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~ Posted by Robert Butler, February 3rd 2012
 
In From Here to New Hampshire we blogged about the view from our office (with the Shard and the London Eye in the distance) and the beneficial effects, generally, of looking out of the window—whether you're a blogger in London or a former poet laureate in New Hampshire. It turns out the view from our window is also a barometer of the city's financial health. From my desk I can count 25 building cranes, which the chancellor of the exchequer may not consider good news. The Financial Times reports that only 300 tower cranes went up in London in the second half of 2011 compared with 371 in the previous six months. And who's patient enough to count 300 tower cranes? The Health and Safety Executive receives notification of each one that goes up. 
 
In Another Top 40 for Dickens, we noted Penguin Classics' online poll of favourite Dickens characters and suggested another Top 40 poll for favourite minor ones. We put forward five. One of our expert readers wrote in to suggest another 14 including one dog (Bullseye from "Oliver Twist"). The Daily Telegraph is running a series in which 29 journalists write about their favourite Dickens character (one for each day of this month). That discussion continues on Twitter, where there's a shout-out for Tommy Traddles, David Copperfield's endearing pal. The tweet is from the great-great-great-great-grandson of Judge Thomas Noon Talfourd, who is said to have inspired the character and who is the dedicatee of "The Pickwick Papers".
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~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 30th 2012

Two weeks ago a political columnist suggested there were two David Camerons, the rural one and the urban one, and the urban one was winning out. The two other most senior figures in the cabinet—Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, and George Osborne, the chancellor—were resolutely urban.

This observation was prompted by the news that the government had come out in favour of HS2 (or High Speed Two), a £33 billion rail link from London to Birmingham, which would divide at Birmingham, and head on to Manchester and Leeds. The new route would save 20 minutes of journey time. It would also  damage beautiful stretches of English countryside.

The economic argument goes that if you cut journey time, you increase productivity. But The Economist pointed out that “a large part of the supposed benefits rest on assumptions that businessmen are unproductive in transit”. If business people are happily productive when in transit, the most effective way of assisting that productivity would be not to disturb them.  read more »

~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 27th 2012

In a blog post last week we noted how Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, was giving mothers-in-law a good name. An example of the opposite can be seen at the movies. Listen to the New Yorker on Vanessa Redgrave's performance as Volumnia in "Coriolanus": "Every mother-in-law joke you've ever heard, along with every Oedipal fantasy, is distilled into this formidable figure..."

Critics have called Vanessa Redgrave's performance "magnificent" and "one of the best of her career", yet she hasn't been nominated for either an Oscar or a Bafta. Volumnia's great scene occurs in Act 5 of the play. It's one of those moments (described in our current Notes on a Voice on Shakespeare) when the playwright pulls off a favourite trick: the 180-degree turn. Redgrave manages to persuade Ralph Fiennes' Coriolanus to change his mind and not to sack the city of Rome, even though—if he draws back at this stage—it will probably lead to his own death. Late in the movie, Redgrave plays on Fiennes's mind with great delicacy and force.  read more »

~ Posted by Hazel Sheffield, January 24th 2012

Those who splashed out $200 for a ticket to the Democratic fundraiser at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre got more than they bargained for last Thursday, when President Obama unexpectedly sang the first line of the Reverend Al Green’s "Let’s Stay Together".

“I’m...so in love with you,” crooned the president, in surprisingly good voice, before grinning and admitting to the real Al Green, “I cannot sing like you.”

Still, it takes some nerve to break into song in front of nearly 1,400 supporters just moments after the Reverend's own performance. Obama laughed at the applause and pointed backstage. “Those guys didn’t think I would do it!”

It’s not the first time the president has serenaded his fans. During the 2008 election Obama sang a snatch from Aretha Franklin’s "Chain of Fools" to a crowd that included Franklin herself. That time, he told his audience, "I wasn't going to do that." His good-humoured performance on Thursday night was a welcome respite from the heated exchanges in the Republican debates, which hit Florida with more in-fighting last night.  read more »

~ Posted by Emma Hogan, January 18th 2012

There was low cloud over London today. From the Intelligent Life offices, we could see the top of the Shard—the 1,016ft building which opens in 2013—disappear into the sky. If we craned our necks to the right, we could also see Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, both muted in the grey light.

As studies have shown, particularly in regard to hospital patients, an attractive view can be good for your health. One of the key turnaround moments in 19th-century literature occurs in George Eliot's "Middlemarch" when Dorothea wakes after a tumultuous night, looks out of the window at other people going about their jobs and realises that "She was part of that involuntary palpitating life".  read more »

~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 17th 2012  read more »

On February 6th, Queen Elizabeth II reaches her diamond jubilee – 60 years in the same job. Charles Nevin tracks down six others who have lasted as long ...  read more »

~ Posted by Emma Hogan, January 10th 2012  read more »

~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 4th 2012

Two leading political commentators – one on the left, and one on the right – have complained about an inaccuracy in the movie “The Iron Lady”: it credits Margaret Thatcher with a sense of humour. She had many gifts as a prime minister, but she didn't do jokes unless they were supplied by her speechwriters. Even then, she could be resistant. Once, when she was persuaded to quote lines from Monty Python, she inquired: "Are you sure he is one of us?"

A BSOH is a trait apparently shared by Mitt Romney, who last night won the Republican caucuses in Iowa by the thinnest of margins: he polled 30,015 votes, Rick Santorum polled 30,007 votes. Romney had surprised reporters at the weekend by saying this:

I’ve been looking at some video clips on YouTube of President Obama, then candidate Obama going through Iowa, making promises. I think the gap between his promises and his performance is the largest I’ve seen, well, since the Kardashian wedding and the promise of "until death do we part".  read more »

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~ Posted by Robert Butler, December 19th 2011 

Tom Stoppard is our most literary playwright. You can see this in two ways. There's the influence of writers in his work: Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett all contribute to "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead". And there's the literal presence of writers in his work: Alexander Herzen in "The Coast of Utopia", James Joyce in "Travesties" and A.E. Housman in "The Invention of Love". Those are all historical examples. The contemporary writer who probably most influenced his work—in "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour", "Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth" and "Professional Foul"—was his friend Václav Havel, the dissident playwright and Czech president, who died yesterday.   

In 2006 Stoppard returned to the theme of censorship and freedom of expression with "Rock 'n' Roll", which centred round a rock band's resistance to the Communist regime in Prague in 1968. Two of the characters were based in part on Havel. When Havel was in London to see the premiere he was interviewed by Jasper Rees, a regular contributor to Intelligent Life, who asked him if he would ever return the compliment and consider putting Stoppard in one of his plays. Havel replied, 

Tom is a wonderful person and a sensitive and modest man who is also very smart. I tend to get my inspiration from arseholes.