A Neglected Classic?

The Radio 4 programme Open Book has been in search of neglected classics, asking various writers to make their nominations, then throwing the list open to a public vote. Now they have a winner. Yes, The Snow Goose, the sentimental novella by Paul Gallico which was a huge hit with readers (and even some critics) in its day, has remained in print and extremely popular (especially in Britain) ever since, is widely read in schools, was made into a very successful TV movie, and even inspired an album by prog rock band Camel (true - it was called Music Inspired by The Snow Goose, a most unprogrocklike title). In what sense, then, is The Snow Goose a 'neglected classic'? It sticks out like a sore thumb from what is otherwise a rather interesting list - if only Rasselas had won! Or Esther Waters, or The Polyglots, or The Quest for Corvo, or... well, anything but The Snow Goose really.

Winter Bees

I've noticed in the past couple of years that bumblebees seem to be flying long after the end of summer and before the coming of spring. Now a research study (reported in today's Telegraph, but unavailable on their notoriously useless website) has found that many of our bumblebees are indeed giving up on hibernation and staying active through the winter months. Naturally the scientsts' first thought is that this is down to 'climate change' (as they like to call the Slight British Warming), but they acknowledge that other factors must be at work, since it is only in Britain that this overwintering is occurring. Perhaps our native bumbles are interbreeding with hardier foreign species, introduced to help with pollination in polytunnels - or, more likely, since winter flying is predominantly an urban/suburban phenomenon, it's down to our helpful planting of exotic winter-flowering shrubs (especially bee-friendly Mahonia) in our gardens. So, once again - as with, for example, the Large Blue and Heath Fritillary - man's activity proves to be a benign influence on nature.

One for Remembrance

A Private
by Edward Thomas

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frozen night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:
"At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he,
"I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town,
Beyond `The Drover', a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France -that, too, he secret keeps.

What's Not To Like?

Edsel Ford, the curiously named only son of Henry, and President of Ford Motor Company from 1919 to 1943, was born on this day in 1893. His posthumous fame (if that's the word) was assured when a new Ford bearing his name was launched with much hype and razzmatazz in 1957 - and flopped spectacularly. What went wrong? Examine the picture above and ask yourself, What's not to like?

Just Another Brick in the...

Twenty years ago, channeling the power of rock through his mighty anthem Looking For Freedom (Number One in Austria, Switzerland and West Germany), David Hasselhoff brought the Berlin Wall crashing down in ruins. (Okay, there may have been other factors - that's for historians to argue.) To mark the ocassion and seal his place in history, the Hoff performed Looking For Freedom atop what was left of the Berlin Wall, where he was greeted with delirious applause from a crowd numbering hundreds of thousands. Fast forward twenty years and the Irish midget who calls himself 'Bono' takes a break from his duties as international statesman and universal sage to blatantly steal Hasselhoff's thunder by fronting his side project U2 (World's Most Boring Band?) in a free concert at the Berlin Wall - a free concert tactfully hidden from the view of non-ticket holders by a socking great metal wall! That's the spirit, Bono! If only the Hoff had been there to scale that metal wall, guitar in hand, and belt out Walking To Freedom - that would have shown them... As Plato almost said, 'When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.'

Any Excuse for a Venetian Painting

The Venetian painter Pietro Longhi was born on this day in 1701. His genre scenes have a charm all their own, with their muted tones, their quality of stillness, the oddly stiff figures, faces hidden or vaguely smiling, the mingled air of amiable comedy and quiet sadness (as in Domenico Tiepolo's Punchinello scenes). Longhi's pictures minutely catalogue the everyday activities (or inactivities) of a society fascinated by itself, turned in on itself, living through the long hedonistic afterglow of Venice's greatness (see Browning). Too accomplished a painter to be a naif, too good-humoured to be the 'Venetian Hogarth', Longhi is just Longhi. And that rhinoceros, by the way, is the celebrity rhino Clara, who had quite a life...

Good Grief!

A while back, like everyone else, I signed the e-petition calling on Gord to resign. Now I've had a 'response' from Downing Street, consisting of a link to this. Nice of him to explain - if I'd only known he was 'completely focussed' on all those big important things, I wouldn't have signed in the first place. Time for a new petition begging him to stay?