A farewell

The news has just reached me that the incandescent, inspirational mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died yesterday, aged 52. If this seems a brief post, it's because words sometimes fail in the face of such a catastrophic loss. Instead of carrying on, I'd like to redirect you to the obituary from the New York Times.

Breakfast bites #2

I don't know what it is about the BBC Breakfast news guests, but they've been coming up with the kind of apt statements that you couldn't make up if you tried to. This morning they brought on a fashion historian to talk about the background to the bikini. It was invented by a Frenchman (naturellement), an engineer who'd inherited his mother's lingerie shop and wanted to attract new business. Less was more, but the time was wrong. "The original bikini was thirty inches of material and fitted into a matchbox," she said. "It did not take off."

Paperback writer!

The paperback edition of RITES OF SPRING hit the doormat the other day & looks simply wonderful. Release date is 27 July, but it can be pre-ordered from Amazon here.

Putting the oo back into tattoo

On BBC Breakfast news this morning they interviewed a girl whose employer had caused ructions by asking her to cover up her spectacularly tattooed arms while in the office. "The thing is," she said, "where do you draw the line?"

Happy Midsummer's Eve!

Never do anything before your second cup of coffee

A little alert for everyone. Early today I received a message from a correspondent in the US attaching a petition about the destruction of the Salle Pleyel in Paris. Sign the petition to Mr Villepin to stop it! The pleas seemed convincing, and before having my second cup of coffee I went into the site, signed the petition and forwarded the message to some people I thought would be interested.

A message promptly came back from an agent friend saying that actually the Salle Pleyel has been beautifully refurbished and the programme for next season is excellent. Another well-informed correspondent tells me that the acoustics are being done over by Russell Johnson. It does seem to be true, as the petition protested, that the number of seats has been reduced considerably and that the hall will be housing other kinds of music besides classical concerts. But it also seems to be true that the work is pretty much finished & that this is a strange moment indeed for such a petition to be doing the rounds.

I can't prove that the protest isn't genuine, of course, but I urge caution if you're on the receiving end of this since I've spent the better part of this morning sorting out the mess resulting from forwarding flawed info too fast.

UPDATE, 4pm: It seems sensible to let you all make up your own minds on this, so:

Here's the petition;

Here's the hall's official site containing all the information about the refurbishment.


The season opens in mid-September.