There's only one thing better than a violin...

...and it's a tenor voice like this.

Juan Diego Florez's latest album, Sentimento Latino, is out on Monday. If you like sun-drenched South American songs dressed up a bit and sung by a voice so honeyed and radiant that it's like magnetised massage oil for the soul, order it now.

A difficult morning in London

Today is the first anniversary of the 7 July London Tube bombings. A two-minute silence was held at King's Cross and most of us, thinking back, are feeling sad, defiant, angry and resiliant.

We are proud of this wonderful, vibrant, multifaceted city with its millions of inhabitants of every colour, race and creed and will never forget those who died that day.

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.