A group of clearly and openly rightwing UK (well actually probably London) bloggers is started what looks like a seriously funded internet TV politics channel, 18 Doughty Street, which as Channel 4 points out (looking rather worried, as well they might be) isn’t subject to the same regulation as broadcast TV. They say they will be openly right wing but open to other voices – so it will be interesting to see how it works out …
And will there be a broadly leftwing equivalent?
From the inbox: the latest report of the excavation of Old Nisa, a Partian site in Turkmenistan, has been posted. Some lovely architectural detail…
Someone just described me as having “more projects than a four-armed paper-hanger”. I like it. It is apt; perhaps a little too apt, but then the best images slice in a little.
What a lovely combination. The London Library has a small display of some of the life membership application forms that it has received over the years – there are all the usual ones you’d except, from Bernard Shaw to Virginia Woolf, but also featured is “Mrs Harley Moseley”, who joined in 1956 from St Mawes, Truro, Cornwall, listing her occupation as “pigkeeper and poet”.
Google has failed me on this one … can anyone supply any info?
Over on My London Your London I’ve a review of a delightfully subtle dramatic exploration of Trevor Phillip’s “passive apartheid of the countryside” remark – White Open Spaces. Get your ticket soon – I suspect judging by the press night audience reaction word of mouth will make it a near-sellout.
It has been sitting in my to-read pile (which hasn’t yet quite taken over the house) for a long time, but I’ve finally got around to reading Maureen Duffy’s The Passionate Shepherdess: The Life of Aphra Behn. It was published first in 1977, although I’ve been reading the preface-updated 2000 paperback. Since it is such a popular topic I’ve no doubt aspects of the account have been modified by subsequent research, but it is an excellent read, and a decent piece of what in 1977 was real recovery work.
I’ll share just a little part that appealed, talking about her play Sir Timothy Tawdry:
Dellmor: Gods what an odious thing mere coupling is!
A thing which every sensual animal
Can do – as well as we – but prithee tell me,
Is there naught else between the nobler creatures?
Flauntit: Not that I know of, sir – Lord he’s very silly or very innocent, I hope he has his maidenhead; if so and rich too, Oh what a booty were this for me!By introducing the brothel and Betty Flauntit’s attempts to get Bellmor for his money, Aphra Behn has made a parallel between prostitution and forced marriage …
Bellmor: Will you now show me some of your arts of love?
For I am very apt to learn of beauty – Gods –
What is’t I negotiate for? – a woman!
Making a bargain to possess a woman!
Oh, never, never!
You can see why later, more genteel generations had troubles with Aphra – suuch bluntness wouldn’t come back into fashion for centuries.
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