The Blog


MESSIAH AT TEMPLE CHURCH

Last week was my birthday. I don’t set great store by this anniversary, even less so in the last decade following my mother’s death. In my opinion a birthday is chiefly a matter between oneself and one’s mother, marking the unique flesh-wrenching ord [...]

Shakespeare's The Tempest

When I’m asked for my favourite Shakespeare play, there’s no certainty what I might say but sometimes I name The Tempest. I have seen the play many times, most recently in London in this year's "Shakespeare in the Squares" season. The Tempest was t [...]

Lester

The death of Lester Piggott, who was easily the most magnificent 20th century jockey anywhere in the world, was announced yesterday. He was 13 times British champion (that is, he had the most winners in the season) but ultimately he had an internatio [...]

Walter Sickert in Camden Town

Tate Britain’s big survey of Walter Sickert (1860-1942) begins today. Although Sickert was German born, he is an emphatically significant and influential figure in British art history, his family having emigrated to England when he was eight. This bl [...]

ROBERT POLHILL BEVAN

In a third blog of what may turn out to be a series on Neglected British Artists (following my posts on Evelyn Dunbar and John Craxton) I turn to Robert Polhill Bevan (1865-1925). It would not be surprising if you’ve not heard of him although Bevan r [...]

Baksaria

I wrote this short poem many years ago about a poor northern Syrian village sitting in the foothills close to the Turkish border. I visited the place in 1971 and stayed there a short time. Today this area has been subject to incursions by the Turkish [...]

JOHN CRAXTON'S AEGEAN DREAMS

I've been reading reviews of a new biography of the English painter John Craxton by Ian Collins (John Craxton: A Life of Gifts, Yale University Press) and am looking forward to reading the book. It is high time this excellent artist got his due, as I [...]

MING DYNASTY ART

I suppose nearly everyone has heard of the Ming Dynasty of China but few in Europe and America would be able to say much about that pivotal period in Chinese history. Six years ago I wrote the following piece for the Financial Times about a marvellou [...]

OF TIME, AND STORIES

We are all interested in time, but writers are especially so.  I touched on it in a podcast I made a couple of years ago (posted on this blogsite as a "A Letter to myself aged 7" in October 2018). More recently I was asked for a contribution to the D [...]

10 LYRICS BY LORCA: 10 EVERY SONG

The last poem in my sequence of ten by Lorca is the simplest but in some ways the most disturbing of the lyrics. It springs its trap in the last line when the relationship between nouns apparently coupled in harmony — song/love, star/time — is sudden [...]
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