One of the most eagerly anticipated exhibitions ever, Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan brings nine of the Renaissance genius's paintings together for the first time.
The show is a complete sell-out and queues for the few daily walk-in tickets are forming in the small hours.
Proserpine Gainsborough-Halfwit joined the throng at the National Gallery...
Have you ever tried to...
We seem to be alternating between dull and entertaining bouts of UC lately.
Thankfully, there were smiles on faces this week as the two teams seemed genuinely to be enjoying themselves.
Which means that I don't have to be sidetracked into describing the cuisine chez Fields this Monday evening (well, if you must know, it was sweet, lean, scrumptious lamb cutlets followed by figs and home-made...
The end of the 1960's saw seismic upheavals in the pop and rock landscape in Britain - not the least of which was the demise of the fabulously successful Small Faces. Apparently lost at sea after being cast adrift by Steve Marriott, the remaining three members teamed up with two other lads, disgruntled themselves by Jeff Beck, in whose group they had felt minor players to the guitar hero.
The F...
Two Oxford colleges cooked up a tasty dish for gourmands of University Challenge in a second course match this week.
Worcester College edged out Queen's at the coffee course and duly take their place in the quarter-finals.
We're becoming very familiar with Worcester's likeable foursome of Dave Knapp, Jack Bramhill, Jonathan Metzer and skipper Rebecca Gillie - this is their third appearance t...
Zzzzzzzzz.
Oh good grief!
If I hadn't been eating dinner (home-made salted cod fishcakes and black bean salad) I'd have been asleep by the time this game was half over!
Birmingham picked up the first couple of starters and never looked back. They were not just faster to the buzzer, they really looked as if they knew more - which I'm sure was not the case.
Poor Birmingham, bless their c...
Historian and academic Ken Lucid jumped on the District Line and had a butcher's at a couple of exhibitions at The V&A...
Post-modern irony?
I'll tell you what's post-modern irony... the exhibition souvenir shop charging twenty quid for a T-shirt with "Protect Me From What I Want" emblazoned across the chest!
Bloody typical postmodernist cheek!
Anyway, aware that we are supposedly...
Millions of fans woke up this morning wondering just what had gone wrong with their favourite TV detective show.
The latest episode of Midsomer Murders had plenty of ingredients for a classic - teenage sex, nuns, stolen trousers and stolen silver, a spoiled brat, a rotten Irish accent and a former Carry On starlet.
But it failed to deliver.
Not least because the entire two-hour programme...
Any quiz show in which an answer is the '80's Leeds band The Sisters Of Mercy has to have entertainment value.
And last night's University Challenge, the second and final play-off between highest-scoring first round losers, was entertaining, despite the apparent disaparity in the final scores.
The eight representatives of Worcester College, Oxford, and St Andrews are clearly a smart set of c...
John Barnaby returned to our screens in a satisfyingly bonkers episode of Midsomer Murders last night.
It seems an age since Neil Dudgeon first stepped out as the detective chief inspector, but this was only his third outing and it didn't disappoint.
In fact, the only thing missing from the whole experience was Terry Wogan marvelling over the Midsomer craziness on his Radio 2 breakfast show...
Barnsley: Internationally renowned philosopher Archibald Cudworth is to publish his latest work Treatise On Yorkshire Self-Centrism As Lately Witnessed In God's Own County. "Aye, it's a reet long read," said the great thinker. "But in t'nutshell it boils dahn to 'see all, 'ear all, say nowt; eat all, sup all, pay nowt; an' if tha can get owt fer nowt, get it for thisen."
Bradford: Local boffin...
Subtitle: saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe. The stars of this exhibition are beautifully-crafted reliquaries that demonstrate the effort, skill and expenditure that went into housing the purported bits of saints' bodies for the faithful to visit.
Historian Ken Lucid went along for a look...
What is it with the BM, eh? Last time out it was The Book of the Dead, all about ancien...
Subtitle: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples
Ever since the Risorgimento, there has been debate about whether the unification of Italy of 1860-61 was a 'a good thing.' David Gilmour argues that it was not.
Ken Lucid assesses his case:
Back in my student days I shared a house with six others - there were four of us guys and three girls. We were a pretty mixed bunch, and al...
Foreign travel was off the agenda when Peregrine Trip decided to treat his mother to a two-day excursion. So Elgar country it was…
"A gorilla picking his nose?"
"A gorilla picking his nose," Mrs confirmed. "That's what they were singing about... 'something, something, something... gorilla picking his nose.' Bloody revolting!"
It was a choral enterprise and therefore, I suppose, it had som...
Peregrine Trip investigates the West Country cathedral city…
I stared intently at the map, but I just was not seeing. For the life of me, I could not locate Bristol Road.
So, feeling rather foolish, I asked the thick-set lad at reception who was trying to give me directions: "I'm sorry, but which is Bristol Road? I know… I'm sorry… it's stupid but I just can't see it."
The pair of recepti...
Peregrine Trip loves the Bay of Naples. He just has a problem with lifts. Well, one lift in particular…
We stayed at Sant Agnello. The brochure said Sorrento and it was only when we arrived that we realised the heart of the more celebrated Neapolitan Riviera centre was a 20-minute walk away. Quite a dodgy walk at times, too - nasty bends with little or no pavement.
But once you have made it...
Well, he looked like he wanted it... and he got it.
Ian Bailey emerged victorious as BBC's 2011 Mastermind on Friday, scoring an unblemished 18 on his specialist subject and a magnificent 19 on general knowledge.
It was a tight match from the start as opening contestant Peter Riley started with a no-passes and no incorrect answers 18. Bailey was second up and, concentrating with eyes closed,...
Travel editor Peregrin Trip visits the historic Belgian port...
Magnificent! Antwerp Central railway station - truly magnificent.
What a temple to the glory days of rail travel! Antwerpen Centraal was clearly designed to demonstrate that the latter-day burghers' ambition and civic pride were just as great as their medieval forefathers who built its more ancient and holier compatriot down the...
Otto von Bismarck, (April 1, 1815 - July 30, 1898) the creator of modern Germany, 'ruler of the Kaiser'... This towering figure in the history of modern Europe has hardly been over-examined in English - the last biography was nearly 30 years ago.
Ken Lucid considers this latest appraisal...
Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck - the Iron Chancellor, three wars, the unification of Germany,...
Difficult.
It has been so well advertised - like a hyped movie - that we are not sure what we are to expect from a Midsomer featuring a new DCI.
Well, let's be honest, the opening was inauspicious.
We are asked to believe - as we have never been asked before - that all the locals know Sgt Jones and are suspicious of the new guy.
And this is taking place in a location that is so obvious...
John Martin's epic canvasses were extremely popular in the early-to-mid 19th Century, with their apocalyptic visions - like The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. He was even described as the greatest painter of his day by one commentator.
This is the first major exhibition of his work in more than 30 years - an enlarged version arrives at Tate Britain in the Autumn.
We sent Proserpine Gains...
We are fascinated by the ancient Egyptians and their death cults. Why? Perhaps this exhibition at the British Museum could explain.
Archaeologist Chasuble Mendip-Never writes:
To Bloomsbury, the British Museum. Why, oh why? I detest and loathe these things.
Rubbing along with the great unwashed, the hoi polloi, the mob... oh, the mob! Bonaparte had the right idea...
And why do so many...
Efforts by Skoob Sports and Colonel Juan to cover the vital Chelsea vs Manchester United match on Tuesday evening were praised by rival organisation Ellis Ian Fields News & Features.
Said a spokesman for EIF: "What can we say, except we're sorry to EIF followers hoping to enjoy our superior coverage of this match?
"Skoob News made it perfectly clear earlier today that they were determine...