By my calculation, this edition of The South Bank Show dates from 1994. As much of my politics come from reading Oliver Twist too young, and as Oliver! is the great British musical. I had to watch it. And there is much to enjoy, beginning with Lionel Bart's adventures in the new world of pop music with Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard. Then there's Oliver!, whose first night was just as triumphant as Bart makes it sound. On to the film, where I note that Mark Lester was still giving the impression that he sang in it. He didn't. The ...
We are two weeks into the local election campaign in Gateshead and Reform have already lost 2 candidates (that's an average of one a week). Firstly, Peter Gray has resigned in Crawcrook and Greenside. The reasons for this are not clear. Yesterday brought us the second loss - David Prior was kicked out because of his previously undeclared membership of the racist, anti-semitic and far right
Yet another example of Reform's useless vetting of candidates was on display last night when David Prior was expelled, half way through the election campaign here in Gateshead. Prior had previously been in the BNP, membership of which is regarded as incompatible with Reform. Prior had been chosen as one of the three Reform candidates for Saltwell, a ward which contains one of the largest orthodox
"There has never been anybody like her. To say that she loved acting just would not be enough. We realised only recently when we were looking at some old clippings that newspaper banner headlines had called her London's greatest actress." This is the Northampton-born artist Henry Bird paying tribute to his wife Freda Jackson when she died in 1990. My latest article for Central Bylines pays tribute to them: Northampton's arts power couple.
I was reading Nicholas Jenkins's The Island: W. H. Auden and the Last of Englishness- or scanning for a column I'm writing, if I'm honest - when I came across a reference to a sonnet by Auden on Richard Jefferies. It turns out to have been written when the poet was 18 years old and to be included in the collection W. H. Auden. Juvenilia: Poems 1922-28. It also seems that the young Auden's chief acquaintance with Jefferies' work came via the biography of him by Edward Thomas. I can't find the whole sonnet online, but here is an extract: ...
Few institutions define modern Britain as strongly as the National Health Service. Created in 1948 under the leadership of Aneurin Bevan, the NHS was founded on a simple but powerful promise: Healthcare would be free at the point of use, based on need rather than ability to pay. For generations this principle has been a source of national pride. Yet today the NHS faces unprecedented pressure, and unless we are prepared to rethink how it is funded, that founding promise itself may become impossible to sustain. Demand on the system has grown dramatically over the past two decades. Britain has ...
"Between calling for an end to 'the postwar neutering of Germany and Japan' and a reinstatement of the draft, Palantir also demanded an end to cancel culture and more competitive pay for civil servants. One particularly disturbing point makes the claim that some cultures are objectively superior due to the advances they've made in technology, while 'others remain dysfunctional and regressive'." Cydney Hayes reports on the backlash against Peter Thiel's company Palantir. Tanya Park defends Lib Dem South Cambridgeshire and its four-day week: "Its staff complete 100 per cent of their work in 80 per cent of the time, for ...
