Did the teenage William Shakespeare spend time with England's most wanted religious fundamentalist at Hoghton Tower in Lancashire?
Where there was a Will
Tag: Preston
Spare Parts from Sherlock
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s notorious attempt to kill off Sherlock Holmes was an infamous failure when an outraged public following demanded his resurrection and the author reluctantly obliged. Likewise, all attempts to bury the detective have proved impossible. His popularity is currently high. It was also buoyant in the mid-1980s due to the superb rendition … Continue reading Spare Parts from Sherlock
Hard Terms
One millisecond after midnight on the first day of September 1978 death, fusion, reincarnation, resurrection and birth all occurred at the same instant. At that moment three hundred and thirty-three cumulative years of education concluded and continued. Three colleges ceased to exist and lived on. That was the precise moment when three historic Preston Catholic … Continue reading Hard Terms
A Whiter Shade of Pal
Observations on a commemoration A couple of years ago a video installation at the Harris Museum in Preston projected extraordinary film footage onto the wall of the main staircase. It showed crowds of smiling, waving and cheering people standing on the platform of Preston Railway station as packed carriages of eager, and blatantly exuberant, soldiers … Continue reading A Whiter Shade of Pal
Ah Oui! Tonight and every night Josephine!
You are what someone else drank Today you will swallow at least 500 molecules of water that passed through Napoleon. Strange but true. Oh, and you’ll swallow a similar amount from Hitler. And from Boadicea, Cleopatra, Napoleon’s lover Josephine, and anyone else you care to name who has been dead for some time. People dismiss … Continue reading Ah Oui! Tonight and every night Josephine!
To help with a handcart
Hard Times by Lubaina Himid An appreciation Walking into the Hard Times exhibition brought to mind the ignorant tirade of forty years ago when the tabloid press had a field day over the Tate Gallery’s £2,297 purchase of Equivalent VIII by the American minimalist Carl Andre. Ridiculed as ‘a pile of bricks’ and a waste of … Continue reading To help with a handcart
Take off and stalling
The opening of Preston’s new market A reflection on the first morning A round of applause is always encouraging, and that, along with a choral cheer that didn’t so much lift the roof as reverberate reverently beneath it, heralded the latest regeneration of Preston’s Tardis of trade when it opened today. Sadly, it’s smaller, rather … Continue reading Take off and stalling
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