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Recent Posts
- How Russians protested in August 1968 when Soviet Russia invaded Czechoslovakia
- Street Life and Morals — an interview with Lesley Chamberlain
- When I shook Gorbachev’s hand
- On a Novel by John Barth and a harrowing illegal abortion scene: think again ‘pro-lifers’!
- Ghislaine Maxwell: J’ACCUSE!
- Russia as a Eurasian Power — the history
- Russia in my lifetime : a tragic story Central Moscow in April 1992 was a jumble sale. Trestle tables obstructed the pavements, old counterpanes covered them. Mostly older people, mostly women, displayed trinkets for sale: a cup, a few beads, a spare tin. Outside the Bolshoi Theatre sheet music – bound conductors’ scores even– waited for a chance buyer. They were like cultural treasure turned out of safe-keeping by a marauding army. Over in Sokolniki park at the Sunday market Red Army uniforms were going for a song. The entire Soviet past was ridiculed. It made me feel uncomfortable. I cast my mind back twenty years earlier to my first contact with Communist Russia, when a planeload of young Western visitors who should have known better applauded when we took off for home again. Mostly they didn’t like the food. In Nizhny Novgorod I knew a woman who had been an Intourist travel guide. She knew her lines by heart. ‘You tell the visitor so much they don’t need to ask questions. Isn’t that right, Lesley?’ Galya had a nervous breakdown when both her technique and her beloved knowledge of Soviet history and culture were made redundant overnight. The Cold War, and its end, were a painful business.
- The Old Men at the Zoo: Novelist Angus Wilson (1913-1991) on the Riot of post-war Britain
- A Meeting with Isaiah Berlin and a few reflections on his quarrel with Roger Scruton
- A Meeting with Isaiah Berlin and a few reflections on his quarrel with Roger Scruton
- From Weimar to Washington: The Collapse of the House of Bourgeois Ideas – Part 1
- How Tolstoy named an adulterer — the great writer 110 years on
- The Crown The Making of A National Epic
- The Agonies of George Steiner
- Roger Scruton – A Personal Memoir
- A giant step, but for whom?
- Le Carre’s Agent in a New Field
- A European View of Jeremy Corbyn
- Letter to Nietzsche
- Van Gogh in Kent: the inspiration he took forward from his days in England
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Category Archives: Theatre
The Crown The Making of A National Epic
Towards the end of the first episode of Peter Morgan’s masterpiece The Crown, a dying George VI is given a present by the local people. In the drawing room at Sandringham, the Norfolk country estate where the British Royal family … Continue reading
Posted in Brexit, Britain Today, British politics, Current Affairs, english literature, Theatre, Writing
Tagged Brexit, British society, The Crown
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‘Mozart and Salieri’ from Alexander Pushkin to Peter Shaffer
When Alexander Pushkin, the father of Russian literature and still its greatest figure, mooted a tragedy called ‘Mozart and Salieri’ an article had recently appeared in the German music press. The rumour was that Antonio Salieri, a minor composer dead … Continue reading
Shakespeare and Wagner or Turning the Bard Inward
What is it links Shakespeare and Wagner? Almost a hundred years ago Edgar Istel examined how Wagner borrowed from Measure for Measure to create his early opera Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love)and set out how Wagner read Shakespeare and … Continue reading
Vaclav Havel died four years ago: Leaving was his last play
Former Czech President and dissident leader Vaclav Havel died on December 18, 2011. To the end he wanted to return to his first calling, as a playwright. His success on stage was part of the Cold War as we knew it, … Continue reading
Posted in Cold War, Europe, Literature in Translation, Theatre, Writing
Tagged theatre, vaclav havel
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Lesley Chamberlain 