Parkrunning

In Woody Allen’s 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters there’s a scene where Mickey, a despairing television writer trying to seek a meaning in life (played by Allen, inevitably) is walking through Central Park. In the middle of his existential crisis he looks at the joggers who pass him by. We hear his thoughts: Oh!Read More

2024 – the year in music

It’s time for my regular December round-up of favourite cultural highlights from the year, broken up into different topics, the first of which is music. Much of the music I listened, or saw live, over 2024 was old favourites, but there was some exploring among favoured genres: jazz, experimental, guitar music. Here, then, are someRead More

Beguiled

I discovered the poet Stevie Smith, as I suspect many others did, on 19 February 1980, when the film Stevie was first shown on British television – on BBC Two, at 21:00 to be precise. In my memory I hurried out to Whitstable’s Pirie & Cavender bookshop the following day and acquired a copy ofRead More

Visiting Van Gogh

For the last few months of his life, the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh lived in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise. He had been discharged from the clinic at Saint-Rémy where he had been treated for mental disorder, moving to Auvers to be near to local doctor Paul Gachet and his brother Theo, resident inRead More