Someone was away, so guess who landed the column The Week in Culture for today's Independent...?
It was the perfect excuse to do a music-film equivalent of one of the "literary smackdowns" that are so popular on Twitter right now. Pick your Russell: Ken, or Simon R Beale? Now, I love Simon dearly. And Sir Mark. And Dr Deathridge, whose lectures at Cambridge were absolutely the best back in 1986. But just try watching an episode of BBC4's Symphony series back to back with Lisztomania. Just try it...
Who would ever come up with a thing like this now? But of course, nobody would have done so before Ken Russell, either. Here's one of the milder episodes for this week's Friday Historical: Liszt and Marie a la Charlie Chaplin and Edna, in a recollection of love's young dream and its gradual destruction, while the great song 'O lieb, o lieb' is sung by Roger Daltrey. A Friday Historical that is only 36 years old, with a singer who is very much still with us. But historical because it's unlikely that any comparable thing will ever happen again.
