The touring National Theatre production of The Habit of Art (2009) by Alan Bennett was a massive disappointment. The play takes as its subject a meeting between Auden and Britten at the former's Oxford residence in 1972. This is a subject which fascinates me, partly for the personal reason that I went to the same school …
September Miscellany (2010)
September has been a very good month. A score of 7.07 on the Depression Scale which is the second highest ever and by far the best September. This may be partly because I am now marking more generously. It may also be partly because there is always something of a positive reaction when I emerge …
Fifty Years Since Kennedy v Nixon
Apparently it is 50 years since the first televised Presidential debate in the US. A brilliant account of the contemporary impact of this was given on the Trollope 19thC Studies list and the author gave his permission for me to reproduce it here....... "The first televised debate between U.S. presidential candidates -- Nixon and Kennedy -- occurred …
Crabbe – Tale 12:’Squire Thomas
'Squire Thomas (or The Precipitate Choice) is one of the Tales in which Crabbe's sometimes bleak view of humanity is revealed in its fullest extent. Every single character in this Tale is deeply unpleasant. It is this kind of Tale, and its underlying world-view, which earned Crabbe a (semi-deserved) reputation as one whose view of …
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) is not an easy film. By that I mean to imply both that it is painful to watch as a result of the emotional intensity which it generates, and also that it is not easy to interpret. But let me start with a description. The film is shot …
Unbridled Romanticism
In Chapter 5 of The Roots of Romanticism Isaiah Berlin considers what he terms 'the final eruption of unbridled romanticism'. Berlin says that Friedrich Schlegel, himself a part of the movement, named three vital components of this movement: Fichte's philosophy, the French Revolution, and Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister. Fichte's philosophy The innovation which Fichte and …
Reeves on Mill: Chapter 8
The impact on Mill of the events in Paris in February 1848 was, as was common among European radicals, immense and galvanising. 'I am hardly yet out of breath from reading and thinking about it......Nothing can possibly exceed the importance of it to the world or the immensity of the interests which are at stake …
Crabbe – Tale 11: Edward Shore
Returning to Crabbe after a long absence (10 months) I am confronted by a Tale for which I have little sympathy. However I am able to admire Crabbe's narrative skills and the power of his verse, even if I am suspicious of the ends to which they are put in this case. Edward Shore is …
Turgenev’s Smoke
Returning to Turgenev after a long break I have reached the extraordinary Smoke (1867). This novel was badly received at the time and does not appear to have been much rehabilitated in the century and a half since its publication. One does not have to search far for the reasons for the contemporary hostility: in …
Berlin on Romanticism
Writing about the work of Isaiah Berlin is an extremely difficult process. The thought is so diffuse (though only very rarely anything less than pellucid), the arguments so close, the range of reference so wide, and above all the generosity of spirit, the endless qualification and perception of alternative views, mean that any attempt at precis …
Moving Toyshop 