Category Archives: Arts & Literature

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine-October 21, 2024

A painted portrait of Alexei Navalny.

The New Yorker (October 14, 2024): The latest issue features Owen Smith’s “Alexei Navalny” – A portrait of the defiant Russian opposition leader.

How Alarmed Should We Be If Trump Wins Again?

How Alarmed Should We Be If Trump Wins Again?

Even many of the ex-President’s opponents haven’t grasped the scale of the man’s villainy. By Adam Gopnik

What the Polls Really Say About Black Men’s Support for Kamala Harris

After the 2016 election, progressives blamed white women for Hillary Clinton’s loss. This year, Black men have come under special scrutiny. By Jelani Cobb

Alexei Navalny’s Prison Diaries

The Russian opposition leader’s account of his last years and his admonition to his country and the world. By Alexei Navalny

The New York Times Book Review – October 13, 2024

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (October 12, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Heart of the Matter’

Truly Scary Books for Halloween and Beyond

These terrifying tales by the likes of Stephen King and Shirley Jackson are more than good reads: They’ll freak you out, too.

Evan Gershkovich, U.S. Journalist Imprisoned in Russia, Will Publish a Memoir

The memoir, which will cover his time in prison and Russia’s move toward autocracy, will be published by Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

The South Korean author, best known for “The Vegetarian,” is the first writer from her country to receive the prestigious award.

Classical: Soprano Nola Richardson Sings Mozart

Voices of Music (October 12, 2024): Mozart’s motet Exsultate Jubilate, performed on original instruments by the award winning Early Music ensemble Voices of Music. Nola Richardson, soprano. The complete is work presented here for the first time in 8K video on period instruments.

Video timeline: 0:00 I. Exsultate Jubilate 5:00 II. Recit: Fulget amica dies 6:04 III. Aria: Tu Virginum Corona 13:11 IV. Alleluia 16:05 Credits

Reconstruction of the recitative: directors Hanneke van Proosdij and David Tayler reconstructed the recitativo accompagnato string parts from Mozart’s continuo part, and this receives its world premiere here. Months after completing the Divertimento in D Major,

Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart left for their third tour of Italy, with a first stop in Milan. There they met the soprano castrato, composer, and harpsichordist Venanzio Rauzzini, who was cast as one of the leads in Wolfgang Mozart’s new opera Lucio Silla opposite the prima donna Anna Lucia de Amicis.

Art: ‘Vincent van Gogh – Life and Light in Provence’

The National Gallery (October 11, 2024): Journey to the south of France and witness the landscapes that so inspired Vincent van Gogh and the painting techniques that have made him famous today. Travel through Arles and Saint-Rémy – from the banks of the Rhône to the hospital where he stayed.

See for yourself the locations that made their way onto Van Gogh’s canvases. ‘Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers’ is a once-in-a-century exhibition that brings together paintings from across the globe, some rarely seen in public. Track Vincent’s work through 1888 and 1889, the two most artistically fruitful years in his life.

Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers 14 September 2024 – 19 January 2025

#NationalGallery #ArtHistory #VanGogh #VincentVanGogh

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Oct. 11, 2024

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Times Literary Supplement (October 9, 2024): The latest issue features ‘This English House’ – W.H. Auden’s changing view of home by Seamus Perry…

Country Life Magazine – October 9, 2024 Preview

Country Life Magazine (October 8, 2024): The latest issue features

Daffy goes digital

Annie Tempest’s inimitable characters totter gently into the modern age with a new website

Mud, mud, glorious mud

Dogs, birds, pigs and humans alike follow hippopotami down the hollow. Deborah Nicholls-Lee dons her wellies and joins them

A sense of time and place

Ben Pentreath unravels what makes an interior English, that indefinable, yet instantly recog-nisable and beguiling aesthetic

Made in the Marches

The border of England and Wales is proving inspiring for artisanal craftsmen, finds Arabella Youens

Mixing old and new

Country Life’s Interiors Editor Giles Kime opens the doors to his revived 17th-century cottage

New looks for a new season

From bamboo bookshelves to lamps and pots, Amelia Thorpe chooses accessories to covet

Turi King’s favourite painting

The scientist and historian picks a powerful royal portrait   

Growing pains

Minette Batters takes her seat in the House of Lords

The right place to build

The historic streetscapes of our towns and cities reveal lessons we still need to learn about how to build, believes Ptolemy Dean

The legacy

Kate Green salutes Dorothy Brooke and the global equine charity that bears her name

Antlered majesty

Manmade, yet wild, deer parks prove we can create Arcadia, asserts John Lewis-Stempel

Timber of the gods

Jack Watkins admires the huge, ancient and once-exotic cedars that punctuate our landscapes

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell tallies her trinkets

Interiors

An imaginative kitchen extension and tea-tinged fabrics

Building on great bone structure

The good bones that anchor the gardens of Foscote Manor, Buckinghamshire, please the eye of George Plumptre

Foraging

John Wright raises a dram of home-made vodka to the crab apple      

Operation mincemeat

Always comforting, cottage pie satisfies Tom Parker Bowles

Salt of the earth

Pick up a handful or several of salted peanuts when you’re next in the pub, urges Rob Crossan

I have news for ewe

The humble sheep changed the course of British art history, reveals Bendor Grosvenor

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine-October 14, 2024

A busy city street seen through an overpass in Jackson Heights Queens.

The New Yorker (October 7, 2024): The latest issue features Victoria Tentler-Krylov’s “New Heights” – Sunlight flickering on the hustle and bustle of the streets.

Trump’s Dangerous Immigration Obsession

The daily stream of racism and mendacity has had a numbing effect. But the question of what Trump might actually do is a prospect that voters cannot afford to ignore. By Jonathan Blitzer

Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster

From crypto to A.I., the tech sector is pouring millions into super PACS that intimidate politicians into supporting its agenda. By Charles Duhigg

Sleep Essential for Health

Donald Trump is lying next to you in the bed, wearing snug cotton pajamas printed to look like his signature blue suit. You want to tell him a few things you think he ought to know, but his fake snoring drowns you out. By Ian Frazier

Books: Literary Review Magazine – October 2024

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Literary Review – October 2, 2024: The latest issue features Richard Vinen on Churchill; @wendymoore99 on Marie Curie; Ritchie Robertson on Augustus the Strong; @robinsimonbaj on British art and @tomlamont on James Salter

Croquet & Conspiracy- “Churchill’s Citadel: Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm” By Katherine Carter

‘It’s not a bad life for the leaders of the British bourgeoisie! There’s plenty for them to protect in their capitalist system!’ So wrote Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London, after his first visit to Winston Churchill’s country house at Chartwell in Kent. He described the house thus: ‘A wonderful place! Eighty-four acres of land … all clothed in a truly English dark-blue haze.’

All for the Thrill of the Chase – “Augustus the Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco” By Tim Blanning

Frederick Augustus (1670–1733), elector of Saxony and king of Poland, owed his sobriquet ‘the Strong’ to such feats as crushing a tin plate in his hand (mentioned by Rilke in the ‘Fifth Duino Elegy’) and to his vigorous sex life. Contemporaries credited him with fathering 354 illegitimate children; Tim Blanning soberly reduces the number to eight. This biography is concerned not with court gossip, however, but with Augustus’s political career and cultural achievements. Blanning celebrates Augustus as the virtual creator of the once-magnificent city of Dresden, where the kings of Saxony resided, and hence, surprisingly, as ‘a great artist, arguably the greatest of his age’.

London Review Of Books – October 10, 2024 Preview

London Review of Books (LRB) – October 2 , 2024: The latest issue features Hardy’s Bad Behavior; Fredric Jameson, Byond Balliol…

John Kerrigan

England’s Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland by Lorna Hutson

A.E. Stallings

Poem: ‘The Plum Tree’

Helen Pfeifer

The Genius of Their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni and the Lost Enlightenment by S. Frederick Starr

Katherine Harloe

The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present by Oswyn Murray

David Runciman

Short Cuts: Just ask Tony

Terry Eagleton

The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present by Fredric Jameson

James Vincent

Horny Robot Baby Voice

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Oct. 4, 2024

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Times Literary Supplement (October 2, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Canon Fire’ – Emma Smith and Brian Vickers on authorship in the golden age of theatre…