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Daphne Du Maurier

Recently I was speaking at a plenary session of a literary festival on Great Authors of the Twentieth Century. My co-speaker, a literary academic from Corpus Christi College Cambridge, advocated James Joyce’s Ulysses as the game changer of the century and rather pooh-poohed my choice of Daphne du [...]

October 22, 2019 // 0 Comments

Aspects of the RWC quarters

For all the prowess of England, the All Blacks and South Africa – or maybe better because of it – the only really competitive game yesterday was Wales’ narrow and undeserved victory over France. Manchester United v Liverpool did not live up to hype. My strategy was to follow the build [...]

October 21, 2019 // 0 Comments

The digital age ….ugh

A common beef of us oldies and on the Rust is coping with the digital age. I suffered yesterday. First up, my bank credit card was cancelled for no given reason as there was an “ issue”. This means I will have to contact all those who use it for renewal but will doubtless miss some company who [...]

October 19, 2019 // 0 Comments

Spitfire

I am a person of ritual and routine. I like to do the Telegraph crossword at 6 pm with a glass of malt whisky. At 8.00 pm before retiring I like to watch the TV for an hour, the problem is that none of the staple diet of bake-offs, ballroom dancing or celebrities doing whatever appeal. So I build [...]

October 18, 2019 // 0 Comments

Strange new and remembered times

For those readers who may have missed it – particularly female ones – I begin my post today by providing a link to a piece by Meghan Daum that appears today upon the website of The Guardian in case it may be of interest. It is a thought-provoking opinion piece from the perspective of a [...]

October 17, 2019 // 0 Comments

Rigoletto/ Glyndebourne on Tour

Rule One of the New York Stock Exchange: “Know your client. ” It’s something the director of Rigoletto Christiane Lutz might have taken on board. The audience at Glyndebourne is elderly. I saw few there last night under 65. They expect a traditional Rigoletto but this is not what they [...]

October 15, 2019 // 0 Comments

The World on Fire

We are now into the third episode. Thank goodness the weakest element of the narrative, Paris has been dropped. The plot is heading forward on all fronts. The brother of Lois the singer has joined the navy and is chasing down on HMS Exeter the pocket battleship the Graf Spee into the River Plate. [...]

October 14, 2019 // 0 Comments

Headlong/Michael Frayn

Michael Frayn’s novel Headlong operates on 2 levels. The first is a fiction in which Martin, a philosopher married to Kate an art historian, chances upon a painting of his neighbour in the country which he strongly believes to be a missing Brueghel. It is worth millions and he starts a [...]

October 13, 2019 // 0 Comments

World on Fire/ Episode 2

With one major reservation I am hooked on this series, morphing from shall-I-watch-it to what-will-happen next? There are four plot lines in Warsaw, Berlin England and Paris and my major reservation is that Warsaw’s is much the most gripping and the Paris one rather pedestrian. The Warsaw section [...]

October 9, 2019 // 0 Comments

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