Month: December 2024

The Nativity

The Via San Gregorio Armeno is a narrow alley in Naples full of shops selling nativity scenes. When I went some years ago I thought it all rather kitsch, verging on vulgar. I have changed my mind.

Mind the Gap

Recently I have been reticent about my dealings on the stock market because there haven’t been any. My last transaction was to top up my ISA in April.

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Categorised as Business

The Reason Why

Why did Roy Jenkins decide on another major biography in his old age. (It was published when he was eighty-two, the year before he died.) John Campbell explains.

Welsh Rabbit

Churchill was appointed Home Secretary in 1910. Aged thirty-five he was the youngest since Robert Peel.

A Night at the Opera

“The book which the reader has before him at this moment is, from one end to the other, in its entirety and details … a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from… Continue reading A Night at the Opera

En Passant

You may pop into a church, if it’s not locked, to say a little prayer. I go in to look at architecture and monuments; always to a greater or lesser extent rewarding and I can say a little prayer when I get home.

Tarsila

Paris in the 1920s was a crucible in the heat of which Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism were forged by artists like André Lhote, Fernand Léger, and Albert Gleizes. There was a woman in another country and another continent who wanted to learn about these new styles.

Lamentation

Feeling a little under the weather I have postponed reading Sonia Purnell’s biography of Clementine Churchill and turned to lighter fare more suited to my mood.