Igenlode Wordsmith

I wrote a long post, but the browser crashed while I was looking for images :-(

Summarised version:

( BBC Radio Lord of the Rings )
Waiting for the Out: continues very good -- Guardian review

(  Marie Antoinette )


And also *two* Russian Smekhov-adjacent serials: an in-depth nine-part podcast on the 'musical spectacular' "Ali-Baba" (which I had vaguely heard of but hadn't realised he actually wrote all the lyrics for -- apparently it was another beloved Soviet children's classic, at least according to the possibly-not-impartial makers of the podcast!) and a pre-Musketeers adventure serial that was referred to in several recent interviews, "Smok and Malish", in which he plays the lead. Again, I had vaguely heard of this: it is clearly the prior production briefly alluded to in "When I Was Athos" which had involved falling off roofs, out of canoes, and into snowdrifts :-D
( Read more... )

I don't know -- I'm beginning to feel that *maybe* I've crossed some sort of threshold since Christmas, and that I'm actually starting to understand Russian freely at last...? ( Improved listening comprehension )

( Fast-talking historian )

It is so jolly cold that I am back to using a bungee cord on the bookcase (hooked around The Collins Book of Best-Loved Verse, which is conveniently slender but rigid) in an attempt to keep the bathroom door shut, given that the bathroom window lives *open*...)

On the other hand I have managed to complete my third chapter, and just need to write the final epilogue snippet, for which I have some ideas bubbling away -- though I'm not quite sure how I'm going to actually end it, plus I need to check some dates on French foreign policy first :-)

I am still listening to the BBC Lord of the Rings( Read more... )

I turned on the radio at random and caught the last half-hour of what seemed to be a play about Lady Emma Hamilton. As it was a few minutes past the hour I thought I'd missed only the first few lines of a two-hander in which a drunken Emma confides her history to a tactfully non-judgmental servant in her final days, so one can imagine my surprise when a lonely and apparently delusional Emma attempted to summon her Nelson... and after some delay he actually arrived!

It gradually became evident that this was in fact a fully-cast play set on the eve of Trafalgar, examining Nelson's and Emma's relationship with a sympathetic and unromanticised eye: two touchy and desperately insecure people, both past masters of the art of emotional posture and manipulation and yet both sincerely devoted to a liaison that was deeply wounding to Nelson's wife and aroused cruel mockery in the onlooker. I assumed it was a recently commissioned production, and was astonished to learn from the credits at the end of the transmission that "Bequest to the Nation" had been written by the great Terence Rattigan: a play of his that I had never even heard of, despite the recent stage revival of many of his works.

That certainly accounts for the humanity and understanding in it...