Latest from the Blog
“Within you and without you” – John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, by Ian Leslie
This superb dual biography of John Lennon and Paul McCartney takes a more-or-less psychoanalytical approach to their relationship. If the book is a tragedy of sorts, Ian Leslie opens with the falling action after the devastating climax of Lennon’s death; specifically, McCartney’s apparently cold reaction to the news: “It’s a drag, isn’t it?” he told…
“He steps from the tomb in his rags and his wounds:” resurrection in Nick Cave’s album, Wild God.
Nick Cave described his 2016 album, Skeleton Tree, as both prophetic and cursed. Of all the songs on the album, only ‘I Need You’ was written after one of his twin sons died in an accident in 2015 – all the other songs pre-date this tragedy. It is this song he sings solo at the…
Don’t be afraid: “Seamus Heaney & the Music of What Happens” (Arena, BBC2; dir. Adam Low)
The documentary opens with his daughter, Catherine, talking about his death and in that sense is structured like a traditional obituary. She recounts that his final text to her mother (his wife, Marie), ended, Noli Timere. Don’t be afraid (a Latin phrase that comes down to us as a kind of refrain in the Gospels).…
Main image: Lewis Chessmen © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
Blog content: © Benedict Gilbert 2021
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