Broadsides – A collection of bits and pieces
"Unprovided with original learning, uninformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a blog”
This stunning, dramatic, magnificent portrait, by Ken Currie, hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. It portrays Scotland's principal forensic anthropologist, Professor Dame Sue Black. It is an enormous canvas, 9 feet by 6 feet, which the artist has entitled "The unknown man" It captures Professor Black at the very height of her... Continue Reading →
Every year, for the god knows how many years now, we take a house, for the whole of August, in Edinburgh, for the Festivals. In recent years it has been a gorgeous eighteenth-century property on the ancient and cobbled George Square, complete with chandeliers and a vaulted basement dining room and loads of bedrooms for... Continue Reading →
We dined, Patricia and I, at the First Coast restaurant on the Dalry Road in Edinburgh. ( prononced Dalrye) So good was the food and the experience that I was moved to write a poem in praise of such a feast of meats. Apoligies to Rabbi Burns. A Poem with an asterisk* Cone all... Continue Reading →
I went to see “Aye, Elvis”. It was such good fun. It’s a musical. So poignant , I laughed tears and wept at the pathos. A Scottish woman, leading desperately lonely life, looking after her wheelchair bound mother, working for next to nothing as a checkout girl at the local supermarket, not well educated but... Continue Reading →
We have visitors at our George Square Edinburgh Festival house, amongst them my dear friend Rob Hain, an artist from the Scottish boarder s who created this wonderful canvas of Edinburgh’s Usher Hall from where all her scholars take their graduation honours and where all the great orchestras of the world come to play. ... Continue Reading →
We have visitors at our George Square Edinburgh Festival house, amongst them my dear friend Rob Hain, an artist from the Scottish boarder s who created this wonderful canvas of Edinburgh’s Usher Hall from where all her scholars take their graduation honours and where all the great orchestras of the world come to play. ... Continue Reading →
There are probably more charity shops in Edinburgh than in any other city in the British Isles. I don’t know why. There just is. On some streets there are more charity shops than ordinary shops. I long ago reached the view that at least one out of every three people you meet in Edinburgh must... Continue Reading →
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh has re-opened in its dramatic, neo gothic palace on Queen Street. Ruskin would be delighted. It is a rather rambling interior and quite difficult to navigate. I wondered about with nothing really grabbing my interest, until I stumbled upon, entirely by good fortune, the exhibition of war paintings by Sir... Continue Reading →
60 outstanding Picasso’s gathered from around the galleries of the world and chosen to show the influence of Picasso upon Modern British Art and Artists. Placed between, amongst and about the Picasso’s are the works of those he so influenced. Henry Moore and Picasso; David Hockney and Picasso; Francis Bacon and Picasso; Wyndham Lewis and... Continue Reading →
British comedy has never before, been this desperate: "Your boyfriend asked you to piss on him? Ha ha ha ha guffaw guffaw Did you like it? Ha Ha Ha Ha guffaw Ha Ha: He shows a slide of a drawing of a man masturbating using the dead arm and hand of a man in a coffin,... Continue Reading →
This show doesn’t really work. It hasn’t joined the dots together fully, which is a great pity, for the writing is absolutely first class. A real poet of the interweb. If he has a book of poems then I’d buy it and recommend it to anyone I know. I hope he sticks to it. He... Continue Reading →
The Unitarian church of St. Marks, hard by the sheer cliffs of Edinburgh Castle, has an interior, as you would expect of the Unitarians, entirely unadorned, with any religious image. An odd place to listen to Jazz. There, where the altar should be, stands a great glossy black note of a grand piano. The musician... Continue Reading →
I have always had a considerable soft spot for Ruskin. My college days, brief as they were, were spent in Ruskin College Oxford, named for him because of his serious commitment to the teaching of the working classes as outlined in his monthly “letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Brittan” The college was... Continue Reading →
CLINTON – THE MUSICAL: What a great idea. Sex, power, politics, sex, the white house, sex, lying, sex, impeachment, sex. And what fun they must have had putting together the lyrics and music for this one. They portray Clinton as two persons, or one person with two personalities, or maybe a schizophrenic. Anyway there is... Continue Reading →
Adolf. You can’t go wrong with Adolf. Everyone remains fascinated by the horror of it all, the audacity of it all, the endless history of it all. Sky has a history channel virtually dedicated to NAZI stuff. The Hitler Channel my wife calls it. So throw up a production at the fringe dedicated to Hitler,... Continue Reading →
He moved amongst the Caesar’s and Napoleon’s of finance and power. He moved with diplomatic immunity, and with reputational immunity, the later conferred by a docile French press unworthy of the trade of journalism. He left a trail of sleaze. He almost became the next socialist President of France. He fell, in Manhattan, in the... Continue Reading →
Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Another day in Edinburgh, another play. The book, by Robert Tressell, had a deep influence upon a whole generation of trade unionists, my generation in fact, for it was published circa 1956. There was hardly a shop steward or full time official in any kind of active capacity who had not read... Continue Reading →
Of all the books on all the shelves in all the world then surely Ulysses would be the very last you would choose to actually perform. With its often impenetrable text and its binge of words. Yet here is young Katie O’Kelly, choosing Ulysses and with an Olympic feat of memory, a crisp Dublin diction... Continue Reading →
Broadsides - A collection of bits and pieces 