Last night I had the unpleasant experience of attending a meeting at the London Barbican.This is, unaccountably, a Grade II listed building and heralded as one of London’s ‘best examples of Brutalist architecture’. So that you can avoid them, The Barbican was developed from designs by architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon as part of a utopian vision to transform an area of London left devastated by bombing during the Second World War. Frankly, the bombed sites would have looked more attractive.There have been...

I go every year to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, a collection of mostly bizarre, soi disant ‘art’; painting and sculpture with automatic entry to Royal Academicians who usually disgrace themselves by showing their disdain for the public by exhibiting crass, clumsy, crude examples of their artistry at ludicrous prices.It is intriguing to view the amount of trash which is on display and for sale, but I always look for a sculptured turd – a lump of uninformed lumpy clay,...

That great applause-fest, the BBC promenade concerts, is back at the Albert Hall. From the performers and composers point of view, this is the best opportunity in the world to preen yourself before five and a half  thousand people over eight weeks from July to September. Much of the programming includes the well loved works of genius by well-known classical composers smattered with the lesser and sometimes appallingly presumptuous works of other soi disant composers, much of which is attractive...

Enoch Powell , a notable and highly intelligent politician in his day and largely and incorrectly remembered for his misquoted ‘rivers of blood’ speech, once said , ”In the end,  all politicians are failures ”. In the current hurly burly of appallingly conducted Brexit negotiations and the opprobrium this has brought down on the ruling British Conservative party as much as on the indecisive and divided Socialists and indeed,  looking back over  Prime Ministers of the country over the last...

It is amazing that so many people can work themselves up into such a storm of hatred, in public, for someone who has had no effect on them at all, except for offending their opinions.Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America represents a country whose been our long-term ally and actual saviour. On the eve of D day, if you care to remember the isolation of Britain during World War II and the sheer fact that 6600...