Last in this series looking back on 2018 is the year in images. St Helena, Ireland, the Lake District, around Kent, working in London, and much reading. My pictures (bar one), my memories. Most of the photographs I take end up on my Flickr site, for anyone who might be interested (all under a CreativeRead More
2018 – the year on screen
Next in these reviews of the year is things seen on screen. Now that the boundaries between film, television and Netflix have blurred so utterly, it seems foolish to think of the various forms of screen entertainment or instruction as being separate from one another. We separate them only out of habit. Anyway, here areRead More
2018 – the year in music
Third in this series of reviews of the year, from my humble perspective, is music. While live music was only occasional, and then too often disappointing (I shall mention no names), recorded music was quite splendid. Spotify is one of the great cultural enablers of the age. Yes, the audio quality is sub-standard, and theRead More
2018 – the year in books
Next in these reviews of the year is the year in books. I read a lot in 2018, and it was a vintage year: for books published in 2018, for those I finally caught up on, and (best of all) all those unexpected surprises from times past. I’ve put the highlights into nine categories, withRead More
2018 – the year online
Yes, 2018 is winding its way, unapologetically, to the bitter and, and it is time for some reviews of the year. As in past years, I’m producing a series of posts over December listing some of the things cultural that appealed to me over the year. To kick things off, here’s the year online –Read More
Easy pieces
The 1970 film Five Easy Pieces is generally held to be among the best of the classic 70s period of Hollywood cinema. It tells of an oil rig worker, Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson), who comes from a privileged, classical music-playing family, from which he has tried to escape. He travels home when he learns thatRead More
Hick hop
We live in an age of the mashup. Everything can be blended with something else. Is this because technology (manipulation of digital files, sampling, file sharing) has opened up a way of thinking about the world; or have we reached a particular stage in our cultural development in which everything, being equal, becomes interchangeable, andRead More
The matchless Orinda
In the heart of the City of London, at the corner of Poultry and Queen Victoria Street, stands a striking modernist pink stone building. No. 1 Poultry Street is the youngest listed building in the country (it was granted grade II* status in 2016), but the site it occupies has a long history. Tucked aroundRead More
Film and the historian
Few arguments can be more engrossing to take up, yet with so little hope of resolution, than the relationship between history and film. It is almost as if one of the chief functions of film is to bring history into confusion. Actuality film – newsreels, newsfilms, documentaries, home movies – appears to capture moments ofRead More
Robot news
Xinhua, China’s state news agency, announced this week what was claimed to be the world’s first AI news anchor. It presented to a conference in Wuzhen two virtual anchors, each derived from human newsreaders working for Xinhua. There was a Chinese-speaking anchor, based on Qiu Hao, and an English-speaking anchor, based on Zhang Zhao. BothRead More