Jack Clemo Poetry Awards

A poorly taken picture of Tony Jasper and Lady Mary Holborow at The Society of Authors yesterday:

The Arts Centre Group held their annual Jack Clemo Poetry Awards there.

House of Commons

Labour MP Meg Munn hosted an afternoon tea in celebration of the Methodist Recorder’s 150th anniversary year in the House of Commons yesterday. Here is a snap from inside Dining Room A:

Charles Dickens was writing Great Expectations and Queen Victoria was on the thrown when the first edition of the Recorder was published in 1861. After the Daily Telegraph, the paper was the oldest in Fleet Street and also one of the last to move out. The Methodist Recorder is now taking on the challenge of a digital age (I heard yesterday that its website will be revamped... soon).

Greenbelt 2011

I’ve experienced a kind of Greenbelt overload since last week. I think this is because it was the first time I'd been and also because of what I was doing there: reporting for the Methodist Recorder and compiling a podcast for Methodist Web Radio. The podcast is here and the Recorder piece will be out next week.

Here are a few photos from the festival:

The Mainstage at Greenbelt

Debate on poverty in the UK

George Luke, DJ and gig organiser for the Performance Cafe

The Performance Cafe

Writer and performer, Stella Duffy

Me in front of Mainstage in between rain showers, looking no way near as stylish as Stella.

Isreali Philharmonic Orchestra targeted by Protesters

I feel for the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra this morning after a small group of protesters wrecked their performance at The Royal Albert Hall last night. The concert had to be pulled live off air from BBC Radio 3. You can hear the protesters shouting: “Off, off, off,” on a recording featured on The Telegraph online today. What got me was that Communications Minister Ed Vaizey, who was in the audience, tweeted: “Demonstrators seemed to have turned the entire audience pro-Israel.”

I’ll say it again: Being Pro-Israel does not mean that you are anti-Palestinian or that you endorse every policy that the Israeli Government makes. I am pro-Israel. That doesn’t mean I support the denial of human rights. For all the protesters know, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra doesn’t support oppression either. And yet they get booed off the stage purely because they are Israelis. No one equates the statement: “I am pro-American” with the same logic; that is: “I support all American foreign policy.” Why does this happen with Israel? Now it seems that anyone from Israel, whether that someone be a musician, an athlete, an artist or a writer, is a controversial figure merely for being Israeli. I remember meeting a tourist from Tel Aviv in a London pub. She hadn’t said anything more than where she came from, but it was enough for a couple of people around her not to want to have anything more to do with her.

Ed Vaizey’s final tweet last night was a link to this blog post, which is worth reading.

Comprehensive Schools

Melissa Benn has written a lengthy piece in G2 today about the disparities between private and state school education in the UK. In it she quotes Tory MP Oliver Letwin who reportedly said that he would rather “beg on the street” than let his child go to a school like Lilian Baylis Technology School in Kennington. Aside from the fact that the atmosphere “could not present a greater contrast with schools such as Wellington”; that “75 per cent of the children are on free school meals” and that the school has “a far higher percentage of children with special educational needs”, we don’t learn why Oliver Letwin is so horrified. There’s no mention of the curriculum. We’re told that “successful learning" at the school depends on a “range of support and mentoring” but we are not told what they learning. Perhaps the needs of the students at Lilian Baylis mean that this school doesn’t reflect the range of subjects on offer at the average state school. What is the range of subjects on offer at the average state school? How many comprehensive schools, for example, teach French, German and Spanish? How many offer politics and economics at GCSE? Are there any state schools (excluding grammar schools) that teach Greek and Latin? Or is it that the kids who want to learn have to hope to come across books like Primo Latino in order to teach it to themselves.

Drive Time - Premier Radio

I'll be on Premier Radio today just after 4pm for the Review Show. We'll be talking about:

1) Ishmael's Songs and Hymns.
2) Soul Food For Mums - Lucinda van der Hart and Anna France-Williams.
3) Soul Survivor - live worship from Kingsway.

Nijinsky and Diaghilev

How exciting: A new play about Nijinsky and Diaghilev called Rattigan’s Nijinsky. Rattigan is said to have described the dancer and impresario as "the two most famous lovers since Romeo and Juliet”. According to the piece in yesterday's Indie, Rattigan was blackmailed by Nijinsky's widow, Romala Nikinsky, into withdrawing a screenplay commissioned by the BBC in 1974 and Nicholas Wright’s new play explores this. Journalist Paul Taylor wonders why Rattigan, who had never written openly about gay male relationships before, decided he would write about Nijinsky and Diaghilev when Romala was still alive, adding (in brackets) that “(since her husband's death, Romola had somehow managed to become both intensely homophobic and a practising lesbian)”. I wonder if Rattigan knew that (it’s not that uncommon an occurrence) and, if so, exactly what it was that he knew about her and how she would react to his script?