After his 1959 masterpiece, Kind of Blue, Miles Davis teamed with Gil Evans for the orchestral sound of Sketches of Spain and the Rodrigo piece, Concierto d’Aranquez. In one session Miles picked up that some of his hired classical musicians … Read More »
Urbane, articulate and well coiffured – a far cry from the bearded, ranting mediaevalist of secular nightmare – Al Jazeera presenter Mehdi Hasan is an ideal frontsman for Islam in the west. The other day he wrote in the Guardian … Read More »
Feminists know this but it’ll stand repeating. Since one male can impregnate many females, societies can afford to lose more men than women. It takes all sorts to make a world and any healthy society, from hunter-gatherer onward, will contain … Read More »
Seventies feminists, and progressives in general, were pretty clueless on genetics. They had to be, to attack male supremacism with the necessary force. In any case the pendulum was still arcing outwards from the horrors of a philistine geneticism painfully … Read More »
Last week Indonesia shot nine drug smugglers after a decade on death row. Since most were foreigners, the final days saw much megaphone diplomacy: greatest attention going predictably to two (non-white) Australians. Canberra has form here. Its outspoken responses to … Read More »
This morning on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, the Rev Giles Fraser gave a simplistic tour of the selfishness v altruism debate. He didn’t follow the many who rubbish Dawkins without reading his most important work; indeed, he quoted the man … Read More »
In my highly acclaimed Motorbiking I – written last year, also from Vietnam – I told of fishing boats and traffic chaos, towering Buddhas and downing beers, curving alleyways and writhing sea snakes. I’ll return to snakes another time; this … Read More »
Listen here. Gorecki’s choral 3rd, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, could hardly be less typical of a Polish composer outspokenly avant garde; a Stockhausen admirer whose declared mission was “not to entertain but to educate”. Symphony No 3, piercing in its … Read More »
The medium is the message, said Marshall McLuhan. Silly to judge screenplay by ‘fidelity’ to book. The latter may be as well crafted (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), better crafted (Bridget Jones) or just ill advised (Gormenghast) but fidelity … Read More »
Carpenters use plane and saw to shape wood and not-wood to requirement. Photographers use shutter, aperture and studio kit or off-camera flash to shape light and not-light. Which is why two painters hold special significance for shutterbugs. Rembrandt was four when Caravaggio … Read More »