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Music Review: Hackney Diamonds (the Rolling Stones)

The Rolling Stones have now been together for sixty years – of the “originals” (Brian Jones) died aged 27 in 1969 and another (Charlie Watts) died in 2021 aged 80. On 26th July Mick Jagger turned 80, a milestone that Keith Richard will also pass in December if he makes it that far; the other [...]

September 7, 2023 // 0 Comments

Review: The Sound Of Music (Chichester Festival Theatre)

Last weekend – somewhat out of the blue – I received an invitation to attend the penultimate evening performance of the Chichester Festival Theatre’s production of Rogers & Hammerstein’s musical The Sound of Music and was only too happy to accept. There can scarcely be a Ruster unaware [...]

September 6, 2023 // 0 Comments

A Day at the Races

Yesterday I was invited to the afternoon meeting at Brighton Races. Brighton as a sporting city punches above its weight with a Premiership football team and a cricket side that produced the likes of Ted Dexter, Jim Parks, John Snow and more recently Mushtaq Ahmed, Murray Goodwin, Matt Prior, [...]

September 5, 2023 // 0 Comments

Classic Cinema/The Third Man /Sky Arts

This was a tribute to the recently passed film critic Derek Malcolm – a keen admirer of Carol Reed’s 1949 classic. For most cinema buffs this would be high on the list of their favourite films, justifying the praise that – however many times you have seen it – you start watching [...]

September 2, 2023 // 0 Comments

A la Colthard/Reform club

Recently Bob Tickler held a dinner at the Reform Club for me, his p/a Polly and her best friend Grania. Bob is most excited about joining the Reform Club. Although he was once  a member of the adjoining RAC, he does not regard himself as a conventional St James club man. The Reform with its [...]

August 25, 2023 // 0 Comments

A la Colthard/foodie travelogues

Cooking and television have a productive relationship. Before Big Brother, Peter Bazalgette made his name and the start of his fame and fortune with Ready Steady Chef. This launched the celebrity chefs like Pierre Marco White , Jamie Oliver and Keith Floyd. The phase has now moved onto travelogues [...]

August 16, 2023 // 0 Comments

Barbie: a sort of a movie review

In keeping with the traditions of this great organ – one of which is that any contributor can write upon any subject – I feel it incumbent upon me to begin today’s offering with the twin admissions that personally I am neither the Rust’s film correspondent, a title which rightly [...]

August 10, 2023 // 0 Comments

Seven Days in North Africa

About a month ago – after a frenetic period of activity and incoming commitments, several of them originally unplanned and/or ‘imposed’ at very short notice by third parties both family and otherwise – She Who Must Be Obeyed and your author decided that we were desirous of “stepping [...]

July 31, 2023 // 0 Comments

Thunderclap & The Man who made Vermeers

Thunderclap by Observer Art Critic Laura Cumming is the story of the life and death of Dutch 17th century artist Carel Fabritius. In fact much more is known about his death in 1654 when his house collapsed after a gunpowder  depot explosion in Delft. As for his life, he was born in the village of [...]

July 25, 2023 // 0 Comments

After Impressionism

Yesterday I went to the After Impressionism exhibition at the National Gallery and was underwhelmed. Perhaps this was caused by waiting in the rain in the entrance queue; or the fact that I knew virtually every picture so the impact was lost; perhaps I could not see for whom the exhibition had been [...]

July 15, 2023 // 0 Comments

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