Nick Harkaway
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nickharkaway.com
Nick Harkaway
@nickharkaway.com
18K followers 3K following 14K posts
Book-writin' man. Also husband, dad and occasional clothing-repairer, dog-walker, enthusiastic improviser of temporary solutions to random problems. Decreasingly rigorous on social media.

www.linktr.ee/harkaway

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nickharkaway.com
I went to see the show! :)
Me outside Soho Place Theatre, where the white-on-red digital poster for The Spy Who Came In From The Cold glows in the dark. It’s night and I’m wrapped up warm: grey coat, blue scarf up around my lower face, glasses and spiky dark blond hair. Two biscuits baked as speech bubbles resting on a metal-look counter. One bubble says “one can’t be out in the cold all the time” and the other “all cats are alike in the dark”.
November 28, 2025 at 8:09 AM
nickharkaway.com
It has six Labour MPs and two Liberal Democrat at the moment. I hadn't realised Labour had done that well last year. Before 1992 it's Con/Lib.
Historical voting of Cornish constituencies: 1992: Con/LD 1997 LD/Lab 2001 LD/Lab 2005 LD 2010 LD/Con 2015 Con 2017 Con 2019 Con 2024 LD/Lab
November 26, 2025 at 1:49 PM
nickharkaway.com
Somewhat notoriously, Dad loved all sorts of pens, including the Parker Rollerball.

To this day I have no idea why he taped the cap on the end.
Black and gold Parker pen in a shaft of sunlight on a pale wooden surface. Tape around the back of the pen holds the lid in place.
November 25, 2025 at 10:41 AM
nickharkaway.com
What’s still on my phone…
Text on a whiteboard: Seasons by secondary narratives with overlaps Notebook page, text: Reveal: Rebus is not the fourth, it is the fifth of four. Gnomon is the third. (5) Textbook page. Sample text: “… the tearing and devouring of the living god, and his subsequent rebirth, is a leitmotif that recurs in Orphism on a different level of meaning. In Orphic mythology, Dionysus (or his Thracian version, Zagreus) is the beautiful son of Zeus and Persephone; the evil Titans tear him to pieces…”
November 7, 2025 at 1:29 PM
nickharkaway.com
This is revealing.

on.ft.com/3JB1vEM
FT bar chart on “concern about the pace of cultural change” broken down by party. Reform voters are at the top, more than half strongly agree “culture in the UK is changing too fast” and another tranche agree, leaving only a small box who don’t. Conservatives come next, the LDs, then Labour - the latter two much less likely to strongly agree or agree, with the two categories together coming in below a third for both parties. Finally you have the Greens who basically don’t agree - maybe fifteen percent in total?
November 7, 2025 at 11:41 AM
nickharkaway.com
Trying to source a bit of fake antique mirror glass for a thing. Apparently this puts me in a very specific demographic?
YouTube recommended video tiles, left to right: classic painting of fruit; Liz Truss Exposes the Deep State; something that could be a light switch with a hand reaching for it? Honestly I have no idea.
November 7, 2025 at 10:16 AM
nickharkaway.com
Hmm. This model does not describe my small-to-medium sized whiplington, who looks like a wolf but possesses the malice and prey drive of a pudding.
Main picture: adorable floor, grey, lies on her side on red squared wool blanket, paws together and hair standing on end as she contemplates some godforsaken epiphany which somehow merges the absence of steak with the sad state of the scritchy markets at this time. Background: green velour sofa, lego chess set, radiator.
November 6, 2025 at 1:17 PM
nickharkaway.com
This, via @hooved-mammal.bsky.social for context
Sky News interview still; Bridget Phillipson MP, dark shirt, acid pink jacket, smiling. Text: MORNINGS @RidgeandFrost 'Do you like New York mayor Zohran Mamdani?' - @SophyRidgeSky Follow 'I don't follow American politics especially closely..'ll follow the big stories' - @bphillipsonMP 'Some people might say this is a big story.. - Sophy
November 5, 2025 at 3:08 PM
nickharkaway.com
Via Gary Marcus.

Wow.
Tweet (yes, ugh, I know) from Seth Harper of New Yorker story on AI: The biggest capital outlay ever, for a product that no one will pay for. OpenAl loses ten billion dollars a quarter. There is no path to profitability for subprime Al. These absurd data centers will stand sentinel over the ruins of our fake economy like moai on Easter Island.
November 3, 2025 at 9:37 AM
nickharkaway.com
One day people will stop writing this phrase.
The simulation hypothesis was long considered untestable, relegated to philosophy and even science fiction, rather than science. This research brings it firmly into the domain of mathematics and physics, and provides a definitive answer.
November 2, 2025 at 7:13 PM
nickharkaway.com
Gorgeous window display at Daunt Marylebone for Alice Jolly’s The Matchbox Girl last week. really superb bit of design here.
Window display: Alice Jolly’s Matchbox Girl on three staggered shelves. The book is rust, cream and black, the first two colours making flights of stairs with a black figure running up the rust stairs low left to mid right.
November 1, 2025 at 11:51 AM
nickharkaway.com
What I actually wanted, honestly, was to make Dad happy that he’d helped. Anyway… compromise:
Me in the jacket. Mid blue tweed, rough wool, elegant cut. Worn with white shirt. The jacket open. Orange lining with urban neon sprawl pattern. Distinctly not what the tailor recommended.
October 31, 2025 at 10:17 AM
nickharkaway.com
Sometimes TV adaptations take you a long way from the original text, but that's no reason not to watch if it looks like fun.
Cover of MEG, MOG & OG showing a red elephant (actually a mammoth) holding a stick figure witch and a black and white cat on his trunk. Cartoon style, kids' illustration. Classic! By Helen Nicoll and Jan Pieńkowski Move poster: Man with a gun pointed towards image right. Hair trembles with emotion. White stylised text (is it supposed to be diffusely Asian or diffusely Nordic? Hard to tell, honestly) reads THEY CALL HIM OG. The OG bit is in brushstroke letters rather than the weird font.
October 27, 2025 at 1:06 PM
nickharkaway.com
I couldn’t in conscience check the first box, so I didn’t vote. I don’t imagine that’s a major factor, but still.
Checkboxes on the way to voting in the Labour deputy leadership contest via union membership. You have to agree that you support the policies of the party before you can vote.
October 25, 2025 at 9:53 AM
nickharkaway.com
I mean wtf is supposed to be going on here?
Write a post. The text reads “right”. Autocorrect offers “I mearight” or “Rught”.
October 23, 2025 at 11:59 AM
nickharkaway.com
There’s some lovely praise on the PRH site… [but… -> next post ;) ]
"In Karla's Choice, Nick Harkaway has done the impossible and made it look easy. He's written a new George Smiley novel that reads like a long lost le Carré classic. It's a story as gripping as a hand on the throat, a subtle, blood-chilling work of suspense that promises to both enthrall the le Carré faithful and captivate a whole new generation of readers. I was floored." —Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman and Horns "Karla's Choice is a note-perfect tribute to le Carré. Nick Harkaway has pulled off the remarkable trick of providing the long-term reader with something which is satisfyingly fresh and new, and yet fits seamlessly into the world of Smiley's Circus in its heyday." -Mick Herron "Honestly reads like a lost le Carrè. Smiley is back at the Circus in the safest of hands." -Richard Osman, New York Times bestselling author of The Thursday Murder Club "Le Carre's legacy is in good hands-Smiley is back with a vengeance!" -lan Rankin, New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Rebus series
October 21, 2025 at 1:58 PM
nickharkaway.com
This story in the NYT about a skyscraper that’s been built to satisfy a perhaps-unachievable spec - and is now having problems - is a kind of 21st Century object lesson.
Text: "There's no sidewalk shed that's going to protect you from chunks of concrete popping off a 1,400-foot building," he said. Anthony Ingraffea, an expert in concrete fractures and a Cornell University engineering professor emeritus who reviewed photos from the inspections of 432 Park, described some of the defects as cosmetic for now, but said others have potential to peel off the building and become "concrete hand grenades." "I would not sign off as a licensed engineer in the State of New York that this building will last forever," Mr. Ingraffea said. "I would sign a document that says the Empire State Building will last. This building, I doubt it."
October 19, 2025 at 4:49 PM
nickharkaway.com
This disallows my vote: I’m broadly supportive of the party in concept, but I left this year because I didn‘t support some of its policies. So… never mind, I suppose. Carry on with whatever the hell it is you think you’re doing.
Text, Labour Party deputy leader vote preamble: I support the policies and principles of the Labour Party, and am not a supporter of any organisation opposed to it. [Check box] I am not an individual member of the Labour Party and have not cast any other vote in this election. [Check box.] Individual members of the Labour Party must vote using their individual Labour Party member ballot paper and any Labour Party member making a false declaration will be liable to disciplinary action by the party.
October 17, 2025 at 3:52 PM
nickharkaway.com
Or should I say Blueksy?
A chocolate bar custom-printed for the Conservative Party conference. Text reads “When Labour negotiates, Britian loses”. That’s B R I T I A N. Wrapper is purple, text is white with the last two words in pale blue. Bar is held from leftbif frame by a hand with red nails, in front of a cream table top.
October 8, 2025 at 5:58 AM
nickharkaway.com
This. This is what I’m talking about. I mistyped “excellent”, went back two letters to correct it, and now we are apparently going to insist - but really insist - that the most obvious letter combo is “excellemy“.
Bsky post entry box. Text reads: “Oooh! Excellemy!” The last two letters are underlined.
October 6, 2025 at 8:31 AM
nickharkaway.com
Can you guess? :)
Quote text from me: “A monster of a book… a vast, brimstoned relentless zinger” Background: grey lava tiles or scales at the top, fading to molten red orange at the bottom.
October 5, 2025 at 7:35 PM
nickharkaway.com
Also and separately there will be the STAGE PRODUCTION of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Picture below, link in next post because for some reason the link doesn’t preview.
Red poster, white text slanted down on the left: John le Carré’s THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD written by David Eldridge and directed by Jeremy Herrin. Two silhouetted figures cast shadows across the top of the text as the walk towards top of frame, and a broken bicycle rests on the word “from”.
October 3, 2025 at 7:52 AM
nickharkaway.com
*English and Irish. With, culturally, a significant helping of German and Swiss.
Telegraph: There is endless gold dust for John le Carré fans in this exhibition The Bodleian Libraries' new show Tradecraft sheds light on the complex, grouchy and very English writer
September 30, 2025 at 11:22 AM
nickharkaway.com
You can also, of course, get clever with it and do the repair on the wrong side. I did this last night as part of learning how to use the gizmo and I rather like it.
Repair in cyan and violet on a blue jumper, close-up. You can see the warp and weft and my slightly amateur faffing at the border, plus a bulge from where it sat on a hanger for too long before I fixed it.
September 28, 2025 at 11:31 AM
nickharkaway.com
Needle marks.
Guardian: During his speech on Friday, he will set out his view that the far right is injecting a "poisonous" discourse into national life, saying: "At its heart - its most poisonous belief - on full display at the protests here in London, just a week or two ago, that there is a coming struggle, a defining struggle, a violent struggle for the nation. For all our nations. "Now - you don't need to be a historian to know where that kind of poison can lead. You can just feel it. A language that is naked in its attempt to intimidate." But he will also explain his belief that immigration and borders need to be controlled, saying: "For too many years it's been too easy for people to come here, slip into the shadow economy and remain here illegally."
September 26, 2025 at 6:44 AM