Chichester’s “Love Story” is a stunner
Forty years on and Erich Segal's "Love Story" makes a surprisingly spikey and yet delicious show in Chichester Festival Theatre's Minerva Theatre. Read more...
Mind & body.
I am interested in the idea and practice of spirituality: but it may all be nonsense, and I may be venially corporeal. This category is a bit of a catch-all for posts on subjects ranging from the intellectual (I should be so lucky), to the spiritual (likewise) via the psychological and the creative.Page 19
Rational Optimist: RDN’s still one
It's not often a good ploy to whinge, and this isn't exactly a moan. Well, only a bit of one. I want to stand up for my Life On a Modern Planet (1995) and Rich Is Beautiful (2005) as works of "rational optimism". Read more...
I Am Love: Flawed masterpiece
For long stretches of I Am Love, I was bowled over in much the way I imagine the movie-makers intended. It had risible patches which didn't quite shake the wheels off the wagon. Read more...
“Welcome To Lagos”: They can keep it
There is an enormous amount to be said for Africa. Stoicism and good humour would be right up there as attributes which abound. Famously, Nigerians have all that in spades. Last night's BBC film concentrated on a Lagos rubbish dump and its scavengers. Read more...
Big girls’ blouses: the new brave wimps
Did you watch the Boat Race coverage? I was struck by the way Dan Snow (who rowed in several) went on and on about how winning it was lovely but losing it marked you for life. I forget the details, but it all left a powerful impression of a generation of athletes for whom winning is a graceless necessity whilst losing is a psychological catastrophe. This is bizarre and applies to other butch moderns. Read more...
RDN on affluence and envy on BBC News Channel
The Observer ran a story about a pair of economists, Curtis Eaton and Mukesh Eswaran, who think they've proven that affluent societies are beset by a horrible envy, and I lobbed up on the BBC News Channel to opine. Here's what I said and what I should have said. Read more...
The British and Ronald Searle
Searle is 90 tomorrow and Channel 4 News ran a tribute interview. Typically, the commentary had to have a little attitudinising. Read more...
Casting around in “Fishing In Utopia”
Note: If this were a review, it could have been much shorter and just said: “Buy this book. It’s lovely, sharp and beguiling”. I wanted to write something which drew on the experiences Andrew Brown and I shared, not least but not only at the Independent in the late 1980s. I also wanted to touch on the whole business of memoir- and nature-writing. Read more...
Compare: Cameron & Blair and 1997 & 2010
Here we go again. We are headed for an epoch-making election with an opposition leader who has a horror of authenticity. We don't need atavastic politics, but it is a big danger that we have political stars whose charisma depends on being bland and controlling. Mr Cameron could do far better. Read more...
Eating in the 7th arrondissement
Is this the best eating in Paris? Quite possibly. Here's my case for L'Auberge Bressane, and the neighbourhood food shops, in the "toney" 7th arrondissement. It's all a demonstration of the homage affluence pays to authenticity. Read more...