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In a Lonely Place

Normally I watch a film from my extensive library, rent it via Amazon, or watch one on Netflix more designed for the young viewer. Occasionally I am drawn by a film on television on one of the movie channels and this occasion was last week’s In a Lonely Place. I was influenced by a strong cast of [...]

September 7, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Reunion

The Reunion on Radio 4 is a much admired programme on the Rust and last week it featured and reunited those primarily involved in the May 1997 chess encounter between World Champion Gary Kasparov and a IBM computor called Deep Blue. Kasparov, who won 2-1, was contemptuous of the computer – [...]

August 30, 2022 // 0 Comments

adieu Lyndhurst House

I was saddened to hear of the closure of my prep school Lyndhurst House which I attended between 1960 and 67. It was one of those huge, rambling houses in Hampstead with teachers that reminded me in their eccentricity of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall.   Overseeing it all was a northern [...]

August 29, 2022 // 0 Comments

Aretha Franklin: Queen of Soul/Prom Concert

A tribute was paid at a Prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall to Aretha Franklin by vocalist Shelea backed by the Jules Backley Orchestra. It was broadcast live on Radio 3 and BBC 4 last night. The obvious difficulty to overcome is that  however good the singer paying the tribute – she is [...]

August 27, 2022 // 0 Comments

Fake or Fortune

The 10th edition of Fake or Fortune is back. Ostensibly a programme about whether an acquired painting might either be worth a fortune or, alternatively, a fake would not be the stuff of popularity but obviously it is. Fiona Bruce, who presents The Antique Road Show, adopts the same technique of [...]

August 26, 2022 // 0 Comments

Crazy for You/Chichester Festival Theatre

This exuberant production maintains the high levels of Chichester Festival Theatre which makes an annual trip to their musical an enjoyable event. Crazy for You has an unusual genesis as the musical – whilst reliant on George and Ira Gershwin’s songbook – was not written by them but [...]

August 25, 2022 // 0 Comments

A pair of sporting realities?

As football’s Premier League competition gets fully under way – already dominating the sporting media headlines day by day, never mind week by week – over the weekend I was left reflecting upon the current state of a couple of other sports whose fortunes are not quite so blessed … [...]

August 22, 2022 // 0 Comments

Pride and Fall

Stuff happens in life and sometimes it surprises you. I occasionally post a blog to this organ on the ongoing subject of my attempt to hold back the years by conducting a fitness campaign in my senior years. It’s no secret that I’ve have been doing it for a while now, as a result of which my [...]

August 20, 2022 // 0 Comments

Memories of South African teams

Travelling up by train, with incessant interruptions on the tannoy by the ‘onboard supervisor’ and noisy Spanish adolescents boarding at Gatwick, I blanked them all out by recalling my memories of watching South Africa in Test matches. My first would have been in 1965 at Lords against Peter [...]

August 18, 2022 // 0 Comments

Mercury Pictures Presents/Anthony Marra

I was disappointed by this book, which promised to be about a B-movie Hollywood studio in the late 1930s and early 1940s, a subject of great interest to me. In fact, but it was more about a film executive Maria Lagana, whose father – a Roman human rights lawyer – was exiled by [...]

August 17, 2022 // 0 Comments

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