From ‘Schoolboy labour’, The Spectator, 12 May 1917: Work on the land, even though the time be stolen from books, will have a distinct educative value, because Public School boys are less handy than boys of the same age in a poorer class. Take boys of 15 in an agricultural district who work regularly on
Buririggu deshita. Suraibi tōbu Wēbu de gairu to gimburu shite, Nante mimuji na borogōbu, Mōmu rassu autoguraibimashita ne. If this looks familiar, it’s not surprising. This is the first verse of ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll, translated into Japanese by Noriko Watanabe. Ms Watanabe is a translator of children’s books living in Sendai, in the north
Ah, Blondie. Those happy days of glorious power pop, chilly disco and rich, fruity vocals — Debbie Harry yearning away like a very bad alleycat on heat. ‘X Offender’, ‘In the Flesh’, ‘Picture This’ and that one where she’s in the phone booth, apparently gagging for it. People knock it, but the late 1970s wasn’t
Coined in 1944, ‘completism’ is a modern term for a modern-day obsession. What began as a phenomenon of possession — whether of comic books, records or stamps — has evolved in the age of Spotify, Netflix and cloud computing. No activity defines current cultural trends better than binge-watching, completism taken to its logical extreme: art
Obsession at the Barbican has a complicated provenance. The experimental Belgian director Ivo van Hove adapted the show from a Visconti film based on the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. This version originated in Amsterdam and was rendered into English by a London playwright. The story mixes surrealism with torrid carnality. Sexy Hannah is
English Touring Opera is playing safe this spring, with Tosca and Patience, and was rewarded, in Cambridge at least, with full houses. Its Tosca has been moderately reviewed, and that is about what it deserves. There is only one set, designed primarily with the tableau of chorus and soloists at the end of Act One
Since completing season two of the brilliant Narcos, I’ve been unsuccessfully looking for a replacement serial drama that is more appealing than a bath and early bed. But the problem with TV these days is that series like Breaking Bad have set the bar so high that one ends up like a jaded emperor, forever
Imagine living in a country where the average age is under 16 (in the UK it’s currently 40 and increasing) so that everywhere you go you’re surrounded by teenagers. It sounds exhilarating. Such optimism and energy; the sheer vitality of young blood coursing through the streets. How brilliant, too, for a country to be unfettered
Of the great sporting imponderables that have come into clearer view over the past few days — will The Archers’ Lily Pargetter ever score any runs for Ambridge and herald a bold new world for women’s cricket? Will we see the first sub-two-hour marathon? — only one can be answered with clarity. As for hapless
I write this from my sick bed. Laid low with a vile lurgy, I feel far from well. And, sad to report, Mrs Ray is far from understanding. She says I should learn to be more stoical. I say she should learn to be more, well, sympathetic. It’s not my fault that I feel my
There are bigger entities landing at your local multiplex this week. An ancient indestructible franchise is re-re-(re-)booted in Alien: Covenant. In Jawbone, it’s seconds out for yet another boxing movie. Miss Sloane is that non-staple of the repertoire, a glossy feminist thriller about public relations. Something there for almost everyone. But there’s also a low-budget
How to solve the problem of an unlucky 13 people at dinner? Developing a rational mind is the obvious answer, but let’s pretend to be superstitious for a moment, because there’s fun to be had. And indeed money: in 19th-century Paris men known as quatorzièmes sat around in full evening dress, waiting for last-minute gigs
Spare a thought for Emil Gilels, still revered today by Russians as the foremost pianist of the Soviet era. The first to win a competition abroad (Brussels, 1938), Gilels was also first to be let out after Stalin died to reconnect cultural ties and earn hard dollars for the state coffers, of which he got
I had 20 good years supporting Manchester United but now I follow Arsenal, and I find the treatment of the magnificent Arsène Wenger by large sections of my fellow fans mystifying and depressing. I supported Manchester United because when Rupert Murdoch bought top-tier English football in the early 1990s and started marketing it aggressively at
If you want to appreciate why the return of Twin Peaks is so significant, then you need to know something of the background. And, no, not the background of the show itself, which rose and fell through two series before coming to a stop on 10 June 1991. Nor the background of its story, which
As the election campaign goes into full swing, we hear surprisingly little about the state of the UK economy — because the Tories can’t (and probably don’t need to) promise that they can make it any better in the medium term than it is now, while almost no one takes seriously what Labour has to
At a beautiful church service recently I encountered again a Gospel parable that left me, again, torn between sympathy and doubt. You will recognise Matthew 25: 35-40, for its phrasing has entered the idiom: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food … sick and you visited me … in prison and you came to
Tory activists last week were heard to refer to Mrs May as ‘Mummy’. No Corbynista calls their hero ‘Dad’. The human race is guided by myth as much as by logic, and mythology explains people to themselves more vividly than economics. The agony expressed in the liberal intelligent press is understandable. The sensible people who
The Global Wind Energy Council recently released its latest report, excitedly boasting that ‘the proliferation of wind energy into the global power market continues at a furious pace, after it was revealed that more than 54 gigawatts of clean renewable wind power was installed across the global market last year’. You may have got the
We were in a detention centre for migrants in Tripoli and we came to a big locked door. It was impressively bolted and padlocked. Someone murmured that we didn’t have time to look inside. But I felt somehow obliged to do so. Outside in the sun I had already said hello to about 100 migrants
