Two bright new library buildings in the UK are proving very popular. “In a development watched with envy by library authorities across the country, visitor numbers have soared at the new libraries in Gosport, Hampshire, and Brighton, East Sussex. Book borrowing has gone up too. The pattern supports the official view that the decline in library use is the result of financial neglect rather than an inexorable flight from reading.”
Tag: 04.23.05
Edwardo Paolozzi, 81
Of the few British artists who came to international prominence soon after the second world war, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, who has died aged 81, was one of the most inventive, prolific and various. Chiefly a sculptor (and one of the first to react against the all-pervading influence of Henry Moore), he was also a highly original printmaker, some of whose collage-based silkscreen images are among the finest examples of pop art – the style he was instrumental in shaping.
English Exams That Skip The 19th Century
Is the English school curriculum being dumbed down? “More than 400,000 students took the AQA GCSE in English literature last year. The exam offers questions on one of eight novels, including Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, and The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger – both 20th century classics. But no 19th century novels make it on to the list, and teenagers can also get an AQA A-level without studying a single pre-20th century novelist. ‘This is a real sign of dumbing down. Many of the books which are put in front of children nowadays simply do not merit the amount of time which is spent on them’.”
Power To The People – Opera In An Ice Rink
“Graham Vick, the respected opera director, is attempting his own radical solution to declining audiences and the trappings of elitism by staging a Monteverdi opera with a mix of professionals and amateurs in a burnt-out ice rink in Birmingham’s Chinatown.”
Forsythe Company Rises From Frankfurt Ashes
Last year, William Forsythe watched as his Frankfurt Ballet was dismantled after it lost financial support. Now he’s back with the Forsythe Company. “Such is Mr. Forsythe’s reputation that his new company is already booked all over Europe and beyond. At 18 dancers, it is half the size of his old company, although Mr. Forsythe says he may hire guest dancers to help perform his larger works. All but one of the new company’s dancers come from the Frankfurt Ballet.”
Sir John Mills, 97
Acting great Sir John Mills has died at the age of 97. “He died at home in Buckinghamshire on Saturday morning after a chest infection that lasted several weeks. His films included Great Expectations in 1946 and War and Peace in 1956 and he won an Oscar in 1971 for playing a village idiot in Ryan’s Daughter.”