(originally written June 2012) Shostakovich 10 A wonderful performance of Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony by the CBSO under the mesmerising Andris Nelsons. Shostakovich is a site of ideological battle, his music fiercely contested and debated, with every sort of hidden meaning detected which might make it acceptable to anti-communist listeners. At the root of this is …
Category: books
Who Writes Our History?
Sarah Helm's If This is A Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women is the most important and best history book I have read in a long while. It is a gruelling read full of horror and evil, redeemed in part by extraordinary acts of courage, compassion, heroism, solidarity and generosity. But it would be foolish …
Bits and Pieces – June 2012
Shostakovich 10 A wonderful performance of Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony by the CBSO under the mesmerising Andris Nelsons. Shostakovich is a site of ideological battle, his music fiercely contested and debated, with every sort of hidden meaning detected which might make it acceptable to anti-communist listeners. At the root of this is a problem that conventional …
A Collation of Links
This entry is somewhat remarkable in that consists solely of links to other people’s blog entries with almost no discussion or intervention. I do most heartily commend all of the pieces, but admit that it also functions as an easy historical record for me of a period in which I have not blogged. I suppose …
Crabbe – Tale 15: Advice or, The Squire and The Priest
As we shall see, there is a sense in which this Tale follows on directly from Tale 14 - it too has as a central concern the effects upon a young man of having his conscience awakened. This raises again the question of the way in which certain Tales are grouped and the order in …
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Crabbe – Tale 14: The Struggles of Conscience
The Struggles of Conscience forms one of that subset of The Tales concerned with the rise and fall of young men (other prominent examples include Tale 5, The Patron, Tale 11, Edward Shore and Tale 21, The Learned Boy). Although these tales are very different in their particular protagonists and their central issues, it is …
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Crabbe – Tale 13: Jesse and Colin (and an update)
I wrote of Tale 12 - Squire Thomas - on September 28th 2010, so my project of providing a commentary on Crabbe’s Tales is proving a protracted one, as I suspected it would! However in the 21 months since then, I have not just read the next Tale - I have read all the early …
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My Silence – Part 4:Kindling
Whilst I have read, or reread, many ‘real’ books in the past 20 months, the most significant development in my reading habits has been the acquisition of a Kindle. I do not intend in future to bother specifying in which format I am reading any particular book I discuss, but did want to spend some …
Those Magnificent Ambersons
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) is in some ways the cinematic equivalent of Byron's diaries. Of course the analogy is not too exact, as not all of the film was consigned to the flames, and we do have a remaining movie which might be described as a semi-masterpiece. But what the film would be like had Welles been …
Early October Miscellany (2010)
I have decided to start posting my Miscellanies as and when they are of sufficient length, rather than waiting to the end of the month; the latter practice has resulted in some absurdly long entries. A very interesting article by John Sutherland in The Times on October 2nd. Formerly I would merely have directed readers …
Moving Toyshop 