I’ve written before about my website Picturegoing, which is progressively gathering evidence of people viewing pictures. It started off by covering cinemagoing, as recorded in diaries, oral histories, memoirs, news reports, novels, poems. pictures and so on – any form of evidence that records directly, or indirectly, the personal experience of viewing pictures. But whatRead More
I went to the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury at the weekend; my first visit inside the city’s new theatre. There has long been a Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury – I first went there in the early 1970s to see an Agatha Christie play, when the theatre was on St Margaret’s Street. Then it was rebuiltRead More
Well, the comic book and me, just us, we caught the bus The poor little chauffeur, though, she was back in bed On the very next day with a nose full of pus Yea! Heavy and a bottle of bread! I’ve been listening to The Basement Tapes Complete, the latest release in the Bob DylanRead More
There is a quaint timber-framed building a couple of doors down from where I live in Rochester High Street. It was, until recently, the incongruous home of an alternative therapies centre entitled Rainbow Healing. It offered tarot card readings, Reiki workshops, holistic health solutions, and lots of candles. It was one of a number ofRead More
I like a good list. I like a well-constructed and clear database that is, when all is said and done, the optimal expression of an extensive list. I’ve produced a lot of lists in my time, personally and professionally, and I’ve had a hand in producing a number of databases that have aimed to helpRead More
I recently bought a poetry pamphlet dating from 1908, from the extraordinary treasure trove that is NeverSeen Books & Curios. It’s an eight-page booklet, published in Hull, number 15 in a series issued by George Gresswell, ‘The Engine-driver Poet’, more of whom below. There are five poems, two of them by Bingley Wilson, three byRead More
I don’t feel easy writing about classical music. It’s something that I greatly enjoy listening to, and something with which I am broadly familiar, but I lack the critical understanding of such fine matters as harmony, counterpoint, sonata form and so on. My understanding is impressionistic and probably sentimental. Give me a piece of writing,Read More
Until now, I’d not been to one of the live video broadcasts into cinemas of theatre productions which have spread so rapidly since the New York Metropolitan Opera introduced them in late 2006. In part this was me being slow off the mark, in part it was apprehension at what I was buying into. Simply,Read More
A recent post by John Wyver on his very fine Illuminations blog covered the history of Mobilux, a system for projecting abstract images onto a screen which was used for some television broadcasts in 1950s. It’s a fascinating insight into the ways in which television was viewed, and used as a vehicle for experimentation, inRead More
Deep indeed is our need of round numbers. We count the past in intervals of ten, fifty or a hundred years, making sure that we are standing in the right place and composed of the right thoughts when the time comes round to commemorate the historically momentous. Anniversaries and centenaries seem always to be uponRead More