Here's the late great Dame Maggie Smith being interviewed by Mark Lawson in 2017. They talk about Alan Bennett, the fame brought by Downton Abbey and the awfulness of waiting on a Harry Potter set in a silly hat. I remember a remark by David Hemmings to the effect that anyone can learn to act, the harder thing is learning to wait.
The latest edition of Miranda Sawyer's Talk '90s To Me podcast is well worth a listen. It provides a history of the changes that took place through the decade both in people's taste for drink and in the economics of the pub trade. Peter Brown is a well-informed guest. As to the panic over children and alcopops, it was largely unfounded. They were expensive, and as underage drinkers take it up because they want to look more adult, a product that was packaged like a children's drink didn't attract them anyway. I remember alcopops as a good after-work drink before ...
". . . .a world suffering from 'global warming and environmental degradation, multiple conflicts, rising military budgets, disregard for international law and international humanitarian law, disruptions to trade, erosion of democratic governance and technological developments that are met with excitement and fear.' " This quotation from a speech by Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, Brazil's ambassador to the UK, forms the opening of a full page article by the Guardian's diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour in last Saturday's paper. It seems to be a pretty god description of the world we're in. Wintour's article is headlined "Hope emerges from chaos." It wold ...
"The taboo around the word 'membership' has been maintained not by principle but timidity. Farage built his project on lies. The least we can do is have the courage to tell the truth about what those lies have cost us in our classrooms, laboratories, training colleges, concert halls, and our standing in a world that badly needs Britain to be more than a bystander."Caroline Lucas goes where Certain Other Politicians fear to tread. Barry Gardiner points to an important lesson of the Mandelson affair: "Most leaders surround themselves with people who tell them what they think they want to hear. ...
The Guardian reports that Britain's biometrics watchdogs have warned that national oversight of AI-powered face scanning to catch criminals is lagging far behind the technology's rapid growth. The paper says that with the Metropolitan police almost doubling the number of faces they scan in London over the past 12 months and a rising use of the technology by retailers in the UK, Professor William Webster, the biometrics commissioner for England and Wales, said that the "slow pace of legislation was trying to catch up with the real world" and "the horse had gone before the cart": Dr Brian Plastow, who ...