Category: people

“Darcy Bussell, who hung up her pointes two years ago, has been taking dance classes. Latin American dance classes, to be precise. She got to put her new-found expertise to the test last night when she joined Strictly’s judging panel for the show’s final three episodes.”

“The mercurial showman, convicted this year of co-authoring one of Canada’s largest commercial frauds, has been retained as creative consultant to two New Jersey-based producers for a remount of Barrymore, a one-man show starring actor Christopher Plummer.”

The directors of a new documentary about the famously, erm, eccentric pianist argue “that his awkwardness combined with his passion was a turn-on for many women.” Exhibit A in their case (and in the film) is Cornelia Foss, who left her husband (composer Lukas Foss) for Gould. (The affair didn’t last.)

A new six-volume compendium and a searchable scholarly website, both dedicated to all of Vincent van Gogh’s letters, “will undoubtedly reshape the landscape of van Gogh scholarship and the image of the artist long held by the public.”

This spring Jamison steps down from the Ailey company’s helm after 20 years of keeping her mentor’s mission alive. “Alvin would have hated that word, ‘mission.’ It gets used because we’ve turned into an organization, so therefore we have a mission. I think vision is the word, because he was a vi-sion-ary.”

“To call Tanguay a ‘rock star’ is anachronistic but appropriate. She was not just the pre-eminent song-and-dance woman of the vaudeville era. … She was the first American popular musician to achieve mass-media celebrity, with a cadre of publicists trumpeting her on- and offstage successes and outrages.”

“They hope to discover remains of clothing, documents and even household waste. The dig is at New Place, where he lived from 1597 until his death in 1616.” The team leader said: “It is very possible we can find parchments if the conditions in the grounds are as good as we’re hoping.”

“Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney heads a roll call of literary figures to have written confidentially to the Dean of Westminster, the Very Rev John Hall, calling for the ultimate accolade to be conferred on Hughes. Other supporters include Sir Andrew Motion, who took over from Hughes as poet laureate, and Lord Bragg as well as prominent academics.”

“Fresh, retrospective analysis of her symptoms, published today, suggests that the author of Pride and Prejudice may have died prematurely of tuberculosis caught from cattle. Examination of Austen’s correspondence and the recollections of her family prove, it is claimed, that she was not, as previous medical experts hypothesised, a victim of Addison’s disease….”

For charity, that is. “Christie’s, which plans to auction the machine on Friday, estimated that it would fetch between $15,000 and $20,000. Mr. McCarthy wrote an authentication letter — typed on the Olivetti, of course — that states: ‘It has never been serviced or cleaned other than blowing out the dust with a service station hose….'”