Category: Poetry

Divan

Last week Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra were back at the Proms. How on earth did the orchestra get such a silly name? The Penguin Cafe Orchestra is a silly name too.

Published
Categorised as Music, Poetry

Robert Herrick

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen is PG Wodehouse’s last complete novel, published in 1974, a year before he died aged ninety-three. At an age when his creative juices might be expected to dry up, it is right up to his usual high standard. If you want to know why Bertie Wooster is mistaken for arch-criminal Alpine Joe… Continue reading Robert Herrick

Betjeman

I have been trying to buy Lord Mount Prospect by John Betjeman and these days you can get anything … at a price.

Published
Categorised as Poetry

The World of Yesterday

I bought The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig on the recommendation of an erudite friend. “One of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century” says David Hare. John Banville adds ” a marvellous recapturing of a Europe that Hitler and his thugs destroyed”.

Educating Christopher

Now that the clocks have gone back the winter film-on-a-sofa season is officially open. I rummaged around and realise that I have far too many  DVDs.

What’s Cooking?

People who are desperate to make some sort of conversation with me sometimes ask how I think up something to write about every day. Well, I have a fall-back in Robert Redfern-West, an erudite and hugely amusing reader in California (?) who sends me super-stimulating (intellectually) e mails and posts super-duper comments – latest yesterday.

A Hit, a Very Palpable Hit

Last year the first day at Queen’s was a wash-out (Anyone for Tennis?). It’s a different story this year with weather so warm that I dispensed with a tie and even considered shedding my coat.

Diaries

Since last November George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis have been my companions at bedtime but all good things come to an end and I have come to the end of their letters. There are more than six hundred and they span some six years.

The Fox’s Prophecy

  Charles Moore in his Spectator column this week recalls listening to Tristan Voorspuy recite The Fox’s Prophecy when he went on safari with him in Kenya. As you will have read, Tristan Voorspuy was murdered on his farm in Kenya and Charles Moore remembers him with affection.

Ego

I mentioned at the beginning of last month diarist and theatre critic, James Agate (Men of Letters). I have the second volume of his diaries, Ego 2, but Lyttleton, Hart-Davis and Leigh Fermor have stopped me reading it.