The Old Country, an Alan Bennett play that dates back to 1977, covers much the same ground as An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution. The central character is clearly based on one of the Cambridge Spies — in this case, a former Foreign Office official called Hilary, who is rotting away in the
English Touring Opera’s spring tour reached Cambridge the week after the undergraduates left for the Easter vacation, and, though I realise that enthusiasm for opera among students is fairly uncommon, I think there would have been enough curious ones to make the Arts Theatre less bleakly empty than it was for the second performance of
There has been a certain amount of controversy about this exhibition, the first Michelangelo show at the British Museum for 30 years. The exhibits are drawn almost entirely from the collections of three museums — the Teylers in Haarlem (where the exhibition was shown last year), the Ashmolean in Oxford and the BM itself. These
British gardeners are often accused of being parochial, and we rarely make much attempt to defend ourselves against the charge. We think it is probably true but wonder what anyone expects, considering the advantages of climate, soil and geography we enjoy and how beautiful our gardens can be as a result. It is scarcely surprising
