Blog

THE PEOPLE IMMORTAL

            On 22 June 1941, a Sunday, Hitler declared war on his former ally Stalin. The German invasion of the Soviet Union – code-named Barbarossa after the “red-bearded” Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I – was much more than a surprise attack. It was the beginning of a calamity. In his drive to acquire Lebensraum (“living …

THE PEOPLE IMMORTAL Read More »

Gaia Servadio

            Most people were charmed by the Italian-born writer and journalist Gaia Servadio, who died in Rome in 2021, at the age of eighty two. At her London home on the Chelsea-Pimlico border she hosted one of the last notable literary salons; Homeric meals were laid on for, among others, Italo Calvino, Salman Rushdie, Philip …

Gaia Servadio Read More »

KLING KLANG

Founded in Düsseldorf in 1970 by the German musician-composers Ralf Hütter and the late Florian Schneider, Kraftwerk were less a band than an Andy Warhol-like art project, that radiated a spirit of perceived “Germanness” and conveyor-belt efficiency in its studio production wizardry. During the punk-heyday in the 1970s a very British fear and suspicion of …

KLING KLANG Read More »