Richard D North welcomes you to his blog. (It links to my old site, now archived.) I am a right-winger, in love with the free market and arguing against the soft-left, liberal, green, PC consensus. Oh, and I'm a conflicted softie. A bit hippy and arty round the edges too. More »
Posted by RDN under At the movies / At the theatre on 12 December 2011. No comments.
Terence Davies is said to be a sensitive chronicler of post-war Britain, but he sure mauled Terence Rattigan’s Deep Blue Sea which really was a wonderful piece of post-war chronicle. (The CFT version was far better.) More »
Posted by RDN under Politics and campaigns on 8 December 2011. No comments.
The first tranche of professors of journalism testified to Lord Leveson today and the result was mildly reassuring. But it is worth stressing how important it is that this trade remain as free of professionalism, certificates, regulation, registration and general tick-box goody-goodiness as possible. More »
Posted by RDN under Economic crisis / Mind and body / TV and Radio on 7 December 2011. No comments.
Ian Hislop very nearly told us (When Bankers Were Good, BBC2) that Dickensian bankers were more moral than our own. A couple of literati on the Today show (BBC Radio 4, 7 December 2011) did actually say how awful and Dickensian our times are. (The inequality! The homeless!) So which is it? More »
Posted by RDN under Economic crisis / Mind and body on 1 December 2011. No comments.
We are routinely said to have “lost a decade” and that the loss is unrecoverable. I have no idea what this means. More »
Posted by RDN under At the movies / Politics and campaigns on 27 November 2011. No comments.
Now we seem to have the perfect story – and, yes, I rather admire Andrew Marr for describing it as such on his show this morning. There is plausibe speculation that DSK was the victim of a sting or scam worthy of the view of French politics as portrayed in Spiral. Or should we say that it might be a sting or scam worthy of American habits, as portrayed by The Ides of March? At the level of script, narrative, theatre, thriller, or whatever, we are having a ball. More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body / Politics and campaigns on 25 November 2011. No comments.
Max Mosley seems to have swept all before him and does so because his case pushes into so many corners of the matters Leveson is considering. Pace the rather silly remarks by Hugo Rifkind in The Times (25 November 2011) it is important that we don’t wrongly calibrate the media’s offences. More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body / Politics and campaigns / TV and Radio on 24 November 2011. No comments.
In recent episodes of BBC Radio 4′s The Food Programme there have been interesting examples of – and some challenges to – the show’s dogma. I think it is fair to say the show is crusading for something it calls “real food”. But what is that? More »
Posted by RDN under TV and Radio on 23 November 2011. No comments.
So. You’re a crook, a colleague, a swain: which of TV’s top female cops do you fear or hope for? The French Berthaud of Spiral is needy, sulky. There’s an element of the kittenish. The Danish Laure of The Killing is laconic and schtum to the point of surliness. Both are romantic figures. Both are richly sympathetic. More »
Posted by RDN under Economic crisis / Politics and campaigns on 16 November 2011. No comments.
The City faces a severe test from the sort of protest centred on St Paul’s. Whether it at last responds properly comes down to character, or its institutionalised cousin – professionalism.
The protestors are asking The City to explain itself, and (so far as this dedicated reader of the Financial Times can see) there’s been no reply. Where is The City’s answer to the question: Does The City do a good job? More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body / TV and Radio on 11 November 2011. No comments.
Mr Gervais’s new comedy is not very funny.
But it made me uncomfortable only because I am not sure it is proper to let Ricky Gervais pull my chain. More »
