Ellen has very kindly pointed out to me that I have never really explained the title of my blog! A pretty daft omission but there you go. The primary allusion comes from Pope's Rape of The Lock, a favourite poem of mine ; the exact lines (from Canto 1) are as follows... >>With varying Vanities, …
The Tenway Junction
I have just finished The Prime Minister, the fifth of Trollope's six Palliser novels or sequence (I have been struggling to catch up with the Trollope-l reading schedule and am now within a few weeks of doing so!). Without going into any lengthy analysis of this great book I did want to just add a …
March Music, Movies, Mysteries
A few miscellaneous March events. First the musical. A stupendous performance of Britten's War Requiem at Symphony Hall by the The Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus. Everything about this was terrific; the conducting by Antonio Pappano, the soloists Ian Bostridge, Simon Keenlyside and Emma Bell, the choral singing and, above all of course, the …
West Wing
I wanted to try and write something about The West Wing but I have already waited too long and forgotten many of the points I wanted to make; no doubt I can return to this post after future re-viewings (which I am sure there will be). I do not want to spend too long on the …
25 Years On
It is 25 years on since the Miners strike began and there has been both newspaper discussion and a few television programmes. Much the best of the latter was a documentary very simply entitled 'The Miners Strike'. In fact this documentary was made and first shown in 2004 for the 20th Anniversary, but I would …
Waiting for Godot
No, not an introduction to some general musings on existence! Instead a note of a trip to see a very remarkable production of the play at Malvern. The cast comprised Ian McKellen as Estragon, Patrick Stewart as Vladimir, Simon Callow as Pozzo and Ronald Pickup as Lucky. It is, I would imagine, highly improbable that …
Light on Christie
I attempt here to précis and comment on Alison Light's brilliant and innovative analysis of Agatha Christie in her Forever England (Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars: 1991) which was a group read for WWTTA in 2007 (yes it has taken me that long!). This analysis, which forms Chapter 2 of the book, is …
Slumdog
Looking back I see it is 2 years to the day since I last wrote about going to the cinema and seeing a really good film ( Dreamgirls - http://nickhay.blog-city.com/dreamgirls.htm ). Now while part of this is down to going less often, it is also true that virtually every new film I have seen within that …
Winter Diary
Now that I have settled in here and put all the essential posts in the February archive, I will produce something a bit more current. Or catch up with lost months of December and January anyway. Lost of course to Depression. It has been a very bad eight months. Since July only October was wholly …
Byron Conference 2008
In July 2008 I attended the 34th International Byron Conference which was held at St Andrews from the 14th to 18th July. As usual it takes me 6 months to a year to get around to writing anything about it! My only point of comparison for this event was the Exeter Trollope Conference. The Byron …
Moving Toyshop 