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Whisper or scream

Robin Holloway

Wednesday, 25th June 2008

Robin Holloway attends the Spanish premiere of Helmut Lachenmann's Little Match Girl

Back to the Match Girl’s longest quart d’heure of all, the terminal subsidence via clicks and whispers into actual silence. Well: ‘if the fool would persist...’ But the only message received here through such pertinacity is that the poor crowd, blunted into submission, must perforce continue to proclaim that the Emperor’s nakedness is indeed resplendent with content in every sense. The small vociferous audience certainly evinced contentment at the end, in a reception as ardent as partisan. It was good to see the Grim One smile; and even live up to his paradoxical name. Maybe Lachenmann is laughing all the way back to his lovely hideaway on Lago Maggiore? ‘Got them again!’

Beyond the Work of One — Oxford College Libraries and their Benefactors

The Bodleian Library, Oxford, until 1 November, admission free

A few years ago, my old tutor, the much- missed Angus Macintyre of Magdalen College, gave me a letter that meant I could get into the Codrington Library — Nicholas Hawksmoor’s 1716 gem at All Souls: Gothic on the outside, classical on the inside. At the end of the letter, he wrote, ‘Welcome to the loveliest room in Europe!’

He was quite right; although other Oxford libraries run the Codrington a close joint second. The only problem is, it’s tricky getting inside them to have a gawp at their treasures without one of these letters.

How lovely that the treasures have now been hoiked out and put on display in a pretty little corner of the Bodleian Library’s Old Schools Quadrangle. And what treasures have been allowed out from 27 college collections, a Private Hall, the Oxford Union and the Bodleian Library. How odd it is to have 30 world-class libraries in a city of fewer than 150,000 people.

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Food for thought

Simon Hoggart

My favourite programme last week was France on a Plate (BBC4, Sunday) in which Dr Andrew Hussey investigated the link between gastronomy and la gloire; French glory and destiny.