Read the two sets of lyrics below and decide whether you are with me or not. EXHIBIT ONE Red Cadillac and a black mustacheRings on my fingers that sparkle and flashTell me, what’s next? What shall we do?Half my soul, baby, belongs to youOh, while I cannot frolic with all the young dudesI contain multitudes …
Continue reading “They gave the Nobel Prize to the wrong troubadour from the 1960s”
On the face of it, Rishi Sunak looks like the big loser from the Cummings affair over the past few days. He has fluffed the opportunity of a lifetime to use his untouchable position to display serious political weight and to position himself a long way ahead of other contenders in the next Tory leadership …
Continue reading “Sunak: golden opportunity missed or playing the long game?”
We took the privileged middle class route of leaving London in early March for our house here on the Sussex coast between Rye and Hastings. Thinly justified by distancing our older selves from two millennials then sharing the house and braving the tube to work in central London. With just sheep for company in the …
South Korea and Germany feature prominently as the standout performances by medical authorities through the coronavirus pandemic. For good reasons since South Korea nipped a terrifying early spike in cases at the end of February (yes, two months ago) in the bud with its rigorous testing and isolating policy. So much so that its deaths …
Almost 50 years ago I was briefly living and working in Leeds during the hey day of its then (almost) all conquering football team. I went one evening to a production of Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Leeds Playhouse. To call that an avant-garde play for its time would be like saying that …
For me, the greatest compensating feature of the past month has been learning how to use online learning platforms to deliver lectures and tutorials to students. I got through six online lectures during the last two weeks of the spring term and have a couple more to undertake later this month. As a confirmed technophobe …
Sure, sure, it is the classic last resort of the aging armchair critic to bemoan the decline in standards of public discourse and media reporting. And I have entered that septuagenarian closing chapter where I compensate for my lack of a serious immediate priorities (such as actually meeting work deadlines) with these little outbursts of …
I have tried so far to construct balanced blogs which add insight into an exhibition or a play or a moral dilemma. The kind of analysis which you would expect from “a very reasonable man”. This much briefer one will be closer to Grumpy from Clapham venting his fury at the radio. Hence the title. …
Let me start with a simple, clear and unequivocal statement. As his swansong at the Almeida, Robert Icke has delivered a first class modern production of a timeless classic with an outstanding lead performance from Juliet Stevenson. Try to see it if you can although lightning fast fingers on the internet button at 1.00 pm …
Continue reading “The Doctor: a play on medical ethics or a grumpy diatribe?”
View from the Clapham Omnibus