Mary Wakefield talks to Craigie Aitchison about Bedlingtons — and about his painting By five o’clock last Thursday evening, Craigie Aitchison and I had been talking about dogs for nearly an hour. It was grey outside but, inside, the pink walls of Craigie’s sitting room glowed in the orange light of an electric fire, and
Georg Gerster (born 1928) is a Swiss photographer who specialises in shooting from above. For more than 40 years he has been taking aerial photographs, and has flown over 111 countries. Concentrating on archaeological and heritage sites, Gerster has made what might accurately be called an ‘overview’ that has greatly enhanced our archaeological understanding. His
In November 1905, in the Galerie Ernst Arnold, four young architecture students from the Dresden Technical School had their first encounter with Vincent van Gogh. Only six months earlier, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Fritz Bleyl had formed an avant-garde artists’ group, Die Brücke (The Bridge), to represent ‘all who express directly
Any article about a production of Wagner’s Ring cycle has to begin by saying that it is the supreme challenge a company can face, and how much more so when the company is based in a remote foreign city, and flies in to mount the tetralogy a few hours after it has been performing something
Periodically, Radio Three sails into stormy waters, a section of its listeners taking a dislike to some new policy intiative and crying ‘dumbed down’. Off the top of my head, I can remember the phasing out of the old talks department; the threat to the regional BBC orchestras; the greater emphasis on jazz; the general
Some playwrights mellow with age, but not David Hare. His sense of righteous indignation knows no bounds. According to press reports, the reason he decided to open his latest play on Broadway is that he still bears a grudge against Nicholas Hytner for refusing to schedule more performances of Stuff Happens at the National. Alas,
It was one of those perfect New York days that make you feel grateful to be alive. I’d eaten my favourite breakfast — pancakes with maple syrup and crispy bacon — then salved my conscience with a huge bowl of fresh fruit, and was now taking a post-prandial walk in Central Park. The sky was
There’s a programme I sometimes do on the right-wing guerilla media website 18 Doughty Street which I think you might enjoy. It’s called Culture Clash, presented by Peter Whittle, and it’s a bit like Newsnight Review would be if you took away the pseudery, the left-liberal cant and Ekow Eshun. Obviously, the production values are
