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Late Mozart and The Rest is History

One of my favourite presenters is Donald Macleod who on Radio 3 at midday presents The Great Composers.    Occasionally it will be a composer of whom I have not heard but, as often as not, I have. Last week he covered the late period of Mozart’s life. For me, Mozart is the greatest of them all [...]

December 25, 2021 // 0 Comments

The Great Train Robbery (2013 two part film)

Yesterday over lunch I discussed with a friend roughly my age the seismic events of out lifetime: the assassination of President Kennedy, the landing on the moon, the killing of John Lennon, the death of Princess Diana and the Great Train Robbery. The sheer audacity of the gang, who on August 8th [...]

December 24, 2021 // 0 Comments

Operation Finale

Operation Finale is a Netflix production based on the abduction and trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann in 1960. The first part – being the planning and kidnapping of Eichmann – was a largely accurate but the second part takes considerable dramatic licence with the facts. Eichmann was the [...]

December 23, 2021 // 0 Comments

Steven Spielberg at 75

In the week I watched Mark Kermode interview Steven Spielberg, whose birthday falls today. It’s in the nature of such things that, if you interview arguably the most celebrated film director of our lifetime, you do not ask too many aggressive questions. Although Spielberg was not given a rough [...]

December 18, 2021 // 0 Comments

Pushing the envelope

Many years ago – I reckon in the mid 1970s – Wales were leading the All Blacks when New Zealand lock Andy Haden was seemingly fouled in a line out. Wales were penalised and the All Blacks took a crucial late lead. Later Haden confessed that this was a rehearsed ploy. I tell the story as [...]

December 15, 2021 // 0 Comments

West Side Story (2021)

Not many directors would risk remaking such a celebrated musical on stage and screen as West Side Story but Steven Spielberg has the chutzpah so to do. Does he pull it off? Yes and no. Yes, he is brilliant film maker and sensibly sticks to  the original. No, because the original score and [...]

December 15, 2021 // 0 Comments

More viewings

My picture fest continued in London with 2 visits to the Royal Academy and a view of the pictures on view at the Richard Green Gallery. I visited the Summer Show at the RA. In trying to reposition themselves for a younger audience, standards have dropped and most of the pictures –  garish in [...]

December 12, 2021 // 0 Comments

Party time at Number 10

One of the more surprising aspects of the current snowstorm of crises surrounding the besieged regime of Boris Johnson is that anyone finds it surprising. From his teenage years onwards, almost everyone who ever came into close contact with the present incumbent of Number 10 had him marked down as [...]

December 12, 2021 // 0 Comments

Modern life (Part 37)

Completely by chance, the other day I found myself ruminating upon which was the exact moment at which I began “falling off the pace” of modern life. This was against a background in which, in casual conversations over past decades, I have long used 1985 at my answer to this question because [...]

December 11, 2021 // 0 Comments

The Courtauld Collection

In the week I saw the refurbished Courtauld Collection which by and large the art critics appreciated. I was underwhelmed. Matters were not helped as the taxi driver who took me there from Marylebone was one of those ‘miserable old gits’ who – when he was not stuck in a traffic jam when [...]

December 10, 2021 // 0 Comments

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