You usually get everything represented at the Edinburgh International Festival: it caters for all self-indulgent tastes in the postmodern world of moral relativism – from binge-drinking and bigamy to buggery and blasphemy. Gradually, over the decades, the arts have aided the rehabilitation of medieval notions of sin and human vice:... Continue reading

Prom 59: The Broadway Sound – John Wilson Orchestra (Royal Albert Hall) John Wilson conducts The Broadway Sound Prom ©BBC/Chris Christodoulou No matter how much Beethoven, Bach, Berlioz and Bartók I take in at the Proms, I’m fast coming to the conclusion that no season would be complete without the... Continue reading

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has severed all direct communication with Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond over a minor dispute about the rights and wrongs of same-sex marriage. Apparently they still have enormous respect for each other, and remain on first-name terms. But Alex wants Scotland... Continue reading

Historic, patriotic, intoxicating, mesmerising: “Team GB’s heroic success seems to have re-awoken in us our sense of national pride,” wrote Sir Roger Bannister, the first man ever to run a mile in under four minutes, “a realisation perhaps that, as a people, we have the ability, the drive and the... Continue reading

Only the chosen ever attain the level of fame or notoriety which propels them to first-name familiarity with the wider public. I’m not taking about the manufactured pap of celebrity pop – those who are thrust onto the world stage all carefully processed and packaged, like Rihanna, Beyonce and Bjork... Continue reading

Prom 18: Beethoven Symphony No.9 in D minor, ‘Choral’. Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain (Royal Albert Hall) “By assiduous labour you shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands,” mused Count Ferdinand Waldstein, as he packed the young Ludwig van Beethoven... Continue reading

It was a casual midnight massacre in a cinema during a screening the new Batman movie ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. And now, just as with every passing mention of Pearl Harbour, Dunblane, or September 11th , this film will most likely be forever synonymous with the tragedy. Clad in gas... Continue reading

Prom 2: John Wilson Orchestra does My Fair Lady (Royal Albert Hall) Annalene Beechey and Anthony Andrews conducted by John Wilson in My Fair Lady at the BBC Proms ©BBC/Chris Christodoulou I was invited by EMI to the world famous Abbey Road Studios this week for a sneak preview of... Continue reading

According to the latest national statistics on School Workforce produced by the Department for Education, a third of teachers of Physics, Geography and German have no qualification higher than an A-level in those subjects. Over the past year, the number of teachers with a relevant post A-level qualification has declined... Continue reading

Day by day, minute by minute, speech by speech and word by word, the United Kingdom Independence Party looks and sounds increasingly like the Conservative Party in exile – on the economy, law and order, education, defence, patriotism, Christianity, immigration, over-regulation, tax reduction, and their support for private enterprise, traditional... Continue reading

Exquisite sparkling diamonds are forged over billions of years under colossal pressure some 100 miles beneath the earth’s crust. They are only brought within mining distance to the surface by uncontrollable volcanic eruptions and the violent ebb and flow of magma. So it has been with the Diamond known as... Continue reading

He didn’t use the word ‘Reich’, of course: he’d be sensitive to shadowy historical undertones and averse to Godwin’s tendencies. But by warning that Germany risks being the centre of an ‘empire’ that ‘caused the collapse of the eurozone’, he certainly raises the spectre of a Fourth Reich, doubtless to... Continue reading

West Side Story (Royal Albert Hall) Fifty years after its release, the MGM musical tragedy West Side Story has been digitally re-mastered on Blu-Ray and returned to... err... the Royal Albert Hall. It’s not the sort of cavernous gulf you’d naturally think of visiting for a cosy cinematic experience of... Continue reading

The very mention of the name of Enoch Powell still divides the firmaments. There is no nuanced via media of opinion on the man: either you love him as the rightest of minds, or loathe him as a deranged bigot. Either he was a prophet of God and enlightened philosopher,... Continue reading

In the midst of euro-economic turmoil, distracted by Leveson and the tedious texts and tweets of Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, the Government is finalising its plans to monitor and log every website you visit and store every IM, tweet and text you send. The police already have draconian extra-judicial powers... Continue reading

Any right-minded person will be robustly in favour of the Government’s measures to reduce illegal immigration. Our resources are stretched, community cohesion is fraught, and our infrastructure is creaking, especially in the south-east. Some of the Government’s policies are frustratingly measured and incrementally tedious, but any workable policy which can... Continue reading

I wrote some time ago of Halima (not her real name) who was one of my delights to teach. I’d identified her as ‘Gifted & Talented’ after just one lesson when she came to me in Year 10. She loved philosophy and was captivated by politics and theology, especially issues... Continue reading