Category: people

“She agreed to play in the concert but prepared a gesture of protest that was characteristically elegant. She commissioned an encore for solo violin from a Georgian composer, Igor Loboda, titled ‘Requiem for Ukraine,’ which she performed after her concerto — as Mr. Gergiev stood in the wings.”

Hughes “travelled to West Africa and Europe, before returning to the US taking various jobs before meeting the poet Vachel Lindsay while working as a busboy at a Washington hotel. Lindsay was impressed with Hughes’ work.”

The actress – whose death at age 82 trended on Twitter – had a career that “spanned decades on the small screen and in theatre and films, including box office hits such as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves starring as the witch Mortiana. She won a Bafta for best actress in 1991 for her role in the TV serial of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.”

“The 59-year-old was conducting at a concert given by a Swiss youth orchestra in Lucerne, when he fell dramatically to the ground. An audience member rushed to his aid, but the musician died in an ambulance on the way to hospital.”

“[He was] the husky-voiced ‘King of Kitsch’ whose avalanche of music, verse and spoken-word recordings in the 1960s and ’70s overwhelmed critical mockery and made him an Oscar-nominated songwriter and one of the best-selling poets in history.”

Jonathan Jones: “Why does Wolf Hall demonise one of the most brilliant and forward-looking of all Renaissance people? Its caricature of Thomas More as a charmless prig, a humourless alienating nasty piece of work, is incredibly unfair. You only have to consider one of Hans Holbein’s greatest works to see this.”

“The Thorn Birds, which has never been out of print, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 20 languages. In hardcover, it spent more than a year on the New York Times best-seller list; the paperback rights were sold at auction for $1.9 million, a record at the time.”

“Sanctioned stalking” … interesting. I could see how someone would see it that way. And I think anyone outside — anyone who is not me or my PI — I could see that perspective. But I do not consider it to be that at all.”

“Even in imperial Rome, matricide was, apparently, bad P.R. … And so Nero turned to the man he had always relied on … The letter ‘explaining’ Agrippina’s murder is just one of the ways Seneca propped up Nero’s regime – a regime that the average Julius, let alone the author of De Ira, surely realized was thoroughly corrupt. How to explain the philosopher-tutor’s sticking by his monstrous pupil?”

“Last week, her duties included the conservation of one of the world’s most important collection of artefacts, including Tutankhamun’s fabled death mask and jewellery, as well as hundreds of ancient mummies, tombs and statues. From now on her role will be limited to overseeing the contents of Egypt’s royal stables.”