I Did It Steinway

Last March in a post titled Wiggers you may remember that the Wigmore Hall was called the Bechstein Hall until it was seized under the 1916, Trading with the Enemy Amendment Act. However, the Steinway Hall that opened in 1875 is flourishing and I went there this week for a lunchtime recital.

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Categorised as Music

Admiral

For about seven years in the early 1990s I was a Name at Lloyd’s. It conferred privileges and obligations. Among the former, being able to use the Members’ Writing Room to sleep in at lunchtime. A tedious obligation was to write a cheque annually in my first few years to pay my losses.

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Categorised as Business

A Tale of Three Towers

The brutalist 1960s Economist tower is losing its eponymous tenant, The Economist, and being given an internal make-over. Externally it will look the same as it’s grade II* listed. It was a bold choice fifty years ago and attracted the opprobrium of many denizens of St James’s.

Welcome, Mr President

I cannot contain my irritation at the protests about President Trump being invited to come here on a State Visit. Like people who commit crime in multi-storey car parks – it’s wrong on so many levels.

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Categorised as Politics

Donny Osmond

After yesterday’s post about Eton it’s Winchester’s turn. I was at a dinner at my club last week at which entertainment was provided by close-harmony sextet, Cantores Episcopi. Two of them are still at Winchester and the others have left recently; at least three of them are in the picture.

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Categorised as Music

Eton Voices

When I heard that Tam Dalyell had died I remembered that he had been interviewed by Danny Danziger in Eton Voices.

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Categorised as Literature

Jackie

Why leave the comfort of your home to go and see a film that has a storyline you are familiar with? I didn’t see Sully about the ‘plane that crash landed without loss of life on the Hudson River in 2009. I have been to Jackie, although the story is even more familiar.

Book Reviews

You scan the book reviews? Some are plodding, dull recitals of the plot – actually this is good – saves reading the book; others are masterful.

Investment Themes

I have been reflecting on my criteria for investing my savings and how they have changed over the years. To begin with I was a pure stock picker, choosing companies on the advice of friends, relations and a stockbroker. I then had a eureka moment when I realised that it would be more rational to… Continue reading Investment Themes

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Categorised as Business

Two VCs

Next month a memorial stone will be laid at the Shepherd’s Bush war memorial on Shepherd’s Bush Green in memory of First World War recipient of the Victoria Cross and native of Hammersmith, L/Sgt Frederick Palmer.

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Categorised as History