Category: people

“The remaining whiff of Orwell, whose five years at various stations in Burma as an officer of the Imperial Police Force ended here in 1927, is a spacious two-story wooden house with fireplaces and a once-elegant staircase.”

“[She was] a small-town farmer’s daughter who resumed a literary career 25 years after putting it aside to run the family farm and raise a son, producing award-winning short stories set in the Deep South and a poignant memoir of life in rural Alabama.”

“He was introduced to Edith Piaf in the late 1950s and started to write songs for the Parisian star, the most famous of which was ‘Milord’ … Developing a reputation as a singer in his own right in the mid-1960s, the hirsute and heavily bearded Moustaki achieved fame with songs including the immigrant ballad ‘Le Métèque’ and ‘Ma Liberté’, a hymn to the 1960s free-living spirit.”

“In a passage buried deep in this long letter full of business chatter and gossip, Edgar Allan Poe recounts the story of his wife Virginia’s 1847 death from tuberculosis and describes his own desperate reaction” – and reveals some insight into his own use of alcohol.

“Known for his symphonies, concertos and other orchestral pieces, he was prized for his subtle blends of ear-catching colors and formal rigor. Though steeped in the French modernist tradition that spans Debussy through Messiaen and Boulez, Dutilleux was also notably independent minded, unwilling to chase the latest fashions.”

“The 66-year-old musicologist, writer and lecturer [Gottfried Wagner] sets himself apart from the other members of the sprawling Wagner clan by refusing, as he sees it, to sweep under the carpet the darker side of one of history’s most controversial composers.

Katharina Wagner: “It’s very difficult to make all the widely dispersed documents available to the public, because they are owned in part by all four branches [of the family] … If even just one says ‘No’, then I can’t do anything about it, no matter how outrageous I might find it.”

“Our technology may be getting smarter, but a provocative new study suggests human intelligence is on the decline. In fact, it indicates that Westerners have lost 14 I.Q. points on average since the Victorian Era.”

“What follows is the only known surviving recording of Virginia Woolf, part of a BBC radio broadcast from 1937. The talk is titled ‘Craftsmanship’.”