Summertime, and the livin’ is easy Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high Oh, your daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin’ So hush little baby, don’ yo’ cry Every song has been borrowed. One welcomes originality and should be dismayed by formula, but a song must always have come from somewhere else. ARead More
Have you seen the pterodactyls in Citizen Kane? They are there, supposedly, in the background of the beach picnic scene towards the end of the film. As the camera tracks through the party guests, following Kane’s butler Raymond (played by Paul Stewart), just before we enter the Kanes’ tent, there in the background are silhouettesRead More
To south London and the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see an exhibition of woodcuts by abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler. It really is the ideal art gallery: essentially two parallel strips, one showing its admirable core collection of greats (Rembrandt, Murillo, Gainsborough, Poussin), the other for special exhibitions. Always something new to see, always something familiar,Read More
My favourite television programme of the moment is The Big Match Revisited on ITV4. This is a series of repeats of the revered ITV football highlights show, The Big Match (1968-1992), which at the time that I remember it best – the 1970s – was shown on Sunday afternoons. It was never quite as goodRead More
I have many favourite spots in the Lake District, but one stands out above the rest. I treasure Borrowdale, of course; the circuits to be made of Derwentwater, Loweswater and Buttermere; the gentle St John’s in the Vale; the secret lands to the north of Skiddaw (Back’o’Skiddaw); and beautiful Grisedale, which greets climbers descending fromRead More
It is good to be involved in a good thing. Last week, after years of development and the coming together of assorted initiatives, the British Library made one million pages from historic newspapers freely available online. Next year it will publish one million more, and million the year after that. At the same time rawRead More
The Game are ending. A strange summer Olympic Games, which many in Japan and elsewhere thought ought not to have taken place, given how Covid-19 is afflicting the people. Yet it did, and the moment it did so everything else disappeared, and all there was were people in contests against one another, participating in somethingRead More
So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum in painted quiet and concentration keeps pouring milk day after day from the pitcher to the bowl the World hasn’t earned the world’s end. ‘Vermeer’ Poetry is everywhere. It is in the view framed by my window. It is in the cup from which I have justRead More
It’s a mad world out there. For too long there has been no escape into galleries, those places where disorder should dissolve and the eye focus on things that make sense. Elusively at times, but sense nonetheless. Now, in Britain at least, and for the time being at least, Covid-19 restrictions are retreating, letting galleriesRead More
At last, after a year and a half at least, I got to see a day’s professional cricket. Having played some games for Members only, Kent County Cricket Club opened up its doors to ordinary folk such as myself. We had to book ahead, we were allocated seats, and the necessary constraints were a bitRead More