Read/Watched/Listened/Ate

7: February 2026

Book: Last week I read The Tiger’s Share by Keshava Guha, a novel about a pair of upper middle class Delhi families that fall out over disputed inheritances. I thought it was brilliant, functioning both as a deft study of the strained relationships between siblings and parents as they grow older, but also as an allegory for the different faces of modern India: wealth and culture, gender relations, religion and politics. The boys (men) at the heart of the novel are entitled, regressive and amoral. Their sisters are more intelligent and successful, but also contemptuous. Their relationship to the country is ambivalent - speaking English, disappearing to work and study abroad. Yet in the final reckoning, Guha suggests they have to find a way to live together.

Article: Headed Clearances are rising significantly - football should not ignore the health risks by Michael Cox (The Athletic). An important piece, highlighting the dangers inherent to the growing prominence of corners and ‘meat wall’ tactics in football, given the links between heading the ball and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. I’m increasingly worried that soccer is turning into american football, a stop-start game of set plays and brute physicality. That’s mainly because I think it makes for a poorer spectacle, but I hope that the beautiful game won’t emulate gridiron in terms of its lack of regard for player safety,

Podcast: What an economist eats for lunch (in 2026), with Tyler Cowen (The Economics Show, FT). I am fascinated by food and Tyler Cowen, so this was a learning experience - though more about Cowen thought than gastronomy. I’m in disbelief about the level of consensus Cowen thinks there is over what constitutes good food - my suspicion is that a person who prefers Italian food to Indian will prefer average Italian food to well cooked Indian - but this would be interesting to study. I’m even more taken aback by the fact that Cowen thinks intelligence is well correlated with discernment of food quality - my instinct is that intelligence is much less general than that. If Cowen is right, I think that’s bad for society: if some people are just better than everybody else at everything that means talent is more scarce, and implies inequality is more fundamental. So I hope, as well as believe, he is wrong.

TV: I’ve enjoyed series 2 of Trying (BBC), a sweet sitcom about a couple seeking to adopt. I often think about this old article about how one of Michael Shur’s most distinctive talents is his ability to portray loving, mutually supportive relationships. Where most writers thrive on conflict and suspense, he is more interested in the happy ending than in the chase. As I get older and sappier, I take greater joy in depictions of decent, happy people figuring out how to live better to contrast with the general misery of, well, most art. And Trying fits that bill.

Food: In honour of my old friend Ben Garlick, I made Yotam Ottolenghi’s caramelised garlic tart. It’s a sort of goat’s cheese quiche, with a puff pastry crust and loads of garlic (albeit mellowed through caramelisation). Hard to go wrong with those ingredients, but as tasty as it sounds.