'The Power Broker' by Robert Caro
18 December 2024
When we saw David Hare’s play ‘Straight Line Crazy’, about the legendary New York urban planner Robert Moses, a couple of years ago (reviewed here in April 2022) I suggested that the two main incidents dramatised in the play would have made brilliant episodes of the design podcast '99% Invisible’. So when I learned, in December 2023, that ‘99% Invisible’ was planning to spend the whole of 2024 running an extended ‘online book club’ to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘The Power Broker’ - Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Moses - I was immediately on board. ‘The Power Broker’ is a monumental 1,300-page work which masterfully chronicles how Moses, never elected to public office, became one of New York's most influential figures. He transformed the state through ambitious park and highway projects, while his ruthless approaches to securing and maintaining power developed a horrific web of corruption, prejudice and racism. ‘The Power Broker’ is brilliantly written and meticulously researched: Robert Caro conducted 522 interviews with those with firsthand experience of the relevant events - including Moses himself - and took seven years to write the book. I have been reading roughly 100 pages each month, in time to listen to each of the 12 monthly podcast episodes reflecting on the relevant chapters and featuring guests including Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Incredibly Robert Caro, now aged 89, is still writing (trying to complete the fifth volume of his mammoth biography of Lyndon B Johnson) and it was fascinating to hear him interviewed on the podcast. As 2024 draws to a close, I feel a sense of accomplishment joining the select group who have read the whole of ‘The Power Broker’ and I'm struck by how its themes of power, urban planning, and social equity remain startlingly relevant today, 50 years after its publication. You can find more details about the 99% Invisible Breakdown of The Power Broker and listen to the podcasts at: https://99percentinvisible.org/club/
Labels: Books, Radio
Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert
17 December 2024
For the past 25 years the Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s annual Christmas Cracker concert has, for me, marked the start of the festive season. This Sunday afternoon family-friendly event is always huge fun and this year’s concert, at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton last Sunday, attracted a large, enthusiastic audience. Alongside a few Christmas carols and Leroy Anderson’s ‘Sleigh Ride’ we always include a narrated piece. This year’s choice, Iain Farrington’s ‘The Scary Fairy Saves Christmas’ was new to most of us but incredibly enjoyable. The words, by Craig Charles, written in rhyming couplets, are dark, mischievous, witty, occasionally controversial and very funny - assembling a cast of goblins, elves, witches and dwarves to create a bleakly comic version of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. Our performance, narrated by William Thallon, went extremely well, with conductor John Gibbons co-ordinating the complicated joins between music and narration in this long piece very effectively. The rest of the programme included ‘A Christmas Dance’ - Frank Bridge’s lovely interweaving of the folk dance ‘Sir Roger de Coverley’ (which is mentioned in Charles Dickens' ‘A Christmas Carol’) with ‘Auld Lang Syne’. And, following our recent performance of JS Bach’s 'Toccata and Fugue' arranged by Stokowski, on Sunday we played another piece from 'Fantasia', ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ by Paul Dukas. This is a notoriously difficult piece (particularly as it is so well known) but I think our performance was very impressive, featuring brilliant performances by the bassoonists, Sian Bunker, Tim Hewitt, Heather Pretty and Frank Jordan. We always include some film music in the Christmas Cracker and this year we concluded the concert with selections from the ‘Harry Potter Children’s Suite’ by John Williams. This kept William Thallon busy as he both played the iconic celeste theme and read new verse introductions to each of the movements, written specially for the concert by Frank Jordan. The movements from the suite featured the different sections of the orchestra in turn (with excellent recorder playing by Graham Tear and Helen Taylor and dramatic violin solo by Richard Smith in ‘Diagon Alley’), before bringing us all together in ‘Harry’s Wondrous World’, introduced in Frank’s words:
So as the season casts its spell,
We wish you joy and hope as well.
May Christmas shine, bright and true,
With magic and wonder surrounding you.
Merry Magical Christmas!
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The NSO Horns at Hogwarts
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Labels: Concerts, Music
'The Proof of My Innocence' by Jonathan Coe
13 December 2024
Jonathan Coe is one of my favourite writers and I particularly enjoy his novels that set fictional events against the backdrop of recent British Politics - from the Thatcher Government of the 1980s (in 'What a Carve Up!') to New Labour (in 'The Closed Circle') to Cameron's Coalition Government (in 'Number 11’, reviewed here in January 2016) to Brexit (in 'Middle England', reviewed here in January 2019). His latest book, 'The Proof of My Innocence', which I have just finished reading (as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Sam Woolf, Alana Maria, Charlotte Worthing, Mark Stobbart and Roy McMillan) is set during Liz Truss's 49-day tenure as Prime Minister. While it does explore the Conservative Party's lurch to the right, 'The Proof of My Innocence' is also a murder mystery, with Coe parodying the current trend of 'cosy crime' novels (much like Kate Atkinson did in her recent Jackson Brodie novel 'Death at the Sign of the Rook', reviewed here in October 2024). But overall it's a novel about writing, where nothing is quite what it first seems (even the title has a double meaning). Much like David Lodge's 'Therapy' this is a novel where it pays to think about who is telling each section of the story. Like David Lodge, Jonathan Coe writes accessible, entertaining prose that is much cleverer than it first appears. 'The Proof of My Innocence' is not his funniest work but it is a very enjoyable and satisfying puzzle.
Labels: Books
'Just Another Missing Person' by Gillian McAllister
13 December 2024
Gillian McAllister writes crime thrillers that are meticulously plotted and genuinely scary, with twists that repeatedly pull the ground out from underneath the reader. Having enjoyed her previous three books I have now finished her latest novel 'Just Another Missing Person'. This appears to be a fairly conventional tale of the police investigating the disappearance of a young woman, but it quickly becomes much more complicated. Each chapter is presented through the eyes of one of the main protagonists but we are never properly introduced to these narrators so we naturally make assumptions about their role in the story, misleading ourselves ahead of the inevitable plot twists. This is fiction you have to read squinting between your fingers at times but it is always gripping.
Labels: Books
'Come From Away' by Irene Sankoff and David Hein
5 December 2024
On 11 September 2001, when US air space was closed following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, 38 transatlantic flights that were in the air en route to America were diverted to the airport in Gander, Newfoundland. This tiny Canadian town had a usefully large airfield because it was built as a refuelling stop in the days when planes couldn't make it from Europe to the States in one hop. Suddenly, on 9/11, the 9,000 inhabitants of Gander were faced with accommodating the unexpected arrival of 7,000 tired, confused and scared passengers who had not yet been told why their flights couldn't continue to the USA. In 2013 the remarkable story of the Newfoundlanders' hospitality became a very successful stage musical, 'Come From Away' with book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, and on Saturday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see it. 'Come From Away' is a lovely show - moving, poignant, funny and inspirational. It uses ensemble narration, with each member of the large cast stepping up in turn to tell us the story of those few incredible days, while constantly rearranging chairs to become passengers on an airplane or customers in a bar etc. The music - provided by a lively on-stage band - draws on the folk music of the Canadian maritime provinces with its Celtic influences. The musical doesn't shy away from the painful reality of the terrorist attacks but it's ultimately a celebration of humanity and the entire sold out audience of 1,400 people rose to their feet at the end in genuine warmth. Do go to see 'Come From Away' if you get the chance.
Labels: Musicals, Theatre
