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Symbolism in art

Recently I watched a programme called Decoding Turner in which a mechanical engineer and his wife advanced a theory that in Turner’s famous The Fighting Temeraire, on the prow of the vessel was concealed a picture of Napoleon. The art historian Andrew Graham Dixon peered at the picture and [...]

September 13, 2023 // 0 Comments

Social chess

I was both honoured and enthusiastic to be selected for the Reform Chess Club in the Hamilton Russell trophy competed for by the ‘Gentlemen’s’  clubs. Honoured as I have only recently joined the club and enthused by playing chess across the board rather then on the internet. The main [...]

September 7, 2023 // 0 Comments

Farleys House & Lee Miller

Sussex is well blessed with places of the arts to visit. I have visited and reviewed Charleston, the Bloomsbury outpost where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant painted and had a brief affaire, and Batemans – the home of Rudyard  Kipling at Alfreston. By bad luck my planned trip to Farley Farm [...]

August 11, 2023 // 0 Comments

Entertaining v Effective

The debate over entertaining versus winning performances is as old as the hills but has taken new life under the régime of Stokes and McCallum. There were real and genuine fears that Australia would be too good for England, but less so after Zak Crawley – one of England’s perceived [...]

June 17, 2023 // 0 Comments

A la Colthard/much sense from Tim Hayward

Tim Hayward is a restaurateur and the food critic of the Financial Times. In yesterday’s weekend edition – instead of reviewing a restaurant – he composed a much-needed piece on the expense of London restaurants, having paid during the week £200 per head at a not especially [...]

June 12, 2023 // 0 Comments

April in Spain/John Banville

John Banville is an Irish writer who has won the Booker Prize for The Sea and written murder mystery novels under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. This novel has a double narrator – psychopath hitman Terry Tice and retired Dublin pathologist John Quirke – and a double setting – [...]

May 9, 2023 // 0 Comments

Legends not Maketh Managers

There is a large sign at Stamford Bridge – ‘Welcome back Super Frank‘ – notwithstanding he has lost his first five games and was sacked from Chelsea. Lampard had early success at Derby largely because, through his Chelsea connections, he could get on loan youngsters like Mason [...]

April 20, 2023 // 0 Comments

Military Wives

On Saturday evening I settled down without much initial anticipation to Military Wives, directed by Peter Carraneo, whose most successful movie to date was The Full Monty. This film is of the same genre: a group of diverse, same sex, people decided to form a choir at an army barracks whilst their [...]

February 27, 2023 // 0 Comments

Motty R.I.P.

I cannot say Motty was a good friend but he was more than an acquaintance of mine. I do not know how many paying tribute to him actually knew him. The tributes did get one thing right: he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of football in an age where there was no internet resource. He kept rigorous [...]

February 24, 2023 // 0 Comments

Revival of Bill Naughton’s Spring and Port Wine

For personal reasons which I will divulge later I was so delighted to hear that Bill Naughton’s Spring and Port Wine is to be revived at the Octagon Theatre Bolton. Bill Naughton was of poor Irish stock in County Mayo and moved to Bolton where he bagged and delivered coal. His breakthrough as a [...]

February 11, 2023 // 0 Comments

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