I’ve been clearing out old boxes of letters dating from student days. In these days of email and texts, when most messages are brief and casual, it’s amazing to sort through these handwritten letters. I’m struck by what a passion for communication we had. Whenever my friends were apart from one another, we all wrote [...]

I’ve been taking sneaky breaks from other tasks to watch the Winter Olympics from Sochi. This is partly in homage to my Dad, a keen skater, who imparted to the wider family a love of figure skating and ice dancing which still gets us gathering round televisions whenever there’s some good skating to watch. And [...]

Went to see the new Coen Brothers’ film, Inside Llewyn Davis, the tale of a moderately successful American folk singer in 1961, on the cusp of the Bob Dylan era. After the death of his duo partner, Llewyn is trying to make it in Greenwich Village as a solo artist. The title of his new [...]

Here I am, lecturing to the British Comparative Literature Association yesterday. At Deptford Town Hall! Who would have expected such a grand Victorian building, with a beautifully ornate staircase, and an excellent Steinway concert grand piano in the Council Chamber? London is full of surprises. I found it daunting – but also very stimulating – [...]

Friends in America have alerted me to an interesting article in the New York Times of 31 December 2013: ‘Maestro at Work: Hold That Cough’. Written by NY Times music critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, it’s about the tickly – sorry, tricky – issue of coughing in concerts. In the fourth paragraph she quotes from one [...]