The Green Fields of France
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?In some faithful heart is your memory enshrinedAnd though you died back in 1916To that loyal heart are you always 19Or… Read more »
Category: Music
Hello Children – Everywhere….
Those opening words and the heartily jolly tune Puffing Billy which preceded them are symbols of a Fifties childhood as evocative as Meccano, balaclava helmets and chilblains. Every Saturday morning… 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 »
Moss Side Story
It was a terraced house in Marcia Street, on the edge of Moss Side in Manchester, just behind Whitworth Park. And it was the late 1960s. The house and the… 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 »
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 »