Prometheus was punished, and indeed all of mankind, for Zeus sent Pandora with her box of evils to compensate the advantages of fire; but Zeus never took back the fire. … Still, the march of knowledge and technique continues, and with it the social and moral travail. No one can be sure that mankind will survive …
I pace upon the battlements and stare On the foundations of a house, or where Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth; And send imagination forth Under the day’s declining beam, and call Images and memories From ruin or from ancient trees, For I would ask a question of them all. W. B. …
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed; When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed: When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see; Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would be. Tennyson, ‘Locksley Hall’ Photo by EP Louise …
Photo by EP A new film blog to follow shortly. Meanwhile fresh plaudits for the Windsor reprise of Edward’s singing Canon Chasuble: Written by Douglas Livingstone with music by Adam McGuiness and Zia Moranne, its songs could have been written by Wilde himself: they are witty, tell a story, are perfectly in keeping with the …
The past is the beginning of the beginning and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. H. G. Wells The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different. Aldous Huxley I have been …
Photo by EP ‘Up to a thousand boats will muster on the River Thames in preparation for the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant.’ So says The Times today in its Jubilee Weekend Guide. In 1956, three years after Elizabeth’s coronation, Kenneth Tynan wrote marvellously about a rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’. The occasion was the …
As flies to wanton boys … KING LEAR My voter apathy was such that I didn’t respond to British Actors’ Equity’s invitation to the Peacock Theatre to show solidarity with the Belarus Free Theatre, at home forbidden to act in anything but the official language of Russian, always under threat of prosecution and worse and reduced …
We had a carpenter come to deal with a little dry rot in our roof. He told me that, amongst the historic buildings he ’d worked in, had been Hampton Court. It struck me that his job was like that of an actor, who works his materials in the great theatres of the world and …
Fresh from its premiere at the Women’s Institute meeting at Brioche, a favoured café in the heart of West Hampstead, I post this slideshow which concentrates on what had been described by Pevsner as the ‘middle middle class’ houses of West Hampstead (we will have to compile another version with the middle-class houses, which …
There is hardly a pioneer’s hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. Alexis de Tocqueville (1831) A slightly belated film in honour of the Bard’s birthday. On the subject of suburban and Shakespearean activity, Sir Frank Dicksee (1853-1928), President of the Royal Academy, who painted this famous Pre-Raphaelite image of …
I recommend the following films from this extensive list: