Just in

Arts

Fauda/4th series

My partner Joanna aptly calls is “Foul Up” as the Elite Israeli defence unit headed up by Dorian – once the bodyguard of Arnold Schwarzenegger – goes into its fourth series. They always seem to mess up. Audacity meets chaos (the actual translation of Fauda) which makes for good [...]

January 24, 2023 // 0 Comments

Gina Lollobrigida R.I.P

I was saddened to learn of the passing of La Lollo. Of the big three Italian post war stars – Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Gina Lollobrigida – she was my favourite. Sophia Loren, guided by her husband Carlo Ponte, had the bigger Hollywood career, Claudia Cardinale was the more [...]

January 18, 2023 // 0 Comments

The Tanner Report: Fulham 2 Chelsea 1

Fulham won the SW6 bragging rights but the story will be the demise of Chelsea and the future of Graham Potter –  not that Fulham, in 6th place, are now challenging for a Champions League spot. The turning point was the sending off of Joao Felix for an over-the-ball challenge on Kenny Tete. [...]

January 13, 2023 // 0 Comments

Jeff Beck – RIP

Time stops for nobody but sometimes a passing touches upon fond memories and thoughts. The overnight news that guitarist Jeff Beck, 78, had died suddenly after contracting bacterial meningitis has come as a considerable shock. In all forms of popular instrumental music – classical, jazz, [...]

January 12, 2023 // 0 Comments

Stars and spies/ Christopher Andrew and Julius Green

There is always the difficulty that any historical account will be so dense and detailed that the reader cannot easily absorb it. No such difficulty here as the authors in tracing the interrelationship between the arts and espionage always keep the narrative the right side of entertaining. They [...]

January 11, 2023 // 0 Comments

Stonehouse

Whilst I enjoyed this three-part series broadcast over 3 nights on ITV, there are two problems with this genre. Firstly, they require not much writing creativity as you already have a story with characters and secondly, how can you differentiate between what is fact and what is faction? Apparently [...]

January 5, 2023 // 0 Comments

Cleopatra (1963)

In a humorous campus novel by David Lodge a group of academics specialising in English literature debate the most important classic novel that they never read. One wins by confessing he has never read one word by Jane Austen. Last year at the San Sebastian film festival, over a fine dinner attended [...]

January 3, 2023 // 0 Comments

Adapting classic books to film

A post on whether books or films are the best way to appreciate World War Two generated an interesting discussion which I would like to extend to classic literature. Over the so-called festive period I saw film adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma and Charles Dickens Great Expectations. Emma starred [...]

December 29, 2022 // 0 Comments

Harlequins – a Tour d’Horizon

This is not my favourite time of the year – it reminds me of the lockdown with confusion as to what day it is as one blends inevitably into another. Add strikes and universal financial concerns and a war in Europe. Like many I take refuge in sport in general and Harlequins in particular. I am [...]

December 28, 2022 // 0 Comments

Reappraising Jane Austen

In a previous post I was rather negative about the Jane Austen novel Persuasion.   In last week ‘s edition of Radio 4’s In Our Time various academics discussed its importance and made many good points that I had missed on the characterisation, observation and depiction of Bath. Here is a link [...]

December 25, 2022 // 0 Comments

1 … 30 31 32 33 34 … 184

Copyright © 2026 The National Rust | Design by Premonition