Category: people

“Fey’s strategy for dealing with everything from entrenched discrimination to garden-variety chauvinism is to write a joke, a better joke than the other people in the room. You see, some of us have forgotten this basic point: Responding to a situation with humor, as opposed to, say, dead-serious self-righteousness, is a rhetorically effective way to get a political point across.”

“Muti’s manner on Tuesday was as brisk and engaged as ever, and conversation bubbled with his customary good humor, perhaps the result of careful recuperation here in Chicago while his wired jaw healed and while he regained his arm mobility, which was limited by the surgery to implant the pacemaker.”

He “was a mid-century idol who played a thrill-killing preppie with weak nerves. He flouted Hollywood convention by dating stars of either sex. And he quit movie acting for the stage just as his film career blossomed. His enduring legacy was established as a young actor in two Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, Rope, and Strangers on a Train.”

The Welsh singer, who performed on more than 250 recordings, was known especially for his work in Britten’s operas (he sounded remarkably like Peter Pears), as Herod in Salome (a role he sang more than 150 times) and in the Bach Passions.

“It’s an urban legend that Ms. Day became a recluse upon leaving show business. In reality, she talks to the people she likes – but that doesn’t usually include the media. She lives an active life engaged in animal-welfare work” in Carmel, California, where she keeps an undisclosed number of dogs.

“His career straddled the entire second half of the 20th century … But he was no less well informed about the practitioners of the first half of the century, and there were few who could write about the grand tradition with the deeply pondered knowledge, wit and eloquence he brought to bear.”

“Her intelligent and beautifully written fantasies are of seminal importance for their bridging of the gap between ‘traditional’ children’s fantasy, as written by CS Lewis or E Nesbit, and the more politically and socially aware children’s literature of the modern period, where authors such as Jacqueline Wilson or Melvyn Burgess explicitly confront problems of divorce, drugs and delinquency.”

“So yes, they’re self-obsessed. But isn’t it revealing what they leave out? No entry exists for the day when Williams wins a Pulitzer, or when his beloved grandfather dies. Readers have to search hard, too, for much information about Williams’s plays, or in fact the wider world.”

“For some it may seem like yesterday that the National Ballet’s artistic director was thrilling audiences as one of the world’s top dancers but despite her youthful looks and enviable figure, Canada’s perennial ballet sweetheart is turning 60.”