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Arts

The insularity of English football

Recently I followed a discussion on Gareth Southgate’s selected squad for the forthcoming Euros presented on Radio 5  by Steve Grossman. For over an hour a panel of so-called experts – including Karen Carney who took the safe option of agreeing with everyone else, possibly in order to [...]

May 27, 2021 // 0 Comments

A convivial lunch & a clearance

Monday  took place my regular Xmas lunch with two brothers took place in English’s. This lunch first began in the late 1970s and only Covid prevented its annual occurrence last year. Since its inception two of us have retired and two divorced and remarried, whilst I remain outside the conjugal [...]

May 26, 2021 // 0 Comments

My art week

Three matters to report this week. The first was the podcast of Waldemar Janusczak and Bendor Grosvenor’s World of Art. I have already mentioned that Waldemar Janusczak’s style of presentation grates and there is a constant leitmotiv of class friction between the down to earth Janusczak and the [...]

May 26, 2021 // 0 Comments

Who Killed Lamb & Danger Man

Neil Rosen kindly lent me the DVD of Hell Drivers.  On the second DVD were featured two programmes that showcased the acting talents of its two leads – Stanley Baker and Patrick McGoohan. Who Killed Lamb? was a Yorkshire TV production play from back in the days when ITV produced some [...]

May 22, 2021 // 0 Comments

Is ‘protest art’ art?

I certainly do not always agree with art critic Waldemar Janusczak, or the florid manner in which he expresses his views, but he is spot on in attacking the politicisation of the Turner Prize. On his website he writes: “The use of the Turner as a propaganda vehicle for ultra Londony evening [...]

May 18, 2021 // 0 Comments

Hell Drivers (1957)

I came across this film listening to Doten Adenbayoh’s Up All Night radio programme. A film buff called in to recommend this film which I duly acquired on DVD. It is the story of short-haul road haulage drivers. Stanley Baker (Tom), lately out of prison, takes a job in a corrupt road haulage [...]

May 17, 2021 // 0 Comments

The Rock Pool (Cyril Connolly) and The Shot (Philip Kerr)

I am an enthusiast and when I review a book it’s generally  in the hope that it will be read. However in the above two I have no such aspirations. I must have read The Rock Pool at least 40 years ago when I had a greater interest in writers of the 1930s. It struck me as a louche account of [...]

May 15, 2021 // 0 Comments

What’s worth keeping (and what isn’t)

In recent times I’ve had the opportunity to re-evaluate my past personal history with some fascinating results. Nearly thirty years ago now my first wife died of cancer and – for a change of scenery – my kids, then quite young, and I moved some seven miles as the crow flies to a new home in [...]

May 9, 2021 // 0 Comments

An Elephant in Rome & my art week

I had no idea that TV chef and pasta sauce entrepreneur Loyd Grossman was an erudite art historian who had studied art at Magdalene College Cambridge. He has written a well-researched account of the baroque sculptor and painter Bernini whose works have so enhanced Rome. Bernini was patronised by [...]

May 7, 2021 // 0 Comments

Great Lives/Harry Hopkins

Radio 4’s Great Lives can can be very variable. As often as not the subject is some female trail-blazer of whom I have never heard. Yesterday Matthew Parris presented an episode on Harry Hopkins advocated by Jonathan Dimbleby a respected historian of World War Two. Harry Hopkins was the [...]

May 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

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