A compendium of musical delights by Alan and Margaret Ashworth
READING in yesterday’s Times that Lord Glendonbrook, the former owner of the airline BMI, is to fund Gilbert & Sullivan productions around the country gladdened my heart. The G & S operettas were … Continue readingConfessions of a G & S Dragoon
ANYONE who watched yesterday’s Australian Open tennis third round match between home challenger Nick Kyrgios and world No 1 Rafael Nadal, of Spain, was privileged. I yield to no one … Continue readingWhy I love Nick Kyrgios
HOW refreshing, when ‘celebrities’ are queueing up to demonstrate their Leftie credentials and denounce Brexit, to find one real star not afraid to take the opposite line. The latest issue … Continue readingBravo Rupert, the Brexit Bear
LONDON was blockaded by a major protest yesterday but there was not the slightest disruption. No one sat for hours in a traffic queue. No one was late getting to … Continue readingBBC simpers with the luvvies as eco warriors wreak havoc
AM I alone in finding this year’s winning one-liner at the Edinburgh Fringe distasteful? Headlined by the BBC and sundry papers as a joke about vegetables, it runs: ‘I keep randomly shouting … Continue readingWhen is a disability joke OK? When it’s told by a Leftie
COULD anything more clearly illuminate the self-centredness of the BBC’s apparatchiks than this pensée from Radio 4 Today host Justin Webb in yesterday’s i newspaper: ‘I have been walking in Camberwell in South … Continue readingThe authentic voice of the BBC
WHILE I was wandering around YouTube for yesterday’s Midweek Hymn, I discovered the largest fully playable musical instrument in the world, the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, and I thought it … Continue readingThe Mighty Wanamaker
Reach for the Sky: The life story of Douglas Bader by Paul Brickhill; Cassell Military Paperbacks, and available secondhand I HAVE read this book several times but I did not … Continue readingThey don’t make men like this any more
LIKE most traditions, the origin of Boxing Day is unclear. The prevalent theory is that the day after Christmas used to be when tradesmen and servants received a ‘Christmas box’ … Continue readingWhy do we call it Boxing Day?
ROAMING around YouTube for my series on Christmas carols, I came across the charming custom of the choral scholars at King’s College, Cambridge, serenading those in the queue for the … Continue readingA Christmas serenade