There were free tickets available at work for The Taming of the Shrew at The Globe. I'm not a Shakespeare fan at all, and further investigation that the production was designed for a family audience didn't improve things, but I decided that it was at the very least an opportunity to see The Globe. It turned out that our seats were in the front and ( Read more... )

Well, 2016 has been rubbish, but let's try and pick out some more positive things from the year:

• Fiction - Doctor Who - Shada, by Gareth Roberts / Douglas Adams
• Non-Fiction - 1946 - The Making of the Modern World, by Victor Sebestyen
• Music - Prom 51 - the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop
• Museums and Exhibitions - Museum of the Americas in ( Read more... )

Best of the year:

• Fiction - The Merchants of Light - A Novel of Venice, by Marta Maretich
• Non-Fiction - The Cucumber for Java Book, by Seb Rose, Matt Wynne, and Aslak Hellesøy
• Music - Prom 28 - The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee, and The Poem of Ecstasy
• Museums and Exhibitions - Escher at Dulwich Picture Gallery
• Food and ( Read more... )

Last night we went to see the RSC's Oppenheimer at the Vaudeville Theatre on the Strand. The theatre was curiously compact, and perhaps more claustrophobic than intimate, but the stage size suited the production well. The approach was often cinematic, cutting rapidly between daytime (physics lectures, the latest research news from Europe) and ( Read more... )

Best of the year:

• Fiction - Cooking with Fernet Branca, by James Hamilton Paterson
• Non-Fiction - Map of a Nation, by Rachel Hewitt
• Music - The Film Music Prom
• Exhibition - Memento Park, Budapest
• Food and Drink - The Boar's Head Gaudy

Several years ago there was a production of Bertolt Brecht's A Life Of Galileo at the National Theatre, which we failed to go and see, so when I discovered it was being staged at the RSC in Stratford, although it's quite a trek, we decided to get tickets. We spent the afternoon doing touristy-stuff and pondering whether The Real Tea Cafe was a ( Read more... )