And if they happen to be Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins, they sing a song written by one of the Carter dynasty and famously performed by a connexion of Prime Minister Addison’s.

So have The Dubliners performed it. And the Allman Brothers - joined by Natalie Cole, David Crosby, and one of the members of ZZ Top. And the Staple Singers ( Read more... )

I seem - in moments of seeking a counter-irritant to my edits of MSP’s forthcoming work (publication on 4 July or so) on George Washington’s correspondence with Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (a task that has alas deprived me of much good company) - to have committed fic, and that in another fandom. It results, on the surface, from research I did ( Read more... )

... and why it's dead wrong.

As you’ll recall, an interest of mine is the old demotic pub and music hall and variety culture, and I hope you saw the Beeb’s documentary programme recently about Mrs Mills.

Of course, if you’d watched that, you’ll have seen young Michael Sands discussing and playing the music of the great Glad. And you’ll also have seen young Stewart Nicholls, in ( Read more... )

Overall, Boyle's opening ceremony was equal parts Hovis advert, Labour PPB, & my last book trailer.

Had I been in charge … Chaucer, Langland, Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare (yes, of course John of Gaunt’s soliloquy and the Band of Brothers speech), Jonson, Milton, Kipling, Betjeman, and Larkin; Dowland, Tallis, Byrd, Parry, Stanford, Darke, Walton, ( Read more... )

Tautological, I know.

I like my friends, and I like to be able to go on being friends with them, and to like them as people despite occasional lapses on their parts into see-icon-and-remember-Stein-remarking-on-the-Tugendbund.

It is therefore with profound relief - the relief of a man who sees some prospect of keeping his temper and thus his ( Read more... )

(Once again, no, you pervs, not Tom Daley.)

James Rhodes, the pianist, and Stephen Hough, the pianist, are having a fascinating debate chez Torygraph.

Also, the Kindle edition of The Annotated Wind in the Willows is now out, at the British, US, and German Amazon sites.

Finally, there is no truth to the rumour that, when Hari is stripped of it, the ( Read more... )

A must read.

... to those impulses of mine which my family look at askance as not being hearty:

Elgar = Sibelius whilst Vaughan Williams = Grieg?

Discuss.

(Edited for clarity)

( Orwell warned us of this. )