Author: rrn69

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Western classical music and minds of all its greatest composers

rrn69

“Let me be your Ruskin or Baedeker, suppose a first visit, only a week, to Florence or Burges, what must absolutely not to be missed” Robin Holloway offer himself to as a master guide for this voyage. “My aim in this book is to offer an invitation to the glorious long voyage of western classical music for all those who enjoy and love it, and seek to deepen their enjoyment and love without getting caught up in musicology and technicalities: an entry to Aladdin’s cave, an injunction to taste and see re-angled for the sense of hearing in all its … Continue reading Western classical music and minds of all its greatest composers

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Lonely and adrift in Manhattan

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Gish Jen is the award-winning author of The Resisters returns with an autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship. Gish’s mother Agnes Jen – Loo Shu-hsin – born in 1925 to wealthy Shanghai family where the chauffeurs wore leather gloves, expensive Persian opium was served to society women via a sous chef, and girls are expected to behave and be quiet.  No domestic chores were required of her as a child, but the sudden disappearance possibly sacking of her beloved nurse-maid Nai-ma caused an open wound, potentially poisoning her future maternal facility, combine this with the Cultural Revolution, a famine, other … Continue reading Lonely and adrift in Manhattan

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Ultimate will power

rrn69

Today, Europe is fast changing, polarised world dominated by Chinese- American rivalry.  European Union despite its initial successes after the fall of the Berlin Wall, have failed to implement a strategy for success in the twenty-first century. Britain’s exit from the EU has weakened both sides and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has thrown these shortcomings into sharp relief.  How should states across the continent position themselves in the decades to come? David Marsh investigates Europe’s present crisis, from a march of populism, Franco-German malaise and the breakdown of relations with Putin’s Russia. Fault lines are emerging in the monetary union, while the … Continue reading Ultimate will power

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Realities of entrepreneurship: Greed, Wealth and Ambition of US business in the ’80s

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The Bonfire of the Vanities in a ’87 satirical novel by Tom Wolfe, where there is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics and greed in 1980s New York City, and centres on three main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow. This novel was phenomenal success, and is often been called the quintessential novel of the ’80s. Sherman McCoy, the central character of Tom Wolfe’s first novel, is a young investment banker with a fourteen-room apartment in Manhattan. When he is involved in a freak accident in the … Continue reading Realities of entrepreneurship: Greed, Wealth and Ambition of US business in the ’80s

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Immigration practical pitfalls of making policy

rrn69

Alan Manning – former chair of the UK’s Migration Advisory Committee- makes it clear, this doesn’t mean that we can’t do much better. In Why Immigration Policy is Hard, Manning says we should start by ditching simplistic views that frame immigration as either wholly good or wholly bad. We will always have, and need, some level of immigration. But just as inevitably, we will have rules on who can and cannot immigrate as more people are likely to want to move to high-income countries than residents will want to admit. To set those rules, we need reliable evidence to adjudicate … Continue reading Immigration practical pitfalls of making policy

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Sally Evans

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“DRIVING IN THE BOOK LANE” – A MEMOIR BY DR SALLY  EVANS –  PHD IN LITERATURE – POET, House wife, Mother WIFE,  MOTHER  AND LONGTERM BOOKSHOP OWNER! Price £7 or £10 posted (UK) Fiction Direct Memoir at The Callender Press. 21 Chapters in total. @sallyevans2025 Poet, novelist, publisher, editor, bookseller and sometime librarian Dr Sally Evans uses the memoir form to consider what turned her into a “bookwoman”. From London to Newcastle, from Kirkby Lonsdale, Teesside and Edinburgh to a bookshop in the Trossachs, Sally drives around in a landscape of books and book people in search of the meaning of life. Questions, … Continue reading Sally Evans

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One Battle after Another

rrn69

“One Battle After Another” – how to tease people intoreluctant laughter at a very real ongoing situation.Directed, written and produced by Paul Thomas Anderson, this story isadapted from the novel “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon. Stars and actors include Leo Di Caprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti and Benicio del Toro. The story is inspired by true events and real-life groups such as The Weathermen – a far left militant organisation active from 1969 to the mid 70s who wanted to eradicate racism and imperialism in the USA. Other reviews do remark on the left wing and socialistic curve of … Continue reading One Battle after Another

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Ignite your imagination

rrn69

Marcus du Sautoy, an Oxford mathematician, playwright and musician reveals in Blue Prints, how creative people can harness the profound and productive relationship between mathematics and arts and explains how creativity is inseparable from mathematics. The designs of Le Corbusier and Leonardo the music of Glass, Bach, and Debussy; the wild visions of Dali, the choreography of Laban, the animation of Pixar- all are shot through with mathematics, from primes and fractals to the weirder words of Hamiltonian cycles and hyperbolic geometry. Du Sautoy argues that the relationship runs both ways. Just as mathematics inspires new art, the artistic mindset … Continue reading Ignite your imagination

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Hayli Gubbi Volcano erupts

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On 23rd November 2025, Ethiopia’s Hayli Gubbi volcano erupts after 12, 000 years of dormancy, sending up massive ash plumes which drifted thousands of miles to reach parts of western and northern Indian states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab disrupting flight operation in the entire region. Airlines including Air India, Indigo, Akasa Air cancelled or re-routed several flights. According to experts the plume’s extreme attitude means immediate impact on ground-level air quality. The IMD expects the main ash cloud to clear Indian skies as it moves towards China and the Pacific. Continue reading Hayli Gubbi Volcano erupts

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Vision of our potential for violence

rrn69

Brazilian novelist, musician and screenwriter Ana Paula Maia’s On Earth As It Is Beneath is a tale of survival in a penal colony on the brink of collapse whose warden is determined to inflict ever-increasing forms of horror on inmates. On land where enslaved people were once tortured and murdered, the state built a penal colony in the wilderness, where inmates could be rehabilitated, but never escape. Now, decades later, and having only succeeded in trapping men, not changing them for the better, its operations are winding down. But in the prison’s waning days, a new horror is unleashed: every … Continue reading Vision of our potential for violence