In 1999, the House of Lords Act barred most hereditary peers from sitting in the upper house of Parliament, meaning a departure of members with such colourful titles: dukes, marquesses, earls and viscounts. Most members of the House of Lords are now appointed for life with the rank of baron, meaning they are referred to […]
I was sorry to hear that Henryk Górecki had died today at the age of 76. Earlier this year, I attended what should have been the world première of his 4th symphony. Unfortunately, the performance didn’t go ahead, we were told because ill health meant Górecki had been unable to complete the work. It was […]
News sources everywhere are proclaiming that Barack Obama has been elected the first black president of the United States. Yet as Mr Obama is of mixed African-European heritage, one can state just as validly that he is the 44th white president. A similar thing is true for Lewis Hamilton, said to be the first black […]
With CERN‘s new machine, the Large Hadron Collider, very much in the news at the moment, it made me think back to the television series, Channel Four’s Reality on the Rocks, broadcast in 1995, which first made me interested in visiting CERN, and no doubt played a part in me eventually working with large scientific […]
I was quite surprised to hear the name David Gaukroger on the Classic FM Evening Concert this evening. His Romany Wood was the first work played on tonight’s programme. David Gaukroger taught my GCSE music class at King Charles I School, Kidderminster, in 1993–94. There were only seven of us in the class, so I […]
It should have come as no surprise to the authorities that awarding Salman Rushdie a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours would cause protests from the Islamic world. Of course, this would be no reason not to reward a person deserving the honour. The United Kingdom is a country where free speech is valued. It […]
In the run up to the World Cup, it was impossible to avoid the hype in the mainstream media over whether Wayne Rooney’s fractured metatarsal had healed sufficiently for him to play in the competition. Surely, football is a team game, and whether or not one player can make it shouldn’t matter, as you have […]
