Новости за 14.08.2015

After the annual ceremony in April to celebrate Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, one incident had everyone talking. Despite the stuffy gala hosting showbiz heavyweights including Martha Stewart, George Lucas and Diane von Furstenberg, all the chatter was over a blond woman who fell dramatically on the red carpet right in front of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. Was it a PR who had taken an embarrassing tumble? Or a stunt by some blogger? No one seemed sure.

“Being successful in comedy is not about being funny any more. It’s about having the right colour skin, the right set of genitals, the right regional accent.” There are numerous variations on this theme in Andrew Lawrence’s new stand-up show, Uncensored.

It was a great day when stationery company Bic brought out a range of pens “For Her” last year. Having been unable to position my hand around the firm columns of traditionally masculine black biros, I had given up on writing many years before. And then, just like that, the linguistic world was my oyster. Ripping open that pink flowery packaging to reveal the purple pens underneath, I felt empowered.

My teachers sounded baffled – even aghast. We had just heard Tom Stoppard talk with torrential wit and zest about his play Travesties, with its brilliantly farcical collision between Vladimir Lenin, James Joyce and the Dadaist mischief-maker Tristan Tzara in Zurich during the First World War. “But he didn’t go to university!” they spluttered.

Today’s revelation that almost 40 per cent of the properties sold under Right to Buy are now in the hands of private landlords comes as no surprise. After all, it was only last year when research I worked on found that 36 per cent of homes sold under the scheme in London are now being rented out privately.

The Assumption of Jeremy Corbyn oughtn’t to surprise. Not because the man himself has long been a flower in the Stop the War, Whoever Is Our Enemy Is Our Friend, And Never Mind Who That Means We Rub Shoulders With, daisy-chain-plaiting wing of the Labour Party, but because we couldn’t go on forever pretending that the coexistence of the soup kitchen and the banker’s bonus was just another of life’s unavoidable little cruelties. Once in a while we need the hard left to pipe up.

Kensington Palace has just come out swinging, this time against the international media for harassing Prince George and his new-born sister, Charlotte. According to the Royal Family, George has become the paparazzi’s “number one target”, and his parents are enraged.

Pierre de Mariveux’s 1730 classic French Farce The Game of Love and Chance (La Jeu de l’amour et du hasard) has been given Anglicised rebrand by British writer and director Matthew Partridge. The beautiful, subterranean vaults of the Baron’s Court Theatre play host to the production, one which reminds one heartily of the dramatic potential of the raw power of youth.

As I watched Tony Blair make a speech last month to his remaining fan club in the Progress think-tank, I had a strange feeling. On the face of it, the former Prime Minister made good sense, as he usually has done since I got to know him well when he was an eager frontbench beaver in the 1980s.

I would have been around eight or nine-years-old when I first stole from a bookshop. I never planned on becoming a book thief, but I was a keen reader and, coming from a family that didn't have much money, my parents just couldn’t afford to buy all the books I wanted to read (although I'm sure they would have been horrified if they knew).

Theatre has many strange —  and irritating — traditions: the high prices, the booking fees, the uninformative programmes, the warm white wine in the interval. But perhaps the strangest of all is the “preview.”

I am a spotty nerd.

Forget the fiery gypsy, carefree, charismatic and domineering. Carmen, according to director Robin Norton-Hale, is a tale of domestic violence, resonating with the many news stories of domestic violence we see today. The heroine is afraid of Don Jose, she is pensive, she is visibly worried about what is in store.

The following is the original piece I wrote about my marathon run, which in the past week has gained a lot of attention around the world. For the run, I made a decision about my own comfort that would best enable me to complete the 26.2 miles. And yet, because we don’t talk about this very natural monthly process, my decision shocked many people.

When Sergei Polunin, a wayward Ukrainian ballet protege, looked to reposition himself as a Hollywood star, he turned first to pop music. Together with the photographer and director David LaChapelle, Polunin created an alternative music video for “Take Me to Church” that was only later sanctioned by the singer, Hozier.

Homer’s epic poem The Iliad is being read aloud in its entirety in a one-off cultural event hosted by The British Museum and The Almeida.

Thanks to Akmol for letting me know that there really is an Indian restaurant in Street, Somerset, called Two Idiots. Apparently it is a reference to an Indian film called 3 Idiots. A valuable addition to my Top 10 (now Top 51) Genuine Shop Names.

This year’s A-level results offer some encouraging trends for the future – but they come with a health warning.

The Right to Buy was one of the most successful and defining Conservative policies of the 20th century. It was Margaret Thatcher’s masterstroke, breaking the relationship between people whose homes, jobs and public services were provided by council monopolies, and the Labour Party that controlled those local authorities. It granted the gift of aspiration to those who, in post-war years, had so little – and drew new voters to the right. It made a reality of Tory hopes for a “property-owning democracy”. Читать дальше...

It’s easy to see why those in charge of the Labour Party are so depressed. They must sit in their office crying: “Hundreds of thousands of people want to join us. It’s a disaster. And loads of them are young, and full of energy, and they’re really enthusiastic. Oh my God, why has it all gone so miserably wrong?”