Ironmongery Returns

Today we start a new occasional series on shopping, shops and shopkeeping. I have unreasonably sentimental feelings about ironmongery. Or at least I thought they were unreasonable. As kids in South Wales my brother and I used to collect small, pearl-handled penknives, the sort you might use to scrape out a pipe ... Read More...

Warlock’s Maori Factotum

It is a little known fact that the composer Peter Warlock once shared a house with a Maori who conceived an opera based on Tristam Shandy and subsisted chiefly on stout... I have been reading Peter Warlock : The Life Of Philip Heseltine by Barry Smith. Dabblers will be familiar with ... Read More...

Wagner and the Contraption

The unexpected pleasures of the technical glitch. 2013 is Richard Wagner’s bicentenary, and I notice there will be a concert performances of several of his operas at the Proms in July, including a complete Ring cycle. I’ve seen concert performances of Wagner before and they are exhilarating, effective, moving, what you will; ... Read More...

Real Real Gone

Part 2 of Brit's look at the influences on Van Morrison features the Godfather of Soul, the King of Rock 'n Soul and some serious sweating... Few artists, as I noted a few months ago, have been more influential than Van Morrison, and few have been as explicit about their own ... Read More...