He rejects suggestions that the drama is a direct comment on Northern Ireland today “This is not a proselytising piece I’m not trying to educate or persuade anyone. If it clarifies issues or provokes discussion of Irish history, that’s up to individuals. All I cared about was writing a moving story.”Removing his ear-plugs after the [...]

And for once, the “objectivity” of the flashback convention feels both legitimate artistically and morally creepy because we repeatedly have access to his immediate past which our hero’s brain crucially denies him.Je Suis Un Phenomene, by contrast, focuses on the real-life case of a person, the Russian memory man, Solomon Shereshevsky, whose problem was that [...]

I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect.” The core themes which Mr Bush is pushing have remained unchanged since he launched his candidacy last year at a ceremony in Austin, Texas: tax cuts, better education, reforming America’s pensions scheme and giving more cash to the US military.The campaign [...]

On the other hand, provisions are very high and the interest rate margin is very sharply down.”Mr Barrett insisted that in spite of the bad publicity over April’s branch closures, and the row over cash machine charges,the bank was winning new customers and doing more business with existing clients. However, he admitted he was not [...]

Like many good photographers, he was instinctively attracted to people who would subsequently become legends.
He snapped Duchamp quickly, and made his own art snappily. He saw how to make surreal objects that side-stepped the usual procedures of sculpture. Everyone knows his Cadeau (1921), the flat iron with nails protruding from its surface. This piece looks [...]

It would be reasonable to assume that, since Red Action’s inception, its members have given assistance of all kinds and at all levels to the cause of Irish Republicanism, both to the IRA and to the INLA (prior to the INLA’s auto-liquidation in 1987 amid vicious feuding).The question is – with a ceasefire and peace [...]

John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique are due on at 7.30.Evgeny Kissin at the Proms: 3pm tomorrow, Royal Albert Hall, London SW7 (0171-589 8212) and live on BBC Radio 3. Kissin’s new recording of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos 2 & 5 is released this week on Sony Classical (SK 62926). The trick [...]

This book shows us what an institutionalised avant-garde can come to. Harvey Shapiro, on the other hand, begins in a slightly too literary way but, over the years, comes to a lucidity and candour I found entirely gripping. The Garden Master but/ tendril- tender all his short life.” Although also echoing Roethke, Shapiro does so [...]

He was also highly active in the affairs of the powerful American Society of Cinematographers.Foreign directors often wanted to work with him. (Cortez lit colour films as dramatically as he lit black-and-white and his arriving scenes are easily spotted.)The cinematographer had one strong ally in Susan Hayward who admired the way he had photographed her [...]

BRITAIN’S pounds 60bn investment trust industry yesterday began to crack under the strain of hostile corporate activity as a leading Barings trust said it would grant some of the wishes of shareholders who want to break it up. Other likely topics for discussion include Liffe’s ownership structure. Mr Hodson has hinted it could incorporate and [...]