A tribute to Brian Magee, superb broadcaster and philosophy's great late 20th Century populariser

One of the unintended benefits of television being so monumentally lousy at the moment - and the fact that, no matter how hard I try, I can't find a single "original" film, drama series or documentary on Netflix or Amazon Prime I have any desire to watch - is that, apart from vintage films, most of my time slumped in front of the TV in recent weeks has been spent watching 20 to 30-year old BBC programmes featuring one very clever man discussing philosophy with even cleverer men, without the aid of graphics or filmed inserts or CGI or anyone dressing up in wigs and historical costumes or hilarious contributions from stand-up comics or a voiceover telling us "Time's running out - our two contestants have less than five minutes to sort out the mind-body identity problem!" An odd way to spend one's time, you might think - but, I assure you, most of these one-on-one interviews are rivetting. The very clever man is always Brian Magee...

The ten greatest/funniest/etc. operas I've recently watched, Part 2: Der Rosenkavalier, Bluebeard's Castle, Katya Kabanova, Wozzeck and Lady Macbeth of Mtensk

(You can find the first part of this post here.)

6. I hope I manage to squeeze in another viewing of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier (1911), which is, quite simply, one of the most enjoyable operas I've ever seen - and the music is certainly some of the loveliest I've ever heard. While Der Rosenkavalier harks back to frolicsome, melody-laden, semi-comic operas of earlier eras - in particular, to Mozart (as well as to more recent operettas, such as Franz Lehar's amusing soufflé, The Merry Widow), many of its themes are surprisingly adult - the way the Marschallin acknowledges the impending loss of her sexual allure by helping her young lover, Count Octavian, to unite him with his true love, the innocent Sophie (who's far closer to his own age), by helping him to prise the girl from the grasp of the her fiancé, the morally disgusting Baron Ochs, is truly touching...

The ten greatest/funniest/most interesting operas I've recently watched, Part 1: Parsifal, Orfeo and Euridice, The Barber of Seville, Der Freischutz and L'elisir d'amore

I have somehow managed to watch 35 operas since the end of November. I so enjoyed the experience of listening to the whole of The Ring Cycle on CD that I decided to try one or two others, and it just snowballed from there. I haven't enjoyed all of them - for a variety of reasons, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Donizetti's Lucia Di Lammermoor and Bellini's Norma all failed to hit the spot - but my response to the majority has been overwhelmingly positive. Here's the first half of my top ten:

The fat lady's been doing a lot of singing, because I'm in the middle of an extended Operathon: Aida, Carmen, and Giulio Cesare

I was so wildly enthused by listening to the whole of the Ring Cycle at the end of November, I decided to seek out a few more - only, this times, ones I hadn't already seen or heard. Given my somewhat obsessive nature, this turned out be 32 more operas between the start of December and yesterday morning, despite two hospice stints. My main guide as to what to watch has been a Guardian article, Top 50 Operas, by the paper's classical music critic, Fiona Maddocks, backed up by Rupert Christiansen's Faber Pocket Guide to Opera, Opera by Alan Riding and Leslie Downer (part of DK's Eyewitness Companions series), and Michael Tanner's The Faber Pocket Guide to Wagner - every one a winner. I haven't had to buy any DVDs, because every opera I've seen has been available on Sky Arts catch-up, YouTube, or as part of my Amazon Prime Video membership. I've learned a thing or two during the process:

Dear Western Feminazis - these brave Iranian women are what REAL feminists look like

Here, an Iranian women has had enough of being harassed by Morality Police penguins:

My cultural 2017: books, art, music, films (and sport)

Books: Fiction
Having set myself the goal of reading 25 novels I really should have read between 1st March 2017 and 28th February 2018, I have to report that I'm not going to make it. It seems that the emotional and intellectual effort required to fully engage with proper literature is simply too exhausting for me in my current enfeebled state. Still, I managed to read 19 of the titles before finally throwing in the sponge around the start of November. The most exciting discovery, for me, was probably Cormac McCarthy, whose All the Pretty Horses is a modern masterpiece.  My greatest relief was finding that my friend Christine Donougher's Penguin translation of Les Misérables is brilliant - utterly masterful.  My greatest feat, in terms of endurance, was finally reading Ulysses all the way through - and enjoying vast tranches of it. And my greatest surprises were rather enjoying Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and discovering just how funny David Copperfield is. One book which has stayed with me, despite my not enjoying it that much, is Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho - it has troubled my thoughts for months, and I rather wish I hadn't read it. My greatest disappointment was finding Henry James's The Wings of the Dove utterly unreadable - yet again...

Quentin Letts's New World Order from the latest edition of The Spectator is very funny...

Continued...

It would be tempting to kick our smug, silly, left-liberal arts establishment's enormous, self-satisfied arse

Apparently it's currently on display at Tate Britain, along with the other pretentious junk competing for this year's Turner Prize. The "winner" is due to be announced...

I'm a culturist - I believe some cultures are superior to others. So does the American writer and commentator Andrew Klavan.

I recently read Andrew Klavan's latest book, The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ.  As I try not to "do God" on this site (well, not overdo Him, anyway), I won't deal with the overtly religious parts of the book - fascinating though I found them, as they're full of parallels to and echoes of my own experience. I will, however, highlight his thoughts on culturism (i.e. the belief in the superiority of one's own cultural tradition to others) because they strike me as enormously sensible, wise and well-expressed - and extraordinarily important, given the success of the cultural and moral relativists who run so much of our national life in emptying our existence of meaning:

The 2015 Grønmark Blog Top 20 "Absolute Blister" Awards for Services to Bum-Holery

1. Angela Merkel, whose open invitation to Muslim immigrants turned a temporary crisis into an epic disaster set to rumble on for decades - or until European civilisation has been sundered from its Judeo-Christian cultural roots and turned into one enormous theocratic Third World slum. Thanks, Ange.

2. Black Lives Matter, for spreading the lie that racist, trigger-happy cops represent the greatest threat to American blacks, when cops are responsible for 4% of gun-related black deaths, while 87% are caused by other blacks. Motes and beams, race-hustlers.

I have a terrible admission to make : I've never read or seen Romeo and Juliet or Merchant of Venice all the way through!

I know what happens in Romeo & Juliet and Merchant of Venice, of course, but that's hardly the point. I have no idea why I've always avoided these two plays, but I intend to put it right in the New Year. I've only seen Taming of the Shrew as a film, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, so I probably need to read that as well.

A Shakespeare play topped the UK's cinema box office receipts on Thursday - Kenneth Branagh's "A Winter's Tale": it was great!

My wife organised the tickets for Thursday's simulcast of the live performance from the Garrick Theatre (in the heart of London's famed West End). We saw it at the Richmond Odeon, but it was available at another 519 cinemas across the UK, and more than 100 abroad. Sales of £1.1m meant that it beat the latest edition of The Hunger Games. Deservedly. I've never been to one of these simulcasts before, but I'd be happy to go again - it was terrific. Branagh's company mainly consists of young, relatively inexperienced actors (the pressure on them must have been immense), and a smattering of enormously experienced ones, including Branagh himself and Judi Dench.

When it comes to the need to experience Shakespeare on stage, Sir Ian McKellen is dead wrong

Ian McKellen as Richard III, apparently

Fruity thespian Sir Ian McKellen thinks the only way to truly experience Shakespeare plays is to see them performed on stage. Reading, he says, reduces them to “an examination subject”. As actors rarely talk nonsense, I’m surprised to find myself disagreeing with the old boy, but I do. I’ve seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream on stage several times (twice at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre alone), and it has always left me cold. I recently read it for the first time, only to discover that it is indeed a work of transcendent genius, as light, airy, joyous and gay (in its proper sense) as my favourite  opera, The Magic Flute. Not only that, but it actually made me laugh out loud (the rustic players performing Pyramus & Thisbe near the end, as you ask), something Shakespeare has only previously managed to make me do thanks to Orson Welles hamming it up as Falstaff on the battlefield in Chimes at Midnight and Roger Allam being sly as the same character in Henry IV, Part 2 (a televised recording of a performance at The Globe).

The English were speaking English before the Romans came - and the Anglo-Saxons didn't wipe out the Celts

Eight years ago I bought a paperback entitled The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language as the final item in a Waterstones threefer deal, mainly on the strength of the reviews on the cover: “The most outrageous book I have ever read” The Oldie; “The best rewriting of history since 1066 And All That” Fortean Times; “Mind-blowing, incredibly entertaining stuff” Daily Mail; “This book brings a blast of fresh air to British history” Rupert Sheldrake. Those comments all turned out to be accurate.

Some of my favourite paintings to add colour, drama, fun and beauty to an exceptionally dreary day

Sky Arts' excellent "Portrait Artist of the Year" is back for another series

Poems to read while micturating : No.1 "The Fall of Rome" by W.H. Auden

I have written this as a contribution to World Toilet Day - which is today, apparently:

One of the many things oldsters don't warn us chaps about when we're in the full vigour of youth is that it's quite likely you'll end up spending a lot more time peeing. Whereas you were once able to sleep through the night and wake up with a bursting bladder, you'll probably find yourself having to pay several visits between saying your prayers and the alarm going off. And when you "go" - or, if you prefer, wee, micturate, urinate, have a wazz, point percy at the porcleain, piddle, take a leak, spend a penny or pass water -  whatever time of the day it is, it may take you longer than it used to.

The Chiwsick Book Festival "A Literary War" quiz - here are the answers...

This year's book festival quiz was won by a very popular member of our congregation who triumphed by the simple expedient of getting every question right. I was astonished that anyone managed to score maximum points, given that I had set the questions and had included a few genuinely fiendish ones. Mind you, several people had predicted the winner - a retired doctor - based on his level of expertise: but that shouldn't detract from his considerable feat. For those of you who had a look at the quiz when I posted it some six weeks' ago (here), are the same set of questions - but this time followed by the answers, in bold (and I apologise for mentioning Ben Elton):

A LITERARY WAR QUIZ: Books, plays, poems and films about World War I

Here's the literary quiz I devised for the Chiswick Book Festival. You can't enter (sorry!), because you had to be there. But if you have an hour or two to while away, and have access to the internet (I'm not sure I'd have got more than 23 or 24 of the 55 available marks without recourse to the web - and I chose the questions!), it might amuse you to have a go. I'll be able to let you know how well you fared against the competition at the end of the month, and will provide the answers at the same time. Good luck!

A.N. Wilson at the Chiswick Book Festival - proof that manners, and a certain kind of Englishman, still exist

I was not at my sparkling best this weekend, and consequently missed the whole of the fifth Chiswick Book Festival, an annual event which is rapidly establishing itself as the urban/suburban version of the rather overblown Haye-on-Wye bunfight. There was something for everyone – A.N. Wilson discussing his new book on Queen Victoria, Peter Oborne on the history of the Pakistan cricket team, Bryony Gordon on her memoirs, The Wrong Knickers, historian Edward Young discussing Disraeli, DJ Simon Mayo on his children’s character Itch, Earl Spencer (who is either an American jazz pianist or the brother of the late Diana, Princess of Wales) on the fate of the men responsible for the execution of Charles I, and my brother’s favourite political commentator, Toby Young, on how to make sure your child gets the best out of primary school.