Classical Music
Englishness with an aftertaste
The pleasures of cowpats
Passion and percussion
Two tastes of Chinese culture in London
An enemy of the best
Nothing routine, showy or ill-considered
A hundred shades of autumn leaves
He grips the attention with every phrase
A guaranteed crowd pleaser
Let the brass section blow cobwebbed memories to kingdom come
Rage captured to perfection
Chamber symphonies were a neglected genre revived during the Covid shutdowns
Not so easy listening
Janacek, Brahms, Bartok: Violin sonatas (Alpha-Classics/Outhere)
Our ultimate moment
Outstanding art for troubled times
Make Mozart great again
Music that lifts the heart
Playing that pulls no punches
Kholodenko is in the elite of classical pianists
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Tame Impala fails to impress
unconquered by a
taste of Crusader food
Gary Stevenson is wrong about wealth taxes
The popular economist is irritating, but more importantly he is mistaken
Why they hated Ann Widdecombe
Fair-minded people could agree or disagree with her opinions. Left-wing bigots hated her for not abandoning them
What is wrong now was wrong before
Julia Gillard should not pretend that the “unintended consequences” of the gender debate were unknowable
Ethnic minorities are abandoning Labour
It is not just Muslim voters who have been abandoning the Labour Party
The right does need religion
Christianity is politically valuable as well as, you know, true
Bach in black
CPE Bach: Berlin Symphonies (BIS)
Rewatching a TV show from a lost world
In River Cottage, a chef escaped to Dorset from London in search of the good life
Beauty from the ruins of war
Painting gave artists and their viewers a temporary way out of the grim wartime reality
Don’t panic about “Angry Young Women”
Despite everything, most people are still fairly normal
Fear and fury in Belfast
Violence spiralled out of control in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of a shocking crime
Soft competition
There are participation prizes to everyone at the Venice Biennale
Vera, the doctor who defied Rasputin
A female surgeon in the chaos of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union
Migrant hotels are not the real problem
The real problem with illegal immigration is at the border
Why nationalisation is not the answer to our problems
Planning, not privatisation, is the big problem with our water
Why we should explore space
Space exploration lifts the human spirit: rather than asking “Why?”, we should ask “Why not?”