wallpaper was busier maybe, the world was browner, but essentially it was the same world, where telephones were answered with a string of digits and time flowed begrudgingly forwards like gravy."

I wrote about my favourite sitcom of all time.

madeleinebrettingham.substack.com/p/that-is-wh...

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 4d

"Still a handful of tickets left" (I think that's the preferred BlueSky euphemism) for my event here next Friday.
www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/book-tickets/

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 4d

Quelle surprise, @wtfrench76.bsky.social

The Dispatch @birminghamdispatch.bsky.social · 4d

Bridge lives in Bromsgrove and runs a small group no-win-no-fee injury claims management companies.

In 2018, Spanish police alleged he was one of eight Brits who ran bogus food poisoning claims to scam a string of hotels in Magaluf.

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Reposted by Jonathan Coe

Asha Rangappa @asharangappa.bsky.social · 7d

I can’t believe I’m watching interviews of city mayors talking about how they are coordinating with other mayors to discuss how to protect their residents FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

I know we are “used to it” but it is absolutely insane

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 9d

'I like the racism, but can I have a less expensive kind please?'

Josiah Mortimer @josiah.writes.news · 9d

YouGov research for progressive group Best for Britain found that potential Reform backers rated a message criticising Farage’s spending plans and economic credentials as the ‘most convincing’ almost 3-in-5 (57%) times
bylinetimes.com/2025/09/29/t...

The Attack Lines That Could Hurt Nigel Farage's Reform UK Hardest

A new mega poll of voters reveals where Reform UK are most vulnerable to political attacks from their opponents

bylinetimes.com

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 9d

I have no influence! But am sure Persephone will do their utmost to bring them out, given the success of this one.

Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 9d

Peaceful morning by the side of Lac d’Annecy, reading Sally Carson’s novel of rising Nazism. What a book! No need to point out the many parallels with today. Thanks to Persephone Books for rediscovering/reissuing it.

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 9d

It’s an option.

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 9d

Good comparison!