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Friday 9 January 2009

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Family business

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 3rd September 2008

Painting Family: The De Brays, Master Painters of 17th Century Holland
Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 5 October

Cecil Collins — A Centenary Exhibition
Monnow Valley Arts Centre, Middle Hunt House, Walterstone, Nr Abergavenny, Herefordshire, until 14 September

This is the last chance to see a Centenary Exhibition of Collins’s work at Monnow Valley Arts Centre. His work depicts a world of angels and envisioned souls, radiant energies and hope. That considerable poet and Blake scholar, Kathleen Raine, stated that: ‘His paintings are icons, for they are informed by spiritual presence, he has penetrated into a luminous world of archetypal forms. The purpose of Cecil Collins’s work is anamnesis, the awakening of imaginative reflections: he is a painter of the lost paradise.’ These are landscapes of the heart, visions of other levels of consciousness. Collins could draw with great authority (see his pen and ink ‘Hymn’ of 1944), but his images are evocative rather than recognisably descriptive. His characters pursue their spiritual quests. The fool is a pilgrim and the pilgrim is a poet and the world is full of poetic possibilities. In the lunatic hurry of our daily lives, it’s not a bad idea to pause for contemplation. Cecil Collins offers good reason for doing just that.

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Community living

Kate Chisholm

Kate Chisholm reviews recents radio broadcasts

Recent loves

Marcus Berkmann

Marcus Berkmann presents his records of 2008

Question time

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Slumdog Millionaire
15, Nationwide

Crowd pleaser

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Cecilia Bartoli
Barbican

Turandot
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The Cordelia Dream
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Sunset Boulevard
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Tristan und Isolde
Royal Festival Hall

Hänsel und Gretel second cast
Royal Opera House

After Baby P: the crisis in child foster care

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Mary Wakefield talks to a courageous woman who blew the whistle on the deep systemic failures in the foster care service — and whose only reward was to be hounded and vilified

In perfect harmony

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Henrietta Bredin talks to the conductor Brad Cohen, who mentored Alex James in Maestro

Wexford winner

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Tom Sutcliffe on the new opera house in Wexford, Ireland

IPod dilemma

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A musician friend of mine acquired his first iPod recently, and like small boys who don’t realise that everyone else went through this about five years ago, he and I frequently discuss our battles with the things.