Well, it’s most definitely That Time Of Year again, as evidenced by the glitzy-to-laughable arrays of Christmas lights sprawled across high streets, and the impossibility of avoiding Little Drummer Boy and Calypso Carol even when doing your weekly food shop. Santa is polishing his sleigh as I type this –
This morning, as I slumped in bed trying to fend off the tail-end of my head cold, I was reading through assorted interesting articles that had caught my eye over the last few days. One of these was a piece from The Independent, first published in 2013, in which the
This week, I’ve mostly been thinking about virtuosos. As I was putting together my notes for a lecture on Paganini, Chopin and Liszt, and the transformation of the solo musician’s role in the first few decades of the nineteenth century, everything from repertoire choices and touring schedules to notions of
The last few weeks have been a time of many people saying even more loudly than usual that the humanities are important to our society. Following Nicky Morgan’s insistence that STEM subjects were the best choice for students who wanted to keep their job options as broad as possible, critics,
Have you noticed that almost everything we now refer to as ‘3D’ actually… isn’t? Clever phone screens, high-tech films and silly glasses, the latest computer games where you fling yourself around your living room to be projected into the action – they’re all terribly clever of course, but they’re not
On Thursday evening of this week, if I do say so myself, I did something rather brave. Here I am, shy little Brahmsian that I am (ok, well, not that shy, but still)… and I stood up in public, and talked about Shakespeare. This might not seem like an earth-shattering
One upsettingly warm evening this week (autumn has apparently not got the memo yet), as I was collapsed in front of the TV, I found myself watching a re-run of that wonderful magic and mystery show, Jonathan Creek. Faked suicides, walking through walls, missing paintings… I love this kind of
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about talking and writing, two things I do every day both for work and for pleasure. As I sat down to watch two very different, equally thought-provoking speeches – Tim Minchin’s speech to the students at the University of Western Australia, and Emma
Opera, Oxford, and online learning. Perhaps not the most likely combination of things for a post. But this week I’ve been thinking a lot about how important, complicated, uncomfortable, and utterly necessary it is to be in the room with certain things to really try to understand or think about
Last night, I went to see the musical Made in Dagenham at the Adelphi Theatre. I remembered the film very fondly, and if the songs turned out to be not all that memorable, the comic timing was superb (it’s worth it for Harold Wilson’s dance routine alone). Since I knew
