It is a pleasure to write about a film that delivers unalloyed pleasure – a little bitter-sweet and a bit feel-good – a good combo like a dark chocolate and orange pudding. I will be surprised if you don’t warm to La La Land and shed a tear too.
An article in The Spectator last week by Sinclair McKay sent me to a bookcase to pull this out. His piece was about Old Etonian, Nigel de Grey, who decoded the Zimmermann Telegram in 1917 with a Presbyterian pastor, the Rev William Montgomery.
Choosing presents is tricky. Books and booze usually go down well but “things” are often risky. Many people are reluctant to add to their clutter. I was given an unusual and most satisfactory Christmas present this year …
If you’re an old hand here you won’t be surprised that I enjoyed the Paul Nash show at Tate Britain. Let me fess up, hitherto I knew nothing about him.
People often talk of having “a place in the country” a splendidly non-specific expression that means anything from a castle set in 10,000 acres that has been in the family since the reign of Elizabeth I to a rented potting shed. My place in the country in the 1990s was the latter.
John Colet was Dean of St Paul’s and, in 1509, founded St Paul’s School. Colet House was built on what is now the Talgarth Road in the 1880s. It is adjacent to LAMDA and has been used by the LAMDA students while their new rehearsal rooms were being built.
I am singularly ill-qualified to write about electronic communication but that’s not going to stop me. Unbelievably, about twenty years ago my then employer, a major US and international insurance company that had diversified into financial services, did not provide its UK employees with e mail.