Just in

Arts

The Night Manager

Rarely has a series of drama attracted such favourable critical acclaim and popularity from the viewing public as The Night Manager. At a recent Sunday lunch I attended it even was discussed before Brexit. A lady friend of mine, an academic poet who never watches television confessed to being [...]

March 29, 2016 // 0 Comments

The Honoured Society/Norman Lewis

There is a certain and deliberate irony in the title of this Norman Lewis work on the Sicilan Mafia as the distinguished travel writer clearly regards the Sicilan mafia as dishonourable. His observation of them runs from 1943 to 1962. In 1943 the Allies invaded Sicily. The Canadian and British [...]

March 26, 2016 // 0 Comments

Because it’s there (not because it pays)

Sometimes, when you’re casting around for something to blog about, you can receive a helping hand from a traditional media outlet or vehicle. Today this happened for me when I came upon a blog by Ros Barber that appears today upon the website of The Guardian, giving her opinion on the experience [...]

March 22, 2016 // 0 Comments

Just another ‘Day In The Life’ …

Much of my yesterday was spent watching, listening and reading in the media of the tributes and analysis of the career and influence of music producer Sir George Martin who had just died aged 90. What struck me in reviewing the media outpourings and my own recollections and judgement, was the [...]

March 10, 2016 // 0 Comments

The Noise of Time/ Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes does not so much wear his scholarship lightly as hit you over the head with it. I only recently finished his essays on art.  Here he writes in the same didactic tone on the life of Dmitri Shostakovich.  This is not to condemn the book. It is especially good on the fate of the [...]

March 10, 2016 // 0 Comments

Well somebody’s gotta do it …

I don’t know why, particularly – but this piece by Adam Sherwin, spotted today on the website of The Independent, caught my eye today and I thought I’d share it with fellow Rust readers as we chart the passage of time both in the world and our own personal lives: See here – [...]

March 9, 2016 // 0 Comments

You know the ‘mushroom’ theory, right?

Sounding like a stuck record is a tough state to be in, both for me as an individual and (I’m assuming) to those that I keep inflicting upon like my regular readers. I therefore apologise, even if I have to acknowledge my special place in the firmament of human existence as the leading 21st [...]

March 7, 2016 // 0 Comments

Look Back in Wonder

Yesterday on the BBC 4 Arts Programme Front Row I heard a clip of Look Back in Anger of Jimmy Porter fulminating against his upper class wife. The play will be running at the same theatre in Derby where its writer John Osborne once acted. It seemed very dated. This is ironic as critic Kenneth Tynan [...]

March 4, 2016 // 0 Comments

Churchill’s Secret

ITV rolled out its mega Sunday Drama Churchill’s Secret last night but I cannot say I gave it the victory sign. A programme about a stroke sufferer albeit Winston Churchill is always going to struggle so it was starting at a disadvantage. As something of an aficionado of Churchill, I could [...]

February 29, 2016 // 0 Comments

Day Two

Yesterday I joined the group as a lecturer alongside Martin Gayford. I had one eye on time in view of Tottenham v Fioretina. Signor Roberto as I call Bob Tickler told me to watch out for a silver  haired bouffant type who fancied himself as an Michelangelo expert. “Stef, he warned [...]

February 26, 2016 // 0 Comments

1 … 144 145 146 147 148 … 184

Copyright © 2026 The National Rust | Design by Premonition