Michel Foucault (1926-84) was a French thinker, one of the “postmodernists”. Not really a philosopher so much as a cultural critic. With his bald head and thick glasses, he certain cut a striking image....

The most accessible genres of classical music are those which combine music with drama – namely ballet and opera. These forms combine pure music with a storyline and a visual feast.   Operas are quite...

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) Alessandro was a great composer of vocal music – operas, cantatas, oratorios and motets. Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) But “Scarlatti” usually refers to Alessandro’s...

When I came across this book by chance, I pounced on it! It was written in french shortly after Chopin’s death in 1849, and represents Liszt’s only full-length book (he wrote several essays and programme...

Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto together in 1848. It’s punchy and readable. It starts “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism”, and finishes “The workers have nothing to...

We drove down the A13 from Paris and spent a few hours in Fécamp on a cold sunny day in March. This port town might not be at the top of the list when it comes to Normandy’s most scenic destinations, but...

A sizeable proportion of Bach’s oeuvre was written for the organ, and this in itself is a good enough reason for us to familiarise ourselves with the instrument. Playing an organ in a church can also be...

There are of course many styles of cookery books, but almost all of them suffer from the same shortcomings. Like anyone who enjoys preparing food, I have my library of cookery books. I’ve thrown a lot...

Has the sun gone down on the City of Light? Is it overrated?   I’ve been living in Paris these last 20 years. I could write volumes on the great things about this place, from the architecture to the restaurants,...

It’s tempting to try to describe the music we love, and we can build up a battery of seemingly useful vocabulary to do so. We might describe a melody as brash, exuberant, lush, rhapsodic, kitsch, lyrical...

In the last few decades many in the West have looked askance at their stressful materialistic lives and turned to the East for answers. We try out yoga and mindfulness retreats. We study the interior decorating...

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is simply the greatest name in English literature. He is remembered above all for his incredible collection of plays. Many were published during his lifetime – the so called...

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) popularised his brand of existentialism in various ways – through his philosophical writings and also through his novels (“La Nausée”) and plays (“Huis clos”, “Les mains sales”)....

Before overcome by manic depression and ending up in an asylum, probably brought on by the syphilis he suffered from his whole life, Robert Schumann (1810-56) wrote a lot of wonderful music. As a general...

Today I’d like to talk about Alain de Botton’s best selling “The consolations of philosophy” which came out back in 2000, accompanied by a TV series. It’s a charming book and easy to read – unusual...

The early days – TV as education The availability and affordability of TVs increased after the war, and most families in England were watching TV by the ‘50s. Both radio and television in the early days...

Time zones The idea is a simple one. We want 12.00 noon to correspond roughly to when the sun is at its highest in the sky. To achieve this, we divide the world up into 24 time zones, each one an hour...

How ballets are born Ballets come into existence in two ways:   a composer specifically writes orchestral music intended for ballet (eg Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake). It is then choreographed by a famous choreographer...

The Romans settled in Lutetia (Lutèce in French, modern-day Paris) around 52 BC during the Gallic Wars led by Caesar. Till then the area around the Ile de la Cité had been settled by a Celtic tribe known...

It’s simply one of the worst styles of architecture to have been inflicted on Europe and America.   Neo-Classicism spans roughly the years 1750 to 1850. After the public got fed up with the vulgarity of...