Bob Dylan is one of the finest ever writers of protest songs, about the oppression of poor people, young people, black people in the militarist, capitalist hustle of the USA. But what about his depiction of fickle women? When he sings in The Gates of Eden: “Of war and peace the truth just twistsIts curfew […]
Bob Dylan’s World of Fickle Women Read More »
Goethe’s character Faust is a potent symbol of Everyman in our modern hi-tech wonderland. If we have the money, we can have almost anything we desire delivered to our door the next day. Does that make us happy? Does that make us good? Does that make our world safe? This may be the most eccentric
Goethe’s Faust, a Parable of Modern Techno Man Read More »
This a terrific film about a man who is not there. It won this year’s Palme d’Or for its tragi-comic depiction of a group of dissidents in Iran. It was shot secretly by the director Jafar Panahi, who was only released from his latest spell in prison after a hunger strike. A man is driving
Secret Police and their Blindfolded Victims Read More »
Some things are defined by the absence or silence around them. In The Histories by US artist Kerry James Marshall at the Royal Academy, we enter a giant visual world occupied solely by black figures. They are not angry or sad. They are just ordinary people, working out who they are and what they are
The Artist of Black Beauty and Reality Read More »
This film about the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936 is unlikely to gain a mass audience, but it very much deserves to be seen. It’s a major work that dramatises events before the Second World War when Britain was still in charge of the territory. Following the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Jews were starting
How We Sowed the Seeds of the Middle East Conflict Read More »
Pressure on the BBC continues from Donald Trump and his allies in the large right-wing sector of our own media. But as the Open Britain campaign implies, this is an attack on the heart of British political culture. (See address of article:) https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#search/bbc+trump/FMfcgzQcqtkLKVPQTvwtcZPZTTdmFZMR If you had to define “British values”, the BBC would come near
Defending the BBC through Dangerous Times Read More »
I followed my usual practice of reading the contents first – and the introduction at the end. I am glad I postponed the personal intro, because this is a rare Christian book which can make good sense to people of any faith or none. In it the author describes her life experience through the lens
Seven Deadly Sins That Won’t Go Away Read More »
So what does it all mean – Grayson Perry’s Delusions of Grandeur at the Wallace Collection in London? On one hand, it proclaims that we have a licence to produce beautiful, bright things again. Art can be childish, it can be colourful and flamboyant, joyful and fantastic. On the other hand, we confront the original,
Sinister Beauty in Rococo Art Read More »
(This follows on from the post on the book Crow) Ted Hughes was maybe the greatest English poet of his generation. But when he described Crow as his finest book, he was wrong. Its bleak philosophical message is unsubtle and the emotional register is passionate, extreme but two dimensional. Birthday Letters, published 28 years later,
Writing from the heart on human failure Read More »
The 1960s and 70s were a time of political and social upheaval in Britain. Under the governments of Harold Wilson, it seemed that power was edging ever closer to the people, but at the same time, radical politics was racing on further to the left. When I was a student at Oxford in the late
The Terrible Eye of Crow Read More »
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