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Jacques Emile Blanche

One of the interesting aspects of my work is to advise friends and clients on paintings. One friend buys through a well known gallery. It’s generally thought that this is an expensive way of building a collection. However it does have certain advantages in provenance and quality. You would be [...]

September 10, 2014 // 0 Comments

A typical television outing

Yesterday morning I watched Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne being interviewed on The Andrew Marr Show. My first comment is about his new hairstyle, allegedly an attempt by his PR and other advisers to shift his image somewhat from this traditional ‘arrogant toff who’s enjoying [...]

September 8, 2014 // 0 Comments

Murder on Air/ The Theatre Royal Brighton

Murder on Air is an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of  Agatha Christie radio plays on air. It does not really work. Once you get over the interest of the effects being created by someone in the corner you are left with actors walking up to their microphones and delivering the lines. This [...]

September 7, 2014 // 0 Comments

Look what I’ve found

Yesterday, through a combination of circumstances, my brother and I found ourselves at our father’s abode – he being away for the next fortnight – and decided to embark upon a review of the innumerable files, boxes of papers, photographs, memorabilia and sundry magazines, books and ephemera [...]

September 2, 2014 // 0 Comments

A talent to amuse

At home, kept usually somewhere close to my work desk, I possess a battered old Samsonite briefcase. In it I keep what might be termed my ‘vital belongings’, e.g. my passport, driving licence, cheque book and anything else, e.g. a stash of euros, a sentimentally-important old watch, innumerable [...]

August 29, 2014 // 0 Comments

Bill Naughton: prophesy realised

The name Bill Naughton  may not resonate with the modern reader till I explain that he was the author of Alfie. He was from the gritty northern  school of writers of the sixties typified by Keith Waterhouse, John  Braine and Alan Sillitoe who are largely unread these days . Bill Naughton was [...]

August 29, 2014 // 0 Comments

The literary value of letters

The other day I had dinner with a barrister friend who is extremely well read and the conversation turned to Arthur Quiller Couch, a Cambridge Professor of English and editor of the anthology of Oxford verse. Q, as he was known, was a resident of Fowey and a influence on the writing of Daphne Du [...]

August 20, 2014 // 0 Comments

Well I suppose it all makes sense

If someone didn’t invent the theory first at some point over the last 6,000 years – the period during which, I was once informed by someone who should know, human civilisation has existed – in my previous existence as a fictional blogger I came up with the concept that reality was in fact a [...]

August 16, 2014 // 0 Comments

Bad Timing (1980)

I have been invited to speak at the Third Man Museum in Vienna on Graham Greene’s Film World and this will be my first visit to the city. I had lunch with one of the most entertaining and informed contributors to my film lists, Michael Cole – whose daughter lives in Vienna – to [...]

August 16, 2014 // 0 Comments

The impossibility of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear

No doubt like many others beyond – shall we say – the first flush of youth, yesterday evening I tuned in to watch Jo Pavey’s progress and eventual triumph in the European Athletics Championships women’s 10,000 metres final. The mother-of-two, who will be celebrating her 41st birthday in a [...]

August 13, 2014 // 0 Comments

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