Category: people

‘Of course, crisis management always brought out the best in Ernest. He was disappointed when things went too smoothly.”

“To read the Meditations, you would not imagine them to be the writings of a man encamped in barbarian lands in the midst of war, nor of a man commanding the largest army ever assembled on the frontier of the Roman empire, nor of a man whose empire and army were in the grip of a deadly plague. The Meditations’ lack of political or worldly anguish and anxiety is a mark of the philosophy they profess: Stoicism.”

“In the well-known original image, Churchill makes a ‘V’ shaped symbol with his fingers – while gripping a cigar in the corner of his mouth. But in a reproduction of the picture, hanging over the main entrance to a London museum celebrating the wartime leader, he has been made into a non-smoker through the use of image-altering techniques.”

“The researchers announced results Wednesday of their year-long project, saying bones dug up in the place where Caravaggio died are likely his. However, they acknowledge there is only an 85 per cent probability they are right and they can never be fully certain.”

“The cause was complications of a stem cell transplant Mr. Wolken underwent in April, his wife, JoAnne Torti, said. He had been ill with myelofibrosis, a bone marrow disease…. Founded in 1971 by Mr. Wolken and Moses Pendleton, classmates at Dartmouth whose combined dance experience was practically nil, Pilobolus was beyond category from the first.”

Gustav Mahler left his Bohemian hometown “to study in Vienna at 15 and never returned, though that is not why the region disowned him. History in these parts is a patchwork alternation of placid co-existence and merciless cruelty.” As the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth approaches, the region still has a “hedgy attitude toward Mahler.”

“[N]o one can deny he was a force of nature. His regular reinventions of the orchestra extended to arts institutions in general and influenced even the arts themselves. He was an Olympian and intellectual with a common touch and a social conscience, and that is ultimately what made him great.”

Shortly after withdrawing £1,500 from the bank, “Bennett, 76, was targeted by two women pickpockets who splattered his raincoat with ice cream, then stole his wallet as they purported to wipe him clean.” The playwright said that the incident was “most upsetting. But I shall be writing about it in my diaries.”

Among those who got the nod: “Paula Rego, the Portuguese-born painter famous for the often fantastical feel to her art, has been made a dame. ‘I was totally surprised by it,’ she said. ‘What is it for? I don’t do anything but paint pictures.'”

“His accomplishments left a lasting imprint on the city’s cultural landscape: He brought a young Esa-Pekka Salonen to Los Angeles as the Philharmonic’s music director, championed the building of Walt Disney Concert Hall, revived and refurbished the Hollywood Bowl, and, as early as 2004, recognized the abilities of Gustavo Dudamel….”