Monthly Archives: August 2006

History

A vision of Camden

August 18, 2006 – 9:31 am

I’ve visited the site before, but A Vision of Britain, which collects data by region for the past couple of hundred years, has come along in leaps and bounds. I’ve just been looking at the London borough of Camden.

Some facts, some surprising:
* in 1951 45 per cent of households didn’t have their own WC

* Population density was highest in 1900, dipped to its lowest this century in about 1980, and then started to rise again.

* In 2001 more than 45 per cent of Camden residents (percentage of adults presumpably) had university degrees (which must I suspect be among the highest in the country).

You can do the same calculations for any area of the UK on the site.

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Miscellaneous

Eating in a warzone

August 18, 2006 – 9:24 am

By far from the worst aspect, but once you hit week three of pitta and hummus it must get to be just one more misery of life… an interesting piece about the food provided for emergency aid.

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Politics

A modest proposal…

August 17, 2006 – 11:27 pm

… as a replacement for the airport panic – speed limits of 15mph – guaranteed to save 3,500 or so lives a year.

I’ve up now over on Commentis Free. (Although the fact that my original headline, as above, got changed, did mean that it lost some of its intended impact.)

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Miscellaneous Theatre

Titus Andronicus revived

August 17, 2006 – 10:21 am

The Guardian’s “history” piece today is the review from 1957 of Titus Andronicus, “given performance tonight for the first time in Stratford-on-Avon’s history”.

Peter Brook, who is responsible for sound, for stage pictures and for direction, has produced the play with dazzling simplicity out of a terrifying tawny darkness. The horrors were not laid on crudely. There was little running gore, and only the lopping of Titus’s hand is really sickening.
But the murderous spirit of the piece is marvellously caught with the shadows and the harsh shapes. Sir Laurence Olivier begins the much-wronged Titus on an almost jovial note, then rising like an Elizabethan Oedipus to the scene where, confronted with his lopped and ravished daughter Lavinia, he has his own hand amputated, and going on superbly through the scenes of feigned madness to the final Feast.

I struggle to see Olivier as Titus, but perhaps that is a failure of my imagination.

(My review of the recent Globe show.)

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Women's history

Gaze on the face of Mary Queen of Scots

August 17, 2006 – 9:19 am

I’ve never quite understood why everyone gets so excited about Mary Queen of Scots. (Well I do – sex, murder, death all involving an attractive woman, but it is one of those stories explored and told so many times I find it hard to raise an interest.)

But in case she is your cup of tea – it is worth saying that the only known painting of her as Queen has gone on display today at the National Portrait Gallery.

(I might even pop in to visit her…)

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Carnival of Feminists

Carnival of Feminists No 21

August 16, 2006 – 1:20 pm

Drumroll please … the Carnival of Feminists No 21 is now up on Being Amber Rhea. And this time you don’t even have to imagine the sound-effects, because Amber has created a carnival first – a podcast. I’m at work so I can’t listen to it now, but I’m sure it is just as excellent as the rest of the carnival.

I was particularly taken by the section on defining your feminism – always a tough task. (My answer usually depends on which day you ask me…)

But don’t dally here, do go over and check out the carnival.

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