It being St David's Day, I thought I'd read some of RS Thomas's poems on Welshness and the Welsh. Reading quite a few of them, back to back, I was left feeling slightly embarrassed. Not because of the bitterness and misanthropy (directed at the Welsh as much as the English); ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Bill
Thomas Hardy, as a young man, was tasked with a job that was extraordinarily well matched to his morbidly repining tendencies. Whilst working as a trainee architect in London, he'd overseen the disinterment and removal of bodies from St Pancras Churchyard. A plaque commemorates his task: During the 1860s the Midland ... Read More...
Continuing our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... I took my youngest son to the National Gallery last week. As we stood before Stubbs's Whistlejacket I asked him what he thought: "It's a bit scary, Daddy". I could see his point. Stubbs's series of paintings depicting a horse being ... Read More...
I recently came across these engaging photos of Victorian Spitalfields. They have bundles of charm and interest. What struck me in particular (apart from the newshoarding announcing the sinking of the Titanic in the final one) was the number of children on the streets and how smartly dressed they seemed (though ... Read More...
Faulks on Fiction (Saturday, 9pm on BBC2 and you can catch up on the iPlayer) kicked off with a look at The Hero. Faulks introduced the programme by telling us he was going to focus on characters rather than the biographical details of authors, which apparently we've been paying far ... Read More...
I came a bit late to oysters: I was well into my twenties when I discovered I'd somehow lost a physical aversion to shellfish brought on by the catastrophic and surprisingly persistent consequences of a dodgy brochette de moule eaten on the harbour at Toulon as a boy. I've been trying ... Read More...
Continuing our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... For such an intimately and widely known painter it's amazing how the works of Vincent Van Gogh retain the ability to make you look again, even when seen on screen. Even his landscapes and still lifes remain gripping. In ... Read More...
Inhabitants of the inner city have to take their country pleasures where they find them. So my sons' going to a supervised birthday in Stoke Newington provided an opportunity for a stroll around the more bucolic parts of the district. The party was held at Pirates Playhouse, a many-storied soft-play centre ... Read More...
Yes, it's a highly entertaining trove of show-business anecdotes. Yes, it's a great tale of a boy made good (and bad), the son of America's first racially-integrated dentist - lauded in Harlem but nowhere else - who achieved Hollywood fame with all its trappings. Yes, it's the inside (and disputed) story of ... Read More...
Last Sunday night's Aurelio Zen mystery (three episodes on BBC1, Sunday 8pm), Vendetta, was remarkably coherent for the genre. The plots of TV thrillers rarely stack up, even in the ninety-minute-plus format spacious enough to accommodate a comprehensive effort. Even the first and most successful of this particular sub-genre, Morse - despite its ... Read More...
