Category: Film, TV & Radio

Pallant House

Last weekend I went to Chichester for the first time. It is ridiculous how many cathedral cities I have not been to or not looked at properly. An excellent excuse for heading down to West Sussex is the Pallant House Gallery.

Heart to Heart

It’s 8.25 pm on Thursday 6th September 1962. You switch on the TV and all around Europe the same programme is being broadcast by the BBC (UK), RTE (Ireland), RTF (France), ORF (Austria), SRT (Sweden), NRK (Norway), RAI (Italy), NTS (Netherlands) and YLE (Finland) as part of a project called The Largest Theatre in the… Continue reading Heart to Heart

Home Life

Chapeau melon et bottes de cuir is, as you know, what The Avengers is called in France. Rather long-winded and goodness knows what it is called in Germany.

White Vin Man

  One of the pleasures of being in France is getting to know the region; its flora, fauna and vineyards. No sign of a hoopoe yet but plenty of vineyards.

Scandi-noir

A Scandi-noir TV series was recommended to me last week: Follow the Money. The second series has just finished so I am not an early adopter The forecast is for rain in London most of this week so, unseasonably, it may be an opportunity to get started on it.

Hit and Myth

Bookshops are piled high with copies of The Essex Serpent, a novel by  Sarah Perry. I read it at the end of last year and have some reservations.

Micawber

If I gave you a butterscotch early 1950s Fender Telecaster with a Gibson PAF humbucking pickup, what would you do with it? I might add, to make my theoretical gift more interesting, that it’s called Micawber.

Dolce Vita Confidential

The title of this new book by Shawn Levy continues “Fellini, Loren, Pucci, Paparazzi and the Swinging High Life of 1950s Rome”. La Dolce Vita, as you will not need reminding, is Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece.

All Change

Life throws up some strange juxtapositions or rather I have such an unfocused mind that I find myself doing different things at the same time.

I, Daniel Blake

The weather has been so miserable with a biting east wind and snow flurries that I went back to the cinema. What I saw did not cheer me up.