5 Days in May: better than Borgen?
I’m not usually drawn to political memoirs, but my friend Joe reckoned I should give Andrew Adonis’s account of the fruitless coalition negotiations between Labour and the Liberal Democrat leadership after the 2010 election had resulted in a hung parliament. You can read it in two or three hours, he pointed out, insisting that I’d […]
Steve Earle: redemption songs
At Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall last week, Steve Earle opened with the Woody Guthrie-styled title song from his excellent new album The Low Highway. Later in the concert, Steve talked about the song’s genesis: travelling across his country and seeing everywhere the signs of economic failure, just as Woody did in the Great Depression: ‘I’m writing […]
The Rite of Spring at Liverpool Phil: an electrifying ‘riot of delight’
On Friday evening we heard an electrifying centennial performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at the Philharmonic Hall with Vasily Petrenko conducting. At the close, the reception for Petrenko and the Philharmonic Orchestra was rapturous. There was no riot. The programme had been billed as identical to the one in which the Rite had its infamous first […]
Way to blue (at last!)
At last! A month away from midsummer, finally we enjoy a day of clear blue sky and warm sunshine. This is the ‘hidden land’ behind Otterspool Promenade this afternoon: just to record for posterity how long we waited this year for spring to properly arrive. Don’t you have a word to show what may be […]
Too Soon to Tell: Rebecca Solnit’s case for Hope, continued
I thought I’d pass on some inspiring thoughts from a new essay written by writer, environmental campaigner and global justice activist Rbecca Solnit (no stranger to these posts – see the links below). Ten years ago Rebecca Solnit began writing about hope with her online essay Acts of Hope, posted at Tomdispatch in May 2003, that bleak […]
Audubon, the Rathbones and Greenbank House
On Tuesday morning, at the Royal Liverpool Hospital, having been liberated from the cumbersome boot I had been obliged to wear after breaking my ankle on Capri, I walked – a little unsteadily at first – to the Victoria Gallery and Museum at the top of Brownlow Hill. I intended to look at the exhibition […]
Photography: the accident that pricks and bruises
There’s a feature on the Guardian website (The power of photography: time, mortality and memory) which questions whether, now that digital technology allows us to take innumerable pictures, we still cherish them as much as we did when film was precious. The Guardian asked asked writers, artists and critics to pick a shot they treasure, […]
Liverpool Central Library reopens: inside the cathedral of learning
The opening of Liverpool’s first free public library on 18 October 1860 was marked by a public holiday and a day of celebrations, culminating in spectacular firework displays. Yesterday, Liverpool celebrated again: from 9:00 am to midnight, thousands poured through the doors of that same library, reopened after two years being rebuilt to a spectacular […]
Queueing for Beginners: ‘the tiny catastrophes of which everyday existence is made up’
In 1973, Georges Perec wrote, ‘What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward, the extra-ordinary: the front page splash, the banner headlines…The daily papers talk of everything except the daily …We sleep through our lives in a dreamless sleep.’ Joe Moran’s book Queueing for Beginners, which I’ve just read, aims to […]
Thea Gilmore with strings: mainstream or lightning?
On my way to see Thea Gilmore play the Liverpool Phil last Friday I was having my doubts. The concert was billed as ‘Thea with strings’ and strings were all over her new album Regardless when I gave it a listen on Spotify. As a Thea fan since the early days I have to say […]
