Tim Atkinson's Blog, page 10
May 22, 2019
Slow moment...
It was on this day in 1950 that the world premiere of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs was given at the Royal Albert Hall. They really were his last: the composer died in 1949 a year before the first performance.
Kisrten Flagstad was the soloist on that occasion, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler.
This performance os September - the final song to be written although not the final one to be sung in a complete performance - is by Lucia Poppyseeds,, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas...
Kisrten Flagstad was the soloist on that occasion, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler.
This performance os September - the final song to be written although not the final one to be sung in a complete performance - is by Lucia Poppyseeds,, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas...
May 5, 2019
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra...
A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella - James Joyce
Umbrella by Will Self
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'm not sure what to say about this. It takes your breath away and twists your brain, delights, frustrates, amazes and baffles in pretty equal measure. But you soon get into an easy rhythm of not letting anything, any of the abundant details, get too distracting, of simply absorbing the text, absorbing the tale, soaking up the story until you realise you're in another world and the world is very much like your own but at the same time, totally different. Reading this book is a bit like having a dream: you know it's not real but it still feels real and you react as if everything was real. Writing my own book about the Great War I was so immersed in some of the research I did that it sometimes leeched into my dreams, with facts and images reflected in the sort of distorting mirrors you used to get at fairs. Umbrella is in some ways like one of those dreams, the machine-gun Stanley Death operates is "their new love – Vicky. Death and his section were taught to dash forward when the whistle blew, release the ratchet that secured her front legs so they could be swung open and then fixed by tightening it again. Sitting there, as Death, Stanley removed the pins from her raven hair, and the Number Two ran up and placed her body on top of her legs, her body – her death-dealing body, her 28-pound body"; with Vicky Stanley Death is "raining down death on a Daimler he cannot see but which he is busily disassembling, his bullets methodically shearing off one mudguard, then the next, drilling out the spokes from the wheels, unbolting those wheels from their axles, hammering the chassis into scrap, and finally pulverising its engine into all its component parts". In a way it's all Craig Raine's Martian and his postcards home, but what a Martian. What a series of successive observations of war, time, memory, family, mental illness, society. Umbrella isn't billed as a war book because it's so much more than that. But it is a war book and as good a book about the Great War as has probably been written.
View all my reviews
Umbrella by Will SelfMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'm not sure what to say about this. It takes your breath away and twists your brain, delights, frustrates, amazes and baffles in pretty equal measure. But you soon get into an easy rhythm of not letting anything, any of the abundant details, get too distracting, of simply absorbing the text, absorbing the tale, soaking up the story until you realise you're in another world and the world is very much like your own but at the same time, totally different. Reading this book is a bit like having a dream: you know it's not real but it still feels real and you react as if everything was real. Writing my own book about the Great War I was so immersed in some of the research I did that it sometimes leeched into my dreams, with facts and images reflected in the sort of distorting mirrors you used to get at fairs. Umbrella is in some ways like one of those dreams, the machine-gun Stanley Death operates is "their new love – Vicky. Death and his section were taught to dash forward when the whistle blew, release the ratchet that secured her front legs so they could be swung open and then fixed by tightening it again. Sitting there, as Death, Stanley removed the pins from her raven hair, and the Number Two ran up and placed her body on top of her legs, her body – her death-dealing body, her 28-pound body"; with Vicky Stanley Death is "raining down death on a Daimler he cannot see but which he is busily disassembling, his bullets methodically shearing off one mudguard, then the next, drilling out the spokes from the wheels, unbolting those wheels from their axles, hammering the chassis into scrap, and finally pulverising its engine into all its component parts". In a way it's all Craig Raine's Martian and his postcards home, but what a Martian. What a series of successive observations of war, time, memory, family, mental illness, society. Umbrella isn't billed as a war book because it's so much more than that. But it is a war book and as good a book about the Great War as has probably been written.
View all my reviews
Will Self Umbrella
A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella - James Joyce
Umbrella by Will Self
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'm not sure what to say about this. It takes your breath away and twists your brain, delights, frustrates, amazes and baffles in pretty equal measure. But you soon get into an easy rhythm of not letting anything, any of the abundant details, get too distracting, of simply absorbing the text, absorbing the tale, soaking up the story until you realise you're in another world and the world is very much like your own but at the same time, totally different. Reading this book is a bit like having a dream: you know it's not real but it still feels real and you react as if everything was real. Writing my own book about the Great War I was so immersed in some of the research I did that it sometimes leeched into my dreams, with facts and images reflected in the sort of distorting mirrors you used to get at fairs. Umbrella is in some ways like one of those dreams, the machine-gun Stanley Death operates is "their new love – Vicky. Death and his section were taught to dash forward when the whistle blew, release the ratchet that secured her front legs so they could be swung open and then fixed by tightening it again. Sitting there, as Death, Stanley removed the pins from her raven hair, and the Number Two ran up and placed her body on top of her legs, her body – her death-dealing body, her 28-pound body"; with Vicky Stanley Death is "raining down death on a Daimler he cannot see but which he is busily disassembling, his bullets methodically shearing off one mudguard, then the next, drilling out the spokes from the wheels, unbolting those wheels from their axles, hammering the chassis into scrap, and finally pulverising its engine into all its component parts". In a way it's all Craig Raine's Martian and his postcards home, but what a Martian. What a series of successive observations of war, time, memory, family, mental illness, society. Umbrella isn't billed as a war book because it's so much more than that. But it is a war book and as good a book about the Great War as has probably been written.
View all my reviews
Umbrella by Will SelfMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'm not sure what to say about this. It takes your breath away and twists your brain, delights, frustrates, amazes and baffles in pretty equal measure. But you soon get into an easy rhythm of not letting anything, any of the abundant details, get too distracting, of simply absorbing the text, absorbing the tale, soaking up the story until you realise you're in another world and the world is very much like your own but at the same time, totally different. Reading this book is a bit like having a dream: you know it's not real but it still feels real and you react as if everything was real. Writing my own book about the Great War I was so immersed in some of the research I did that it sometimes leeched into my dreams, with facts and images reflected in the sort of distorting mirrors you used to get at fairs. Umbrella is in some ways like one of those dreams, the machine-gun Stanley Death operates is "their new love – Vicky. Death and his section were taught to dash forward when the whistle blew, release the ratchet that secured her front legs so they could be swung open and then fixed by tightening it again. Sitting there, as Death, Stanley removed the pins from her raven hair, and the Number Two ran up and placed her body on top of her legs, her body – her death-dealing body, her 28-pound body"; with Vicky Stanley Death is "raining down death on a Daimler he cannot see but which he is busily disassembling, his bullets methodically shearing off one mudguard, then the next, drilling out the spokes from the wheels, unbolting those wheels from their axles, hammering the chassis into scrap, and finally pulverising its engine into all its component parts". In a way it's all Craig Raine's Martian and his postcards home, but what a Martian. What a series of successive observations of war, time, memory, family, mental illness, society. Umbrella isn't billed as a war book because it's so much more than that. But it is a war book and as good a book about the Great War as has probably been written.
View all my reviews
May 2, 2019
Get Your Kids to Eat Anything
Yes, anything. Well, not exactly anything. But stuff you want them to eat, stuff that's good for them, stuff that does them good.
That's the premiss of this excellent book from Emily Leary and that's what it (she) promises. Follow the 5-Phase Programme set out by Emily in this new book and mealtimes will ultimately cease to be battlegrounds and instead become a haven of healthy options where 'new is the new norm.'
In spite of having regular, round-the-table, family meals and trying my best to vary the menu, I've begun to find my children expressing some frustrating preferences. We've always gone for a 'try it first' approach and kept our part of the bargain. After all, that's given us a table of avid olive eaters (I'm sure they thought they were grapes at first) along with other exotica so it can't be classed a total failure.
But stuff they liked, stuff I cooked and stuff that was good for them has begun to be rejected. Broccoli, for instance. Now I know it's not everyone's cup-of-tea (President George Bush Snr being just one) but it was a quick and simple, healthy vegetable accompaniment to almost anything. One I could rely on. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I did (rely on it, that is) too often.
So Emily's book has arrived at a good time and we're about to embark on the five-phase programme and get our kids to 'Eat Anything'.
Well, almost anything.
I don't think they'll be asking for broccoli anytime soon, but who knows?
Watch this space!
That's the premiss of this excellent book from Emily Leary and that's what it (she) promises. Follow the 5-Phase Programme set out by Emily in this new book and mealtimes will ultimately cease to be battlegrounds and instead become a haven of healthy options where 'new is the new norm.'
In spite of having regular, round-the-table, family meals and trying my best to vary the menu, I've begun to find my children expressing some frustrating preferences. We've always gone for a 'try it first' approach and kept our part of the bargain. After all, that's given us a table of avid olive eaters (I'm sure they thought they were grapes at first) along with other exotica so it can't be classed a total failure.
But stuff they liked, stuff I cooked and stuff that was good for them has begun to be rejected. Broccoli, for instance. Now I know it's not everyone's cup-of-tea (President George Bush Snr being just one) but it was a quick and simple, healthy vegetable accompaniment to almost anything. One I could rely on. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I did (rely on it, that is) too often.
So Emily's book has arrived at a good time and we're about to embark on the five-phase programme and get our kids to 'Eat Anything'.
Well, almost anything.
I don't think they'll be asking for broccoli anytime soon, but who knows?
Watch this space!
April 22, 2019
How now, brown cow?
Some time ago I wrote an article for the literary magazine Boundless. It was about accents, dialect, vernacular and speech. It still is And it's been published today.
So why dunt thee 'ave a neb?
https://unbound.com/boundless/2019/04/22/accents/
So why dunt thee 'ave a neb?
https://unbound.com/boundless/2019/04/22/accents/
March 31, 2019
A Thousand Blended Notes
Some poems for the start of April, read by Robin Holmes. Holmes - who was an announcer on BBC Radio 3 for many years - used to select and recite a small group of seasonal poems each month and they were broadcast to fill the off five-minutes air-time:during the interval of a concert, say (now they just play a CD).
I wrote to the BBC a few years ago to see if they still had the tapes. They haven't. They were wiped. But then I found a couple lurking on recordings I'd made on cassette off-air of concerts I was in. (I used to sing with the Liverpool Phil.)
Here's one of them.
I wrote to the BBC a few years ago to see if they still had the tapes. They haven't. They were wiped. But then I found a couple lurking on recordings I'd made on cassette off-air of concerts I was in. (I used to sing with the Liverpool Phil.)
Here's one of them.
March 26, 2019
The Lads in their Hundreds
It's A.E.Housman's birthday. He would have been 160.
His poetry isn't particularly popular today. His short lyrics, his rhyme and metre hark back to a much earlier age and can sound dated. But the sentiments are every bit as relevant, eternal in their scope and beautifully, eternally preserved in Housman's poetry.
He was always a favourite of composers, never more so than in the case of George Butterworth (killed on the Somme in 1916). But the lads in their hundreds aren't going off to fight in the First World War. Their conflict is earlier, the Boer Wars in South Africa.
But the sentiments are the same. No wonder the pocket edition of 'A Shropshire Lad' was long the most-carried books by troops in the First War trenches.
His poetry isn't particularly popular today. His short lyrics, his rhyme and metre hark back to a much earlier age and can sound dated. But the sentiments are every bit as relevant, eternal in their scope and beautifully, eternally preserved in Housman's poetry.
He was always a favourite of composers, never more so than in the case of George Butterworth (killed on the Somme in 1916). But the lads in their hundreds aren't going off to fight in the First World War. Their conflict is earlier, the Boer Wars in South Africa.
But the sentiments are the same. No wonder the pocket edition of 'A Shropshire Lad' was long the most-carried books by troops in the First War trenches.
March 20, 2019
Putney Sofka Zinovieff
Putney by Sofka ZinovieffMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I approach books that have been 'hyped' with caution. Many of the books I think I should enjoy, admire, devour become turgid feats of endurance. Others, often books picked up on a whim, become page-turning treasures. This is one book that straddles both categories: it came recommended (highly) but I only started reading it on a whim the other day. But then couldn't stop. Literally couldn't stop until I got to the end. It was like a reading marathon, complete with runners' high. To say anything ordinary about the book seems inadequate. It's got depth, atmosphere, plot, twists, ideas and poetry. I suppose if I was to have one criticism it is that it ultimately comes to a rather predictable conclusion, after starting with a boundary-destroying daring that is almost breathtaking. Still, well worth reading. (Approach with caution!)
View all my reviews
March 8, 2019
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Or, if you prefer, factum Romanis quid nobis bono?
Well, there's the aqueduct. And there's Horrible Histories. I mean, where would HH be without the Romans to make fun of. (I know, I know, they've got - like - the whole of history to have a go at, but still... the Romans are a pretty big part of it. Big enough, in fact, to warrant an entire film all to themselves.
Yes, the award-winning Horrible Histories comes to the big screen this summer (July - named, of course, after Julius Caesar, but you knew that... didn't you? - 26th to be precise).
Here's a teaser...
Well, there's the aqueduct. And there's Horrible Histories. I mean, where would HH be without the Romans to make fun of. (I know, I know, they've got - like - the whole of history to have a go at, but still... the Romans are a pretty big part of it. Big enough, in fact, to warrant an entire film all to themselves.
Yes, the award-winning Horrible Histories comes to the big screen this summer (July - named, of course, after Julius Caesar, but you knew that... didn't you? - 26th to be precise).
Here's a teaser...
March 6, 2019
Lord, Have Mercy...
It's that time of year again. Ok, it might not be the best music ever written and it might not even be being sung at the service for which it was written, but it's become synonymous with the start of Lent and not just since Roy Goodman jogged off the rugger pitch into King's chapel and recorded what became the stand-out version for many years.
If you want to hear boys today since top Cs then listen to the Today programme this morning. (Lord have mercy on the BBC producer who made these lads do one of the most difficult things in music at five to nine in the morning... in a bloody broom cupboard!)
Personally, I've always preferred girls...
If you want to hear boys today since top Cs then listen to the Today programme this morning. (Lord have mercy on the BBC producer who made these lads do one of the most difficult things in music at five to nine in the morning... in a bloody broom cupboard!)
Personally, I've always preferred girls...
