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War and Remembrance

War and Remembrance is the follow up to Winds of War. John Gielgud is cast as the art historian Aaron Plaskow and Jane Seymour replaces Ali Magraw as his niece Natalie. Robert Morley comes in as the jovial British war correspondent Tugsbury whose daughter Pamela (Victoria Tennant) falls in love [...]

December 2, 2019 // 0 Comments

Clive James RIP

Yesterday my brother gave me a lift from the south coast back to my home. On the way I commented that we should remember the date Wednesday 27th November 2019 because one day in some far off Pub Trivia Quiz it was possible that the question might come up as to which three culturally-significant [...]

November 28, 2019 // 0 Comments

Rise and Kill First/ Ronen Bergman

Thi is an account of the targeted assassinations conducted by the Caesarea unit of the Mossad. The writer does not take a sympathetic stance and states their futility. Although the killings were sanctioned by the Prime Minister, the Mossad soon became a state within a state and though subject to [...]

November 22, 2019 // 0 Comments

Fidelio

In the music course at which I am an irregular attender we have been studying Beethoven. He only wrote one opera which is surprising as the other three major composers of the Viennese School – Haydn, Mozart and Schubert wrote many. He was not short of librettos and many music scholars are [...]

November 21, 2019 // 0 Comments

Preview of Modern British at Christie’s

Yesterday I attended a preview of an auction of Modern British art held by Christies. All the big names were there – L.S Lowry, Stanley Spencer, Ben Nicholson, Walter Sickert, Graham Sutherland – though their representative work was not of their highest quality. One of the factors in [...]

November 19, 2019 // 0 Comments

Robert Mitchum and Winds of War

The recent reference in Bernadette’s (Angell) negative review of World on Fire to Winds of War prompted me to acquire the 6 DVDs of the series and revisit the career of Robert Mitchum, one of my favourites of the leading Hollywood actors. Robert Mitchum was certainly not yer normal Hollywood [...]

November 17, 2019 // 0 Comments

World On Fire/ Winds of War

The last episode of World on Fire was a dreadful piece of TV drama. The series lost all credibility as on one hand it was painstaking in its period detail – but on the other, because of BBC diversity policy, a significant number of parts were unrealistically created and cast to provide ethnic [...]

November 12, 2019 // 0 Comments

2 1/2 sporting documentaries

Whilst grateful to Neil Rosen for his in-flight recommendation of Lost in Translation I was drawn to that section of movies on the plane titled “sports documentaries” and watched two and a half of those. The first was The Edge – the story behind the Revival of England cricket in 2007 [...]

November 10, 2019 // 0 Comments

Lost in Translation

The Rusters asked me to recommend an in-flight movie from the menu and I chose one of my favourite films set in Tokyo – Lost in Translation. It is the first film directed by Sofia Coppola and featured memorable performances by Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray. Bill Murray born in Chicago [...]

November 7, 2019 // 0 Comments

Japanese disaster – viewed from the sofa

So that’s it, then. Another World Cup – rugby’s this time – and “our boys” fall at the Final hurdle again. Global supremacy and immortality oh so near and yet also so far. But that’s how it should be, isn’t it? Wonder, vindication, elation and glory for one finalist – [...]

November 3, 2019 // 0 Comments

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