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The funeral of Ken Howard

Yesterday I travelled up to London for the funeral of the painter Ken Howard. The service was at St Mary’s Church,The Boltons, and the burial in the cemetery between Brompton and Fulham Road. Organised religion occupies the key points in life: birth (the christening service), manhood confirmation [...]

October 4, 2022 // 0 Comments

The legend that is Marilyn Monroe

I do not like the word iconic but I cannot think of a better one to describe Marilyn Monroe. She was recently the subject of a podcast on Rest is History by historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. Better was the Discovering series in Sky Arts profiling her. In  her time – the [...]

October 1, 2022 // 0 Comments

Sensationalists: The Bad Girls And Boys Of British Art/BBC 2

The Sensationalists, broadcast last night on BBC2, is the story of the YBAs (young British artists) – a movement originating in Goldsmith’s College of Art – whose prime mover was Damien Hirst. They fulminated against the traditional values of the art world, epitomised by Cork Street [...]

September 28, 2022 // 0 Comments

Calling the shots/David Dein

David Dein is one of the most successful figures in football in the last 50 years and here he tells his story and his recipe for achievement. He acquired and subsequently lost a fortune in the sugar trade, went onto the Arsenal board where he formed – with Arsene Wenger – one of the [...]

September 27, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

I had this DVD of this 2018 Mike Powell film lying around in my to-be-watched pile for some time. I was persuaded to watch it as its star Lily James features in the Sky Mobile ad and I like her smile, vivacity and vitality. The film is set in occupied Guernsey. There a book club was formed and the [...]

September 22, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Queen’s last journey

Yesterday I joined hundreds of millions around the world watching television coverage of Her Majesty the late Queen’s funeral service despite having decided several times over the past ten days that this was close to the last thing I intended to do. I’m an atheist when it comes to God and, when [...]

September 20, 2022 // 0 Comments

Le Mepris (Contempt)/1962

Partly out of respect to the recently passed Jean Luc Godard – and partly as there was little else to do or watch on Sunday afternoon – I took from the French section of my DVD library his Le Mepris starring Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, Fritz Lang, Jack Palance and Georgia Moll. [...]

September 19, 2022 // 0 Comments

Reflections upon the death of HM The Queen

I suspect like many Rusters over the past week, I have taken the news of the Queen’s death last Thursday – and watched all the resulting consequences, including the carefully-rehearsed-down-to-the-last-detail administrative and ancient (and some not so ancient) preparations, traditions, [...]

September 15, 2022 // 0 Comments

Claude Chabrol and Jean Luc Godard

For me, the two directors that are truly Masters of Suspense are Claude Chabrol and Alfred Hitchcock. Chabrol, from the New Wave of the 1950s, was avowedly French whilst Hitchcock, a master of British realism, studied under Fritz Lang at the UFA studio, Britain and Hollywood. Yesterday I watched [...]

September 15, 2022 // 0 Comments

Ken Howard (1932-2022)

I was more than saddened to hear my old friend Ken Howard has passed away. A brilliant painter of light with an ebullient personality, Ken was the son of a Kilburn carpenter. He got his breakthrough as an artist covering ‘The Troubles’, commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, though not [...]

September 13, 2022 // 0 Comments

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