The (plush) Gentle Axe
Buy it here.
The sun is shining…
Porfiry Petrovich, finishing a novel
Dostoevsky’s St Petersburg
Sometimes Google Alert sends you something wholly unexpected:
Off to the opera
I’ve just bought what appeared to be the last available ticket for Thursday night’s performance of The Gambler at the Royal Opera House. It’s an opera by Prokofiev based on the novel by Dostoevsky. I’m very excited. Here’s the synopsis: Everything can turn on the spin of the wheel… Prokofiev’s opera is packed with action …
Feeling suddenly old
A couple of weeks ago I turned 50. A big enough age-hurdle to get over in itself, but it was even more of a shock to find that the French newspaper Le Figaro had added a further nine years to my age in their review of Le Temps de la Vengeance, the French edition of …