Just in

World Affairs

Sickert/A Life in Art – Walker Gallery

Yesterday I travelled up to Liverpool to view the Walter Sickert exhibition at the Walker Gallery. There are two misconceptions about Sickert – that he was quintessentially English and that he was our leading post-impressionist. In fact he was born in Munich in 1860 of Danish and Irish [...]

December 8, 2021 // 0 Comments

My golfing weekend

The new DP tour is in its South African swing. Because of the Omicron variant many non-South Africans took flight and next week’s event at Leopard Creek is cancelled. There was no coverage of the South Africa Nedbank Open until the final day yesterday and no reference to it on the BBC sport [...]

December 6, 2021 // 0 Comments

Standing up for what counts

Sometimes it occurs to me that, given the frequency with which contributors to this organ feel obliged to open their musings with an apology and/or ‘declaration of interest’ for being either an oldie and/or generally ‘out of touch’, our average reader might be forgiven for gaining the [...]

December 6, 2021 // 0 Comments

Valley of Tears

Last Friday I watched the final episode in the present series on More4. A further series featuring the Egyptian offensive in the southern  front in the Yom Kippur  is in production. I have written  before that films made by both sides in World War Two were motivated by propaganda and this is the [...]

December 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

The (no so) Good Life – a review

Yesterday I travelled down from London in order to attend a touring performance of a new stage version of the highly-popular BBC (Bob Larbey and John Esmonde-written) television comedy sit-com The Good Life (1975- 1978) at the Chichester Festival Theatre. In all honesty I was not expecting a great [...]

December 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

A bird in the hand is worth two in the Bush

Last night – upon a last-minute whim and with not a little anticipatory excitement – my wife and I went to the small-stage Minerva at the Chichester Festival Theatre for the last performance of three at the venue given by Sarah-Louise Young of her one-woman show conceived with Russell Lucas [...]

December 4, 2021 // 0 Comments

My art week

I have just finished Art of the Extreme 1905-1915 by Philip Hook the ex-Director of Impressionism and Modern Art at Sothebys. His background is sales. He writes well. He is on safer ground discussing the great collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov in Russia and the emerging super rich ones [...]

December 3, 2021 // 0 Comments

Not just a matter of self-identification

Many of those who contribute to this organ take pride in the Rust‘s long and healthy record of pointing out both the oddities and absurdities of modern 21st Century “woke”, politically-correct, “Let’s invent new groupings of supposedly disadvantaged put-upon minorities [...]

December 3, 2021 // 0 Comments

Happy Christmas, everyone!

One of the fascinating aspects of the ongoing saga of the Covid-19 pandemic – latest development the “discovery” of the Omicron variant believed by some to have first occurred in southern Africa, if not South Africa itself – is that the battalions of both the “No other way to deal with [...]

December 1, 2021 // 0 Comments

Boris Johnson, Judaism and politics

My niece sent me this Chanukah message from Boris Johnson – see here, courtesy of – TWITTER Like many including the Rust political columnists she cast Bojo as bumbling, lacking genuine conviction, chaotic, rackety, with an unusual personal life. However, even his sternest critics must [...]

November 30, 2021 // 0 Comments

1 85 86 87 88 89 150