Digging in the stacks unearths unexpected things, but never expected the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize to be one of them. Awarded to a journalist whose bravery in exposing corrupt and lying leaders led to a concentration camp, and his death. #NobelPeacePrize

Rode from Pittsburgh to DC along the GAP and C&O canal trails, one of the world’s best bike paths: 335 car-free miles. By day three, Indiana Jones’s “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage” rang true. (But it’s also the years.)

Anti-AfD campaign poster: “Thwart the Nazis plans.” Now reading Victor Klemperer’s diary. “Politics everywhere,” he wrote in 1933, “and everywhere the terror of the Right. Now the business of 1918 is being exactly repeated. Again it’s astounding how easily everything collapses.”

Sitting with undergraduates in the Carnegie Museum of Art, quiet, still, surrounded by beauty. Each student unique + writing about what moves them. I just don’t get why any teacher would want to read AI’s responses to this, or to “Moby Dick.” It’s our job - and a privilege.

Cheers to @RoryStewartUK for recommending Leighton House, the inspiring studio home of an eminent Victorian, around the bend from Jimmy Page’s towered manse at Holland Park. His Rembrandts remind me of Hockney’s love of how he captured movement in a few quick lines. What a find.

Sat in this second-floor hotel room 19 years ago and wrote my first book. Cheap with free coffee and newspapers, a big sash, and the V&A and Kensington Gardens a short walk away. Bliss but for solving the puzzle of how to write a book - one due in 7 weeks. Sink or swim, old boy.

Chuffed to see Annie on the “We Are Very Much Amused” table of eminent Victorians at the superb Waterstones amidst University College London. She’d be amused, too, given UCL’s decision to not grant her a degree, given her activism.

Great product placement. This inviting reading nook leads from the title “I Want You to Be Happy.” Done.

Detail: Wood ducks on a Japanese wedding kimono. Sometimes I think I’m pretty creative, then I see a painting or these wavering silk threads creating movement upon water and I go: Oh.

Detail of Qing dynasty emperor’s robe at the V&A.

“Foreigner” - Sui Dynasty (6th-7th century AD) figurine depicting a Silk Road trader. Looks familiar.

Great place to sit inside with a book: Victoria and Albert Museum’s cafe, out the back of the main building.

Morning canal run, past the Zoo and the back of Regents Park’s posh lawns. I’d love to mow this.

Regent’s Canal remains my favorite London run. Back in the day, you’d dodge abandoned bikes, shopping trolleys and antisocial elements. Now there’s an open-air cinema and cookie-cutter condos. Still a great path - nine miles from Limehouse to Little Venice.

Sunny Sunday on Columbia Road.

“When you draw from the eye, you’re drawing from memory. A memory of five seconds ago, of ten seconds ago, of a minute ago. When you think about it, it’s all memory.” David Hockney, whose lovely “A Year in Normandie” encircles the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. Wa!

Another kid pick-up at Barbican, another Banksy homage to Basquiat, with a nod to the London Eye.

Cecily Brown at Serpentine South gallery.

Walked to pick up kid and happened to pass Banksy’s Basquiat tribute on an underpass at Barbican. Ah, London.

More WW2 spycraft at the just-opened Trent Park, where captured German generals were held and eavesdropped upon. The manor, built by the Sassoons of opium trade infamy, is still decorated with Qing vases, tables, and tapestries - a collision of colonial and Churchillian eras.

Great day at Bletchley Park learning about cracking the Enigma machine and Turing’s genius. An old Beijing’er was delighted at the pigeon memorial room - this chap landed with paratroopers behind the Germans on D-Day and flew 26 hours to England carrying a message of success.