There have now been two superb television series this year - Rome Part 2 (and I have written extensivelt of Rome) and now Cranford. It is hard to imagine two more superficially different series - Rome is blood and thunder, exploitation, ov

 I have written about Rome before - and no doubt will again. I have now got both series on DVD and watched it through continuously once and a second time rather more cursorily. I know that it will become a Depression staple, like The Lord of the

 I do occasionally jot down some headings on subjects about which I might care to write; it is interesting to look back and see what remains of interest after a few months.  But first some more immediate notes. Last week we watched Pau

  I have been infected with a cold over the last week and have therefore been writing much less than usual. So I thought a quick Diary entry catching up with the two most important cultural events in my life over the past 10 days would be worthw

Continuing to watch Rome, the second series, and reading a lengthy discussion on ECW about classicism I fell to musing on these topics. The problem with the discussion was the lack of definition of 'classicism'. What do we mean by this?

   A superb South Bank show documentary on Marianne Faithfull; film from a recent concert, and a couple of interviews, the main one being conducted by Bragg (not a favourite of mine but I must admit this was a good, fairly self-effacing int

Another diary blog, covering in haphazard form the past few months. I have in fact at various times during these months felt capable of blogging, if only at a rudimentary level, but have desisted beause I have felt that any blog should reach a certai

This is simply a reproduction of a column by Matthew Parris in The Times of 10th March 2007 in reaction to the death of John Inman. For any non-British readers, John Inman was a camp comic who ma

  Friday Night Lights is an American TV series which started airing in the US in October 2006. It has been showing in the UK on ITV4 for the past few weeks. I wanted to write about it now because