Clarissa Hard

‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.’ It would appear that the artificial intelligence company Anthropic has taken Francis Bacon’s advice rather too literally. Anthropic has drawn criticism following revelations it has been cannibalising millions of print books to feed its ravenous learning systems. In the scanning process it has destroyed these items, including texts of considerable rarity. Hydraulic powered cutting machines are used to slice off the spines and covers – the footage is enough to give any bookworm nightmares. After the carnage, a recycling company comes in and clears everything up. Talk about getting rid of the paper trail.

Lit in Colour, a campaign launched by Penguin and the Runnymede Trust to diversify English literature, has recently released its five-year progress report. ‘Diversity’ for this campaign doesn’t mean diversity of thought, style, genre, poetic form or historical period, however. It refers to promoting writers on the basis of their BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) credentials while insisting that English Literature – cumulatively one of the most staggering achievements in Western civilisation – is too white for the modern classroom. Is it the job of the curriculum to play catch-up with demographic shifts? Is it the role of literary education to ‘reflect’ the present day, or synthesise history?

When faced with mortal peril, the average member of the British public might prefer to defend themselves with something more robust than a bottle of whiskey. Last Saturday, passengers on board a train found themselves in this dire predicament. The ‘frail / Travelling coincidence’ – as Philip Larkin described the same journey through Doncaster to King’s Cross – took a terrifying turn when a knifeman went on a stabbing spree and injured 11 people. No wonder this nightmarish attack has revived discussions about personal safety Witness Olly Foster recalled that a group of passengers fled until they reached the end of the carriage. Trapped, they stared down the aisle and prayed the assailant wouldn’t pursue them.

Alex Lloyd, a former teacher and head of sixth form in Bournemouth, has been drummed out of the profession for making remarks that many would find intemperate, even insulting, but few would seriously call career-ending.  In 2022, Lloyd led a PSHE lesson on so-called ‘honour’ killings. When two pupils giggled during his lesson, he shouted that honour-based abuse, including FGM, was ‘a serious matter’ that affected their culture specifically. According to a report by the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) in October 2025, Lloyd was visibly annoyed, insisting ‘this was real’ and ‘happening mainly because of [their] culture’.