What’s in a name?
I answered quite happily to the name Michael until I was about thirteen when I decided I’d prefer to be known as Mike. If nothing else it was quicker to write and easier to spell. My… Read more »
Category: Popular Culture
Serviette or Napkin
It is one of the burning issues of our age, whether a properly brought up person (like what all readers of this blog are certain to be) should refer to… Read more »
Ballad of Bethnal Green
‘Extraordinary how potent cheap music is’ observed Amanda, a character in Noel Coward’s Private Lives. It’s also extraordinary how a piece of music you haven’t thought about for decades suddenly chirrups back into… Read more »
Always leave them wanting more…
I can’t really understand the appeal of ‘binge-watching’ – viewing a complete tv series (or box-set) in one sitting. This is clearly an example of the modern desire for instant… Read more »
I Go – I Come Back!
“I go – I come back” was one of the phrases born out of the whimsically surreal and satirical radio series It’s That Man Again (ITMA) which entertained wartime and… Read more »
Phew what a scorcher…
The famous headline apparently was never used in quite quite that form which is a bit of a blow, but it’s certainly been quoted as such ever since. And (as… Read more »
The Deadly Tale of the tortoise, the aubergine and the conductor’s baton
Tim Dowling in his Weekend world column in the Guardian recently wrote about his wife’s tortoise: In the 23 years we lived at our old house the tortoise was… Read more »
Children’s Favourite?
I doubt that many of the Dan Brown fans who visit the Temple Church ever notice the wooden plaque recording the fact that it was here in 1927 that one… Read more »
Things we forgot to remember
I’m interested to see whether this year’s Last Night of the Proms (on Saturday 9 September) takes up last year’s invented tradition when a good number of European flags mingled… Read more »