This Saturday’s Eurovision contest was never going to be a triumph for the UK, that much was for certain. What was slightly surprising, however, was the Danish victory with their song Only Teardrops
The song might have been one of the favourites to win, but the triumph of what Fraser Nelson described as a collaboration between ‘one of Scotland’s world class folk musicians’ and ‘the voice of a rising star of the Danish folk scene’. In this week’s arts lead Emma Hartley interviewed Eurovision winner Emmelie de Forest’s mentor, Fraser Neill, about the making of a very Scottish performer. Here’s a video of the two of them performing
Anne Boleyn was, allegedly, one of Henry VIII’s favourite wives; so why did he behead her? We’d have to rewind time to find out, but for now, the Tower of London have decided to convert their Banqueting Hall into a theatre, and to stage a play following the rise – and fall – of Anne Boleyn. Novelty it may be, but this doesn’t stop it from being an impressive play, as Lloyd Evans says in his review of it this week.
If Anne Boleyn were alive now, her life might have been recorded on one of Alan Dein’s Radio 4 programmes. His most recent series, Don’t Log Off, revolves around the world of internet chatrooms. As Kate Chisholm discovers in her radio review this weeks, the methodology leads him to a variety of bizarre characters, but what is most intriguing about them is ‘how frank Alan’s conversational partners are prepared to be, disclosing the most intimate and sometimes shocking details of their lives’. Here’s a clip from one of his most recent programmes, in which a Cairo interview is interrupted by gunshots.
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