Absolutely mad in the best way. There was a period when British television assumed we would willingly spend an evening with philosophers, cathedrals, paintings. Have you watched Civilisation? Kenneth Clark now makes Simon Schama look like Graham Norton.
And theatre too. I love all those Play for the Day. When the BBC got a load of great actors and a director in a studio and created theatre for all. Amazing. BBC4 sometimes resurrects these, e.g. the recent Ibsen season. Juliet Stevenson in The Dolls House is such a treat.
I've had rather a boring day and was feeling sluggish. Thank you James for rebooting my brain and providing inspiration (and ideas) for a weekend of reading and thinking.
Just a quickie to say that painting of the tree by Samuel Palmer I almost included in my post about Hawthorn and then I took it out because I thought it was probably an apple tree! More later when I’ve had a proper read.
Enjoying your BBC Sounds podcast - as another young person interested in the decline of reading, it was reassuring to hear about your experience of also realising you’d forgotten how to read properly (I.e., deep reading). I was starting to conclude my attention was so fragmented, reading properly again would be a thing of the past - good to hear this isn’t a unique experience! Would be interested in your ‘how to learn to read again’ tips.
Sometimes the workings of Mr M's brain are well over my head. Not today. Baby Bear's porridge. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Welcome antidote to depressing news the PM has had a kicking. I've always been a bit embarrassed by being distracted by stuff such as hideous settees and claws with red talons. A comfort to know I am not alone. Although fascinated by Japan I had to stop watching Mr Portillo. I found his his nose more interesting .The piece about blind people and schizophrenia is an eye opener. Public Holiday here in France..why not the UK?.May 8, 1945, the Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany..
Can I just put in a shout here for Bryan Magee's autobiography? All 3 volumes, not just the first (Clouds of Glory) which though great, was widely discussed and reviewed. It's rare I've read a set of books that took me into their world, the author's successes and pleasures, so completely. I need more people to read these books.
Feel rather disappointed in myself that despite enjoying many aspects of your latest contribution (thank you) my outtake is that I rather like that sofa. Cognitive decline in full force :)
Authorship is "the ability to reach beyond one’s physical surroundings with one’s own ideas and opinions"? Then we should try to calculate how many people used to write letters. Surely today's bloggers and commenters are yesterday's epistlers? For that reason, I suspect that the author explosion is something of a mirage.
Another commenter here mentions Magee’s three volumes of memoirs. I often recommend Magee’s intellectual autobiography, ‘Confessions of a Philosopher’. First read it before I went up to uni. (The actual philosophy can be a bit spotty to an insider but is never the main draw anyway.) Written in his breezily eloquent style for a lay audience and peppered with anecdotes about philosophers and life at Oxford (both as student and, later, don) and falling in love with Wagner and Schopenhauer and standing for Parliament and working at the BBC and grappling with the canon and writing a novel, etc., etc. Really vivid and touching portrait of a habitually earnest and contemplative 20th-c. figure who lived many lives and was personally invested in his intellectual problems.
Surely all your readers are going to be walking around Dublin in period costume on Bloomsday? I suspect that must be the reason there are still tickets for your Sandbrook event.
Absolutely mad in the best way. There was a period when British television assumed we would willingly spend an evening with philosophers, cathedrals, paintings. Have you watched Civilisation? Kenneth Clark now makes Simon Schama look like Graham Norton.
And theatre too. I love all those Play for the Day. When the BBC got a load of great actors and a director in a studio and created theatre for all. Amazing. BBC4 sometimes resurrects these, e.g. the recent Ibsen season. Juliet Stevenson in The Dolls House is such a treat.
Going on the watchlist.
I've had rather a boring day and was feeling sluggish. Thank you James for rebooting my brain and providing inspiration (and ideas) for a weekend of reading and thinking.
Just a quickie to say that painting of the tree by Samuel Palmer I almost included in my post about Hawthorn and then I took it out because I thought it was probably an apple tree! More later when I’ve had a proper read.
Enjoying your BBC Sounds podcast - as another young person interested in the decline of reading, it was reassuring to hear about your experience of also realising you’d forgotten how to read properly (I.e., deep reading). I was starting to conclude my attention was so fragmented, reading properly again would be a thing of the past - good to hear this isn’t a unique experience! Would be interested in your ‘how to learn to read again’ tips.
Sometimes the workings of Mr M's brain are well over my head. Not today. Baby Bear's porridge. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Welcome antidote to depressing news the PM has had a kicking. I've always been a bit embarrassed by being distracted by stuff such as hideous settees and claws with red talons. A comfort to know I am not alone. Although fascinated by Japan I had to stop watching Mr Portillo. I found his his nose more interesting .The piece about blind people and schizophrenia is an eye opener. Public Holiday here in France..why not the UK?.May 8, 1945, the Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany..
.
Can I just put in a shout here for Bryan Magee's autobiography? All 3 volumes, not just the first (Clouds of Glory) which though great, was widely discussed and reviewed. It's rare I've read a set of books that took me into their world, the author's successes and pleasures, so completely. I need more people to read these books.
James will your chat with Dominic Sandbrook go online at some point?
"WTF has happened to television in the last fifty years."
I believe my young friends on the Internet would summarise it as "capitalism, ho!" which I am told is something called a 'meme'...
Lynn Barber may be "sharp on people," but sometimes those sharp observations are things she made up, i.e., lies.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-14306115
Yes, and more than one interviewee complained about her.
Feel rather disappointed in myself that despite enjoying many aspects of your latest contribution (thank you) my outtake is that I rather like that sofa. Cognitive decline in full force :)
Authorship is "the ability to reach beyond one’s physical surroundings with one’s own ideas and opinions"? Then we should try to calculate how many people used to write letters. Surely today's bloggers and commenters are yesterday's epistlers? For that reason, I suspect that the author explosion is something of a mirage.
Loved the youtube video of that TV show. There must be a strong market for intellectual high-brow television, just as there is for podcasts right now.
James Baldwin used to appear on TV in the USA, in the 1960s and 1970s. Unimaginable now, for several reasons.
Another commenter here mentions Magee’s three volumes of memoirs. I often recommend Magee’s intellectual autobiography, ‘Confessions of a Philosopher’. First read it before I went up to uni. (The actual philosophy can be a bit spotty to an insider but is never the main draw anyway.) Written in his breezily eloquent style for a lay audience and peppered with anecdotes about philosophers and life at Oxford (both as student and, later, don) and falling in love with Wagner and Schopenhauer and standing for Parliament and working at the BBC and grappling with the canon and writing a novel, etc., etc. Really vivid and touching portrait of a habitually earnest and contemplative 20th-c. figure who lived many lives and was personally invested in his intellectual problems.
Surely all your readers are going to be walking around Dublin in period costume on Bloomsday? I suspect that must be the reason there are still tickets for your Sandbrook event.
So the airline industry never makes money, yet somehow continues. Not unlike The Times…