T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece is 100 years old this year and I am preparing to read the complete poem online in the virtual world known as Secondlife to mark the centenary of its publication. Yes, virtual worlds really do support writers…
Arts ancient and modern, some sight-seeing and two great writers’ beds I’ve been looking through the photographs of my two trips to Paris, in June and July 2025 and then again in February this year, as I bring my eight…
The Fondation Louis Vuitton by Frank Gehry with David Hockney and Gerhard Richter – three old masters under one roof. In 2025 and then again in 2026, I visited the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris’ sensational Frank Gehry designed art gallery…
1. Rigoletto I have been an enthusiast for opera for all of my adult life and even a bit longer as my first opera was as a schoolboy (it was Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at Glyndebourne in the UK). It was…
Cathédrale Notre-Dame In June 2025, I was lucky enough to get tickets for one of the first concerts to be held in the recently reopened cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. I thought going to a concert might be the…
In my previous blog I said had avoided going to Montmartre in the past because of the crowds but decided to go along anyway this time on my recent trips to Paris. This is also the reason why last year…
I have visited Paris more than a few times in my life, mostly on short trips for work, in my television days, but there were two places, maybe the most famous ones, where I never quite brought myself to go.…
I have stayed in Paris twice in the last year, in May 2025 and then in February 2026, and took the same apartment for both visits. There is something special in visiting and then revisiting familiar places in other countries.…
In May 2025, I spent two weeks in Paris – I’d been there many times before, mostly for work, but never for such an extended period. I wanted to allow it to get under my skin. I think it worked…
I went to Nigerian Modernism, Art and Independence, the impressive exhibition at London’s Tate Modern last week, 19th March. There are a lot of art works here, a vibrant mix of paintings, tapestries, ceramics and sculpture from the 1940s until…
I spent two weeks in the Eternal City of Rome this January. The first part is here I’ve been here on numerous occasions over the years, either for work or for passing visits en route to elsewhere. I’d been…