| | | From torment to pleasure: how playing the violin became part of me | | by Fiona Maddocks Jan 2, 2022 | | A bullying teacher almost made our classical music critic give up playing as a child but when she switched lessons for making music with friends she discovered true delight I had an uncle who, intermittently and not necessarily simultaneously, wore a kilt and played the violin. Each to me was exotic – twin roads to freedom from the dullness of a prosaic, southern English childhood. For a short time I took up highland dancing, with real swords and modest skill. I was seven when I begged to be allowed to join the new string class at school. Above all, I wanted the “equipment”: an eighth-sized violin and silk scarf to wrap it in, bow, spare strings, heavy wooden case with green felt lining (just as I’d wanted the kilt, jacket, sporran, jabot and special laced shoes for dancing). The other children soon dropped out, bored by playing long, slow notes on open strings. It was deadly indeed and sounded awful. There’s no quick path to becoming even a modestly accomplished violinist. Left on my own, things progressed. The nice teacher complimented me on my “good ear” as I sawed through Will Ye No Come Back Again. I won a place at the junior department of a London conservatoire, going by myself, aged 11 until I left school, every Saturday morning: negotiating public transport, having breakfast in cafes and spending the afternoon wandering up and down Charing Cross Road, wondering at the mysterious rubber “health” objects (health meaning sex) hidden at the back of seedier secondhand bookshops. It was an education. It was, too, a wonder I escaped unscathed. A few creepy flashers aside, I was left alone. Continue reading... | | | | | Write it All Down by Cathy Rentzenbrink review – an arm around the shoulder for aspiring authors | | by Alex Preston Jan 2, 2022 | | This wise and generous book eschews the usual advice on structure and encourages new writers to open their hearts In the weeks after my grandfather died in 2019, I spent a melancholy few days sorting through the “Gramps” section of my filing cupboard, mainly the many letters he’d sent to me over the years. It was a way, I suppose, of continuing the 40-year conversation we’d had about books, of keeping his voice loud in my mind. One letter struck me with particular force, though – a page and a half in response to a short story I’d sent him aged 10. It was typical of his letters about my writing: warm yet forthright in its criticism, even at this early stage showing something that I came to recognise as a gift – the fact that he took me seriously as an author, that this was feedback from one writer to another. It’s one of the central messages in Cathy Rentzenbrink’s wise and generous book about the writer’s life, Write it All Down; this idea that one of the hardest things for a writer to do is to take themselves and their work seriously. There is, as she acknowledges early on here, an awful lot of snake oil sold in the creative writing industry: “Books that are too focused on structure make me want to cry,” she says. “Their authors seem to enjoy discussing the classical three-act structure, protagonists and antagonists and all that, but it is just too cold a way to go about things for me, and I know it would never lead to anything good.” Write it All Down is not a book that gives you structure; rather it helps the aspirant writer fashion a vessel into which they might safely pour the contents of their heart. Continue reading... | | | | | The Electrical Life of Louis Wain review – a portrait of the artist as a delusional cat lover | | by Wendy Ide Jan 2, 2022 | | Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy star in this affecting biopic of the Victorian painter whose enthusiasms were overtaken by mental illness A hundred-plus years before cat memes became ubiquitous, the work of the artist Louis Wain was the advance guard in a feline charm offensive. His playful, anthropomorphised illustrations of grinning kittens took Victorian society by storm. This suitably eccentric biopic from director and co-writer Will Sharpe, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role, takes Wain’s art as an initial visual key, but goes further, using everything from a heightened palette to woozy Dutch camera angles to shimmering auras to convey Wain’s unsteady mental state. The artist was, not to put too fine a point on it, delusional. As the film tells it, he believed that cats were evolving to communicate with humans, and that they would ultimately turn blue; he was obsessed with the idea of electricity, but believed it to be a free-floating entity that drifted around the ether. But in all the churning chaos in Wain’s mind, there was a place of calm reserved for his wife, Emily (Claire Foy). Through her, and their all-too-brief marriage, he was able to tune out the noise and into the beauty of the world around him. Like Wain’s art, the film is superficially twee – characters are referred to as “nosy poseys” at one point – but under the kitsch is something more rewarding: an affecting portrait of a creative but troubled man. Continue reading... | | | | | Villagers fight to keep BBC Victorian Farm in business | | by James Tapper Jan 2, 2022 | | The Shropshire tourist attraction and working farm was closed down after an E coli outbreak and campaigners fear it may never reopen Of the handful of historic working farms in the UK, Acton Scott Farm is perhaps the best known. The Shropshire farm was the setting for the BBC series Victorian Farm, and generations of schoolchildren have visited the rolling Shropshire hills to see the shire horses plough the fields and the dairymaid milk the cows. Yet the future of the farm is in serious doubt. Shropshire council, which runs the farm, shut it down in June after an outbreak of E coli and there are no plans to reopen it. Continue reading... | | | | | Female conductor takes the helm in first for Italian opera | | by Angela Giuffrida in Rome Jan 2, 2022 | | Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv makes history with three-year posting at Bologna’s Teatro Comunale A female conductor will take the helm at an Italian opera house for the first time in January. The Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv said she was surprised to learn she was making history after receiving the offer from the Teatro Comunale opera house in Bologna. The 43-year-old begins the three-year posting as musical director on 22 January. Continue reading... | | | | | The BBC's Ros Atkins: 'I do a bit of body-boarding… posting videos is like catching a wave' | | by Michael Hogan Jan 2, 2022 | | The journalist behind those ‘explainer’ videos on seeing his No 10 Christmas party video go viral, being a drum’n’bass DJ and wearing ‘an awful lot’ of blue Ros Atkins, 47, grew up in Cornwall and the Caribbean before reading history at Cambridge. His BBC career began on Radio 5 Live shortly after 9/11. He now presents Outside Source on the BBC News Channel and recently went viral for his “explainer” videos, broadcast on BBC Breakfast and posted online. He lives in south London with his wife and two daughters. How are you finding newfound fame?
Well, I’ve neither been mobbed nor chased down the street, but it’s always pleasant if people pay attention to what you do. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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