Yesterday, celebrating the completion of the final edit of my about to be published novel, I spent the day at the Mosaic Rooms, an art gallery in Kensington, London. Being a Monday, it was closed to the public so a…
It was the weekend when I actually believed that my novel really is going to be published and that it is going to be happening almost immediately now. Well, actually 31st October but that’s no time away. The text has…
Modest Mussorsky, 1881, by Ilya Repin Listening to the music of Modest Mussorgsky this week, the extraordinary portrait of the composer painted just days before his death has never been far from my mind. I decided to look at some…
Modest Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881) I have to warn you that today’s blog is a tragic tale. Yesterday I wrote Mussorgsky’s great unfinished opera Khovanschina and one of the composer’s finest interpreters, the Ukrainian bass, Mark Reizen. It is a…
Ferguson 454 Wireless Radio I’m feeling nostalgic this morning remembering those wireless days, or if you don’t know what I mean, old fashioned radios. The temperature has dropped overnight here in Lewes, south-east England. After unseasonably mild and muggy weather,…
Watching (and listening to) President Obama’s press conference yesterday, I was amazed and enlightened. For us simple Brits it seems incredible that the mighty nation that is the United States could risk defaulting on its debts just because the two…
Yehudi Menuhin filming Menuhin’s Children, September 1998 Yesterday I wrote about my Fibonacci elegy poem about the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin and how it will be published, probably next March, by Every Day Poets. A few people asked me about…
Yehudi and Me I heard over the weekend that my Fibonacci elegy poem, Yehudi Menuhin, is to be published by Every Day Poets – it will probably come out next March on the fifteenth anniversary of the great violinist’s death.…
We’ve been having some rather grey days here in Lewes, UK. I’m not depressed by it when there’s an added dash of gold. The golden sun returned unmasked on Sunday and shone gloriously on my Golden Celebration rose. ——————————————————————————————————————– STEPHEN…
Ed Miliband with his father, Ralph Miliband I hate the Daily Mail – for a long time I’ve hated the way it has spread poisonous anxieties to its readers to promote its own anti-liberal agenda and, naturally, to sell newspapers.…