In the past few days I’ve spent some time studying scores of pieces I’m going to be teaching in a masterclass at the RSAMD this week. The date has been in my diary for a long time, but because the academic year only began a couple of weeks ago, it was impossible to find out who the students would [...]

In Monday’s Guardian, Umberto Eco laments the decline in children’s handwriting ability. He gives various reasons why he thinks it’s a shame that we don’t handwrite letters any more, but surprisingly doesn’t talk about the impact that someone’s handwriting can have on the reader.
When I was a teenager, long before we had computers – let alone [...]

In the Review section of today’s Guardian, I’ve written a review of Daniel Levitin’s book, ‘The World in Six Songs’.
If you’d like to read the review, here’s the link.

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The Author, the newsletter of the Society of Authors, has just dropped on to the doormat. It’s full of doom and gloom about the effects of the recession on writers, particularly freelance writers. Fewer reviews are being commissioned by newspapers. Rates of pay have been cut. Editors are looking to produce the material they need [...]

I’m reading the American poet Mark Doty’s memoir about his two beloved dogs. It’s a charity shop find in a Large Print Edition, the oversize print giving me the impression that the author is talking to me slowly and in a loud voice. The sensation fades away as I get drawn into this lovely book, [...]