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Phil Bloomfield

Brilliant! What a wonderful concert this was, from first to last notes, and such an interesting and entertaining programme. There was an enthusiastic welcome for James Gilchrist from his many ...

13 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

It is amazing to think that this is the tenth year of the Oxford Lieder Festival, that brilliant celebration of wonderful music. This concert was the first in the Festival’s Swedish Weekend, a ...

13 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

Mercifully transferred to the Holywell at the last moment due to a piano malfunction, this delightful recital was the second concert in the Swedish Weekend by outstanding soprano, Ida Falk Winland. ...

13 years ago

Antony & Cleopatra

Phil Bloomfield

It’s an Egyptian Tragedy, a Mediterranean Eastenders. You’ll know the story: boy meets girl; boy marries another girl; boy goes back to first girl; all hell breaks loose; and then girl meets ...

13 years ago

Antony & Cleopatra

Love, Love, Love

Phil Bloomfield

Ken and Sandra are groovy baby-boomers who meet at Ken’s brother Henry’s flat in 1967. He’s an Oxford student down to London for the vac and sponging off his brother. She’s a bit of ...

13 years ago

Love, Love, Love

Tea is an Evening Meal

Phil Bloomfield

All thirteen of us gathered around Faye Draper’s farmhouse table for a nice cup of tea and some bourbon biscuits. We had a selection of interesting and historic mugs to choose from, and not one was ...

13 years ago

Tea is an Evening Meal

Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2011

Phil Bloomfield

Martin Nowak, a mathematical biologist at Harvard, and Roger Highfield, editor of the New Scientist, talked about their new book, Super Co-operators, in which they attempt to explain the logic of how ...

13 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

Peter Atkins retired three years ago from his post as Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University. During his working life he published many successful books on science. His new work, On Being, which ...

13 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

Science writer Georgina Ferry chaired three different panels in succession through an interesting afternoon focussed on Synthetic Life, the Diversity of Life and Life in Space, respectively. The ...

13 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

We started with a spirited, “Happy birthday to you, dear Anthony,” for it was indeed AC Grayling’s birthday. He overcame any momentary embarrassment to lead quickly into a wonderful 40 minute ...

13 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

Dr Sarah Thomas, Bodley's 24th Librarian, spoke to us in the stunning Divinity School about her vision for the future of the Bodleian Libraries. She started with a quick historical summary before ...

13 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

Most of this session was an engaging interview between Dave Freeman and author Colin Thubron, who is reputed to be “one of this country’s most distinguished travel writers”. Dave’s questions ...

13 years ago

Animal Kingdom [15]

Phil Bloomfield

In an arresting title sequence, teenager Josh Cody (J) has one eye on the TV, showing the Aussie version of Deal or No Deal, while his Mum, slumped on the sofa, is being treated for a heroin overdose ...

13 years ago

Animal Kingdom [15]

Oxford Lieder Festival 2010

Phil Bloomfield

You will know that Oxford is a very civilised place. One of its cultural delights is the Lieder Festival, an “annual two-week extravaganza” of song. A highlight of the Festival this year just has ...

14 years ago

Oxford Lieder Festival 2010

Are There More of You?

Phil Bloomfield

This excellent production is a series of loosely interlinked monologues about four middle-aged women who live in SW11, all written and performed by the highly talented Alison Skilbeck. Firstly, ...

14 years ago

Are There More of You?

Propaganda

Phil Bloomfield

The set-up: the Lord Chamberlain’s Men at the Globe have been persuaded to put on an old Shakespeare play, Richard II, by Robin, the Earl of Essex, and his fixer, Harry, the Earl of Southampton. ...

14 years ago

Propaganda

The Glass Menagerie

Phil Bloomfield

Poor Tom Williams: stuck in a cramped St Louis apartment with his loony Mum and his crippled sister, working at a dead-end day job in a shoe warehouse and spending his nights either escaping at the ...

14 years ago

The Glass Menagerie

Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2010

Phil Bloomfield

Professor Richard Wiseman is now a psychologist, but was once a professional magician, so he introduced this excellent lecture/performance with a disappearing hanky trick, using that as a way into ...

14 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

There was a smattering of photographers and a film crew at the Sheldonian for Philip Pullman’s session on his new book, the controversial The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The theatre ...

14 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

These two eminent scientists, both highly experienced in the public regulation of food, gave us a fascinating double-act on the latest research on obesity. Kessler was promoting his new book, The End ...

14 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science, broadcaster, and medical doctor who writes the weekly Bad Science column in the Guardian, entertained a sell-out Garden Marquee crowd at the Festival. He spoke ...

14 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, talked about the BBC Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects, which looks at the whole world through its things. He started with the ...

14 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

Unfortunately, Richard Dawkins did not join us as billed for this part of the celebrations for the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society. A few punters mumbled about getting a ...

14 years ago

Burton

Phil Bloomfield

Rhodri Miles performs as the mega actor and film star Richard Burton in this excellent one-man show at the eponymous studio theatre, where in 1944 Burton took his first standing ovation at the end of ...

14 years ago

Burton

Three Sisters

Phil Bloomfield

No, it isn’t the Bevs: it’s Chekhov, Jim, but not as we know it. There are no cool Derek Jacobi types in white suits and no pale sunshine streaming through the dacha’s French windows, ...

14 years ago

Three Sisters

The Last Station [15]

Phil Bloomfield

This is a biopic of a novelisation by Jay Parini of the last few days in the life of the Russian author Lev Tolstoy. As in all good novels there is a nice bit of conflict going on. Tolstoy (a ...

14 years ago

The Last Station [15]

Judgement

Phil Bloomfield

We enter the Studio, set out in thrust mode, to see a semi-naked man laid out, apparently asleep on a sarcophagus. The room is shrouded in smoke and lit by candles in tall stands. A carved ...

14 years ago

Judgement

Dick Whittington

Phil Bloomfield

It’s worth taking the trip out to West Oxfordshire to see this delightfully traditional Pantomime. Chippy is particularly good at these shows and this year’s version is again a winner. The story, ...

14 years ago

Dick Whittington

Dancing In My Dreams

Phil Bloomfield

This excellent musical play tells the story of Kathleen O’Neill, evacuated with her sister Christina from the East End of London to an unnamed village in the English countryside early in the Second ...

15 years ago

Dancing In My Dreams

Lost in the Wind

Phil Bloomfield

A huge success at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer, Bristol-based Theatre Company Lost Spectacles won hearts of all ages at the North Wall on Friday night with their evocative production - Lost in ...

15 years ago

Lost in the Wind

Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2009

Phil Bloomfield

Susan Blackmore, a multi-talented psychologist with a shock of multi-coloured hair, started her talk by asking members of the audience, “Are you conscious?” When they answered, with whatever they ...

15 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

A Poet’s Guide to Britain is a new series for BBC Four’s Poetry Season, due to be screened this coming May. This preview screening was introduced by poet Owen Sheers, who has chosen six ...

15 years ago

Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2008

Phil Bloomfield

Michael Holdroyd, the celebrated biographer of Lytton Strachey, George Bernard Shaw and Augustus John, was at the Lit Fest to promote his new work, A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of ...

15 years ago

Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2008

Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2009

Phil Bloomfield

This session was a debate on the major questions being raised at every level in our educational system. It was chaired by Jenny Cuffe, a BBC journalist, who introduced the speakers. Each then spoke ...

15 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

In this Lit Fest session, author Graham Farmelo was interviewed about his book, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac. John Carey, The Sunday Times Chief Critic, was the man asking the ...

15 years ago

Phil Bloomfield

David Starkey got the Oxford Literary Festival off to a grand start with a tour de force lecture about the early life of Henry VIII. His talk coincided with the publication of his latest book, the ...

15 years ago