Category: people

“This man was the most-read revolutionary Socialist in American history, agitating for violent overthrow of the government and the assassination of political leaders – and he is remembered now for writing a cute story about a dog. It’s as if the Black Panthers were remembered, a century from now, for adding a pink tint to their afros.”

Prominent in literary criticism since the 1950s, Kermode held “virtually every endowed chair worth having in the British Isles.” He was knighted in 1991, the first literary critic to be so honoured since William Empson.

“Look at her at 35 years old in 1961’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s, playing a married decorator who’s keeping the young writer Paul Varjak: Neal was only two years older than George Peppard, and three years older than her other co-star, Audrey Hepburn. Yet she seems a lifetime more knowing and seasoned than either one.”

The Grammy-winning choral conductor, who was detained at Newark airport on the way to a Lincoln Center engagement, claims that he withheld $90,000 in payments because his ex-wife denied him visitation with his daughters. “My rights as a father,” he said, “have been comprehensively trampled into the ground.”

He was more like Mao’s Nureyev: When, at the end of a 1981 cultural exchange program at Houston Ballet, Li decided to marry an American and stay in the US, Chinese communist officials literally dragged him to an interrogation room and grilled him for 20 hours. Only afterwards did he become an international ballet star.

“Seventeen years after being gunned down by police as he fled over the roof of his hideout, Colombian cocaine king Pablo Escobar is back. This time he’s not public enemy number one but a tourist attraction, drawing visitors to his old stomping ground, the city of Medellin.”

“Paul Hillier had flown from his home in Denmark with his vocal ensemble to the United States for a scheduled performance Friday night at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. “

“A Chinese developer has decided to build a replica of the town half-way across the globe in Xiamen Bay, where mainland China looks out towards Taiwan. Architects from developers China Merchants Zhangzhou visited Cadaqués in June, taking measurements [and] photographing buildings.”

“Archaeologists and clerics here say they have unearthed bones belonging to John the Baptist, an itinerant preacher revered by Christians as the last of the Old Testament prophets. Bulgaria’s government is looking to the discovery for salvation – of a financial sort,” through the spending of tourists and pilgrims.