Few railway stations can offer a grander view of the town that they serve than Margate. As you step out of the station, the full sweep of the bay opens up before you: the low waves ebbing over flat sands, a great line of amusement parlours, shops and hotels following the leftward curve of theRead More
Why have I expended all this effort in writing when I could more easily communicate with images? I’ve been looking at the statistics for the photographs and other images that I have on Flickr, and collectively they have generated 233,869 views over a period of six-and-a-half years. That seems quite a substantial number to me.Read More
‘The Concept of News’ was the title of a symposium organised by The Newsreel Network and held over 20-21 May at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen. The Newsreel Network is a collection of scholars interested in newsreel research, convened by the University of Lund in Sweden, newsreels being a common feature of cinema programmesRead More
King Charles III is one of the best modern plays I have seen. I’ve certainly not seen enough modern plays to make an authoritative judgement as to its quality, but I found play and production – running at London’s Almeida Theatre until the end of May 2014 – outstanding. The play is by Mike Bartlett,Read More
I’m back from a few days in Paris, where (amongst other things) I visited two of the city’s cemeteries. I hadn’t planned to visit cemeteries on this short break, but the page on Père Lachaise in the city guide fell open in front of me and told me I should go, and then Montparnasse cemeteryRead More
I didn’t know what to call this post, but whenever I’ve been through some tumultuous period and come out the other side, the exultant title of D.H. Lawrence’s 1917 book of poems Look! We Have Come Through! somehow springs to mind, so it’ll do. April has been the busiest month, and it has meant thatRead More
The news that the entire British Pathé newsreel archive has been published on YouTube has made a huge impact. There have been news broadcasts, web news and newspaper reports, and the story has spread widely across social media, which is very much was British Pathé wanted. 85,000 videos, or 3,500 hours of film ranging fromRead More
John Marston’s play The Malcontent (c.1603) is currently being performed at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (part of the Globe Theatre complex) in London. As was the case in the 1600s, the play is being performed by children in an indoor theatre. Marston’s play was first acted at the Blackfriars theatre by the Children of theRead More
Taming the News Beast was the striking title of a seminar held on April 1st by ISKO UK, the British branch of the International Society for Knowledge Organization. Subtitled “finding context and value is text and data” its aim was to explore the ways in which we can control the explosion of news information dataRead More
There are many books on news and current affairs, but most are aimed at an academic or professional audiences. There has been a notable lack in the past few years of books aimed at a general readership on news and news history. Recently, however, three significant titles have appeared which each touch on the fundamentalRead More