Tuesday, 28 February 2023
Monday, 27 February 2023
Climate crisis brings whiff of danger to French perfume capital
.webp)
Climate crisis brings whiff of danger to French
perfume capital
In Grasse, droughts, heatwaves, and excessive rainfall
have made growing flowers increasingly difficult
Mélissa
Godin
Sat 18 Feb
2023 09.00 GMT
When
heatwaves used to hit the French town of Grasse, the perfume capital of the
world, townspeople didn’t water their flowers. Instead, they marched along the
town’s cobblestone streets, in a procession towards the church.
“They were
calling for rain from the spirits,” says Carole Biancalana, a fourth-generation
perfume flower producer whose grandmother participated in the rain ceremonies.
“But I don’t think this procession would cut it in today’s climate.”
Since the
17th century, Grasse has been known worldwide for its fragrant flowers.
Situated just inland from the French Riviera, Grasse enjoys a microclimate that
allows fields of may rose, tuberose, lavender and jasmine to blossom. Today,
the region produces flowers for some of the world’s biggest luxury brands,
including Dior and Chanel, who spend significant amounts on raw materials from
the region – Grasse’s jasmine sells for a higher price than gold.
Around the
world, Grasse’s producers are recognised as leaders in the industry: in 2018,
Unesco placed the region’s perfume culture on its intangible cultural heritage
list.
But climate
change is threatening this tradition. Extreme weather patterns such as
droughts, heatwaves, and excessive rainfall have made growing flowers
increasingly difficult. Last summer, Grasse faced extreme droughts, resulting
in some producers losing nearly half of their harvest. High temperatures affect
the future quality of roses and prohibit some flowers, such as tuberose, from
growing. Biancalana felt these impacts directly: this year, her tuberose
harvest dropped by 40%.
“The elders
here keep telling us there are no more seasons,” says Biancalana, noting that
winters are now warmer, with unseasonal cold spells in the spring. She jokes:
“We can’t count on the spirits anymore.”
Grasse is
not alone. Around the world, primary materials for perfumes are threatened by
increasingly extreme weather patterns. Vanilla, a key material for the
industry, has taken a particular hit. Grown primarily on the African continent,
vanilla crops have been struck by heatwaves in recent years. In 2017, a cyclone
in Madagascar destroyed 30% of crops, pushing the price to more than $600
(£502) a kilo.
“Climate
change may not have an impact on the smell of perfume,” says Benoit Verdier,
the co-founder of the custom perfume house Ex Nihilo Paris. “But it will affect
the price.”
Ex Nihilo
has watched the costs for raw materials like vanilla and saffron soar as a
result of the limited supply caused by climate-induced droughts and disasters.
Though they have not yet increased the price of their perfumes, rising costs
for raw materials might force them to. As a result, they are considering
turning towards synthetic alternatives.
“The
romantic view of perfume is for it to be natural,” says Verdier. “There is
mysticism around a place like Grasse, it gets people dreaming. But it isn’t
always more sustainable.”
Crops for
perfumes require a lot of water and land. Shipping raw materials around the
world also results in significant carbon emissions. “It’s more sustainable to
make perfume in the laboratory,” says Verdier.
Producers
in Grasse disagree. “We actually consume very little water,” says Biancalana,
noting that producers in the region use drip irrigation, which has historically
accounted for only 5% of the region’s water use.
Producers
in the region have made significant efforts to ensure their crops are
environmentally friendly. In 2006, Biancalana founded Les Fleurs d’Exception du
Pays de Grasse, an association that brings together producers from the region.
One of their key mandates is that all producers be organic to ensure the
protection of biodiversity, which they believe is one of their greatest weapons
against climate change.
“What can
we do, how can we adapt, who should we ask for support, what research needs to
be done?” says Armelle Janody, the president of the association. “These are the
questions we are asking.”
But to find
answers, the association needs support. Currently, there have been few
scientific studies on how climate change is impacting crops in the region.
“We are
observing changes but we do not have scientific studies on what is objectively
happening,” says Janody.
Leaders in
the industry have already begun supporting local producers by investing in
research and adaptation techniques, which they know is critical for their
companies’ futures. But while producers welcome this support, some are wary of
the potential strings attached.
“The
question for us is how to have industry support without losing our autonomy and
sovereignty,” says Janody, who fears companies could demand greater control
over the means of production under the pretence of supporting climate
adaptation.
“These
brands want to associate their perfumes with our history and our heritage, yet
they come in and want to change everything. We do not want to be servants to
the industry.”
For
producers, it’s not just their agricultural practices that are at stake: it’s
their culture and way of life. The perfume industry has been at the beating
heart of Grasse’s identity for centuries. Since 1946, the town has paid tribute
to the region’s jasmine in an August ceremony that spans an entire weekend.
“This is so
much more than just a job,” says Biancalana, whose family has been working the
same fields for more than a hundred years. “We have a moral duty to our
ancestors and to our territory. People here have always been ready to fight.
That’s not going to change because of climate change.”
Sunday, 26 February 2023
Roald Dahl publisher announces unaltered 16-book ‘classics collection’ / Camilla forces U-turn in Roald Dahl censorship row
Roald Dahl publisher announces unaltered 16-book
‘classics collection’
Series will be released alongside controversially
amended versions to leave readers ‘free to choose which version they prefer’
Sarah
Shaffi and Lucy Knight
Fri 24 Feb
2023 13.26 GMT
A
collection of Roald Dahl’s books with unaltered text is to be published after a
row over changes made to novels including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and
The Witches.
Dahl’s
publisher Puffin, the children’s imprint of Penguin Random House, was
criticised this week after the Telegraph reported that it had hired sensitivity
readers to go over the beloved author’s books and language deemed to be
offensive would be removed from new editions. In response, Puffin has decided
to release Dahl’s works in their original versions with its new texts.
The Classic
Collection will “sit alongside the newly released Puffin Roald Dahl books for
young readers”, the publisher said in a statement, adding that the the latter
series of books “are designed for children who may be navigating written
content independently for the first time”.
On
Thursday, Camilla, the Queen Consort, appeared to weigh in on the debate. At a
Clarence House reception for her online book club, she told authors : “Please
remain true to your calling, unimpeded by those who may wish to curb the
freedom of your expression or impose limits on your imagination.”
Changes to
Dahl’s books in the 2022 editions include using “enormous” rather than “fat” to
describe the antagonist Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and
“beastly” rather than “ugly and beastly” to describe Mrs Twit in The Twits.
In James
and the Giant Peach, a rhyme by the Centipede originally read: “Aunt Sponge was
terrifically fat / And tremendously flabby at that,” and, “Aunt Spiker was thin
as a wire / And dry as a bone, only drier.” Now it has been changed to say:
“Aunt Sponge was a nasty old brute / And deserved to be squashed by the fruit,”
and, “Aunt Spiker was much of the same / And deserves half of the blame.”
Salman
Rushdie, who is published by Penguin Random House, was among those to criticise
Puffin, writing on Twitter that “Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd
censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.”
Philip
Pullman – also published by Penguin Random House – said Dahl’s books should be
allowed to go out of print, while prime minister Rishi Sunak said the issue was
one of free speech.
The
singer-songwriter and activist Billy Bragg also weighed in on the discussion on
Twitter, expressing his support for the changes made to the 2022 editions.
“Suppose your mum wears a hairpiece due to chemotherapy and kids in your class
call her a witch because they read in Dahl’s book that witches all wear wigs”
he tweeted in response to a comment piece for the Telegraph by Suzanne Moore.
The Roald
Dahl Classic Collection will consist of 16 titles. In a letter to staff,
Penguin Random House UK CEO Tom Weldon said the publisher acknowledged “the
importance of keeping Dahl’s classic texts in print”.
The
collection will come out later this year. “Readers will be free to choose which
version of Dahl’s stories they prefer,” said Weldon.
He said the
publisher was used to “taking part in cultural discourse and debate”. He added:
“Sometimes that can be challenging and uncomfortable, and this has certainly
been one of those times.”
In a public
statement, Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin Random House Children’s,
said the publisher had “listened to the debate over the past week” and it had
“reaffirmed the extraordinary power of Roald Dahl’s books and the very real
questions around how stories from another era can be kept relevant for each new
generation”.
The
Telegraph’s associate editor Christopher Hope described the announcement of the
new collection as an “extraordinary win” for the reporters who broke the
original story, but others were critical of the publisher’s move. Sam
Missingham, publishing commentator and founder of The Empowered Author book
marketing service, said the decision was “truly pitiful” and that the debate
has been a distraction from more important issues.
Others
pointed out that, with two sets of editions on sale, Puffin could make even
more money from Dahl’s books. Bookseller D Franklin tweeted: “Puffin and the
Dahl Estate really have worked out how to cash in here: first a sales spike
from the controversy seeing people buying up the previous printing, then a
spike in people ‘supporting’ the changes, and now TWO sets of books in print.”
Puffin’s
current 16-book Roald Dahl set is now at No 2 in the Amazon children’s books
bestsellers chart.
The
Independent
Camilla forces U-turn in Roald Dahl censorship row
Roisin
O'Connor
Fri, 24
February 2023 at 12:24 pm GMT·3-min read
The Queen Consort has forced publisher Puffin
UK to back down on its censorship of Roald Dahl books after she intervened in
the row over the decision to edit his words.
Camilla gave an impassioned defence of free
speech and the right of writers to express themselves at Clarence House on
Thursday 23 February, just days after she let it be known privately that she
had serious concerns over the changes to Dahl’s books.
Last week, it emerged that the best-selling
children’s books were being rewritten to remove language considered offensive.
The word “fat”, for example, had been cut from
every book. Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is instead
described as “enormous”, an investigation by The Telegraph found.
Puffin has now issued a statement announcing
that it will make both the original and censored versions available to readers.
Francesca Dow, MD of Penguin Random House
Children’s – which owns Puffin UK – said it has “proudly” published Roald
Dahl’s “mischievous” books for more than 40 years.
“We’ve listened to the debate over the past
week which has reaffirmed the extraordinary power of Roald Dahl’s books and the
very real questions around how stories from another era can be kept relevant
for each new generation,” she said.
“As a children’s publisher, our role is to
share the magic of stories with children with the greatest thought and care.”
Dow said it was “both a privilege and a
responsibility” to publish books for children and that Dahl’s books were often
the first stories young children would read independently.
“We also recognise the importance of keeping
Dahl’s classic texts in print. By making both versions available, we are
offering readers the choice to decide how they experience Roald Dahl’s magical,
marvellous stories.
“Roald Dahl once said: ‘If my books can help
children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.’
At Puffin, we’ll keep pursuing that ambition for as long as we make books.”
In her speech to mark the second anniversary
of her literary initiative Reading Room at Clarence House, Camilla urged
writers “to remain true to your calling, unimpeded by those who may wish to
curb the freedom of your expression or your imagination”.
In what was interpreted as her disapproval of
the changes made to the text of Dahl’s classic books, the Queen Consort said:
“Let there be no squeaking like mice but only roaring like a pride of lions!”
The decision to censor Dahl’s books also
attracted sharp condemnation from a number of leading literary voices,
including Salman Rushdie, who called the edits “absurd”.
“Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd
censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed,” he tweeted.
American author Michael Shellenberger also
criticised the changes, branding them a case of “totalitarian censorship”.
“The publisher of the books of the late Roald
Dahl has made hundreds of changes to them, supposedly to make them more
palatable to ‘sensitive’ audiences,” he wrote. “This is totalitarian censorship
and should be broadly condemned by authors and publishers.”
The Roald Dahl Classic Collection will now sit
alongside the newly released Puffin Roald Dahl books for young readers, which
are designed for children who may be reading on their own for the first time.
Saturday, 25 February 2023
This England | Teaser / This England review – so sympathetic to Boris Johnson it is absolutely bananas / Kenneth Branagh Plays Boris Johnson; Defends Covid Drama ‘This England’ Slammed By Critics As “Too Soon”
Review
This England review – so sympathetic to Boris
Johnson it is absolutely bananas
Kenneth Branagh’s impression of the former
coward-in-chief is spot on, but Michael Winterbottom’s Covid drama is leaden,
artless and a disservice to all those who died
Lucy Mangan
@LucyMangan
Wed 28 Sep 2022 17.25 EDT
The voice
is spot on. That awful moist, blustering sound – a semi-croak, squeezed out of
a tense throat by a man who can never relax because he has no foundations to
rely on – is perfect. Close your eyes and Kenneth Branagh could easily be Boris
Johnson. The face full of prosthetics is less convincing and becomes a
distraction. But that the mask begins to slip the more time you spend in the
man’s company may be the metaphor to end all metaphors. If so, it’s one of the
more successful elements of Michael Winterbottom’s six-part drama This England
(Sky Atlantic), which follows the then prime minister Johnson and his
government through the first wave of the pandemic.
It is
hampered from the off by feeling both too soon and wildly out of date. This
England was in post-production when the Partygate scandal broke and the
decision was taken not to try to revise it at such a late stage, when
presumably only the most superficial changes could have been made. And of
course, Johnson has since been replaced by someone who is shaping up to be –
though it hardly seems possible – even worse, albeit in a less showmanish and
more stunned-halibut way.
The entire
project now has the air of only telling half the story and not telling the
truth. This would undermine any drama based on real-life events, let alone one
that devotes as much time as Winterbottom’s to what feels – to quite deadening
effect – like simple reconstruction. The salient points of Cobra and Sage
meetings, the public daily briefings and the handshaking hospital visit are
shown, and the pros and cons of locking down, contact tracing and mass testing
are laid out for us and Matt Hancock by doctors and scientists via dialogue so
leaden that you wonder if it was really possible for the pandemic to have been
this boring for anyone. Meanwhile, a tally of reported and actual cases scrolls
by on screen as the days pass. There is no art here and it doesn’t work as
documentary either. The factual films that emerged during and after the height
of the pandemic have been without exception more informative and moving than
this.
Partygate
and all the other revelations since make the Dominic Cummings (Simon Paisley
Day) and Barnard Castle debacle, rendered here in exhaustive detail, seem
wrongly weighted. It was, we know now, a bagatelle. And it makes the hugely
sympathetic portrayal of Johnson, as a man pulled in many directions by a new
wife (to be), baby and dog, saddened by a distant relationship with his other
children, a biography on Shakespeare overdue and now – oh what a sea of
troubles! – a pandemic to deal with on top of everything else, which would have
raised eyebrows at the best of times, seem absolutely bananas.
The
characters are merely ciphers, even Johnson. The only suggestion of any kind of
hinterland is his occasional glance out of the window to mutter a quote to
himself instead of to an effortfully appreciative audience. He is nothing more
than the idle, cowardly buffoon we already know him to be. Cummings is no more
than the robotic weirdo whose image you conjure from the times when he was
still allowed to appear in front of cameras. Care home supervisors and members
of the public whose sickening, ventilation and deaths we see are merely
sketched in. This is a disservice.
The message
seems to be: “Well, everyone was trying their best. Tough situaysh, you know?”
Which won’t really do.
It feels as
though it is still too soon for drama. To see such recent, terrible times again
is so gruelling that, although I stand by my criticisms and have tried to
control for the effect, it makes us resistant to engaging with it again.
Yes, we
need to process our individual and collective experiences and art will help us
do that – but the artists have to be ready first. On this evidence, we are all
still in a state of post-traumatic stress, able only to repeat what happened to
us until we can cope with the facts. In time, hopefully, we will be able to
observe the events from different perspectives, combine and recombine them as
stories that aid understanding and dissipate our horrors, allow for questions
and posit some answers. But we are not there yet.
Kenneth Branagh Plays Boris Johnson; Defends
Covid Drama ‘This England’ Slammed By Critics As “Too Soon”
By Caroline
Frost
Caroline
Frost
editor
September
11, 2022 1:25am
Kenneth
Branagh has defended upcoming political drama This England, in which he stars
as British former prime minister Boris Johnson, which many people have slammed
as “too soon.”
The
six-hour series details how the UK government addressed the first chaotic
months of the coronavirus and national lockdown. Critics of the forthcoming
show say it’s too soon to depict such a drama, with its huge death toll leaving
hundreds of thousands of Britons still bereaved and economically vulnerable.
To those,
Branagh says in an interview with The Times, “I think these events are unusual
and part of what we must do is acknowledge them. It might allow people to
process a little of what went on. Any way of understanding it better is
important.”
Oscar
winner Branagh spent two hours every day in makeup, transforming himself into
British former premier Boris Johnson but deliberately chose not to reveal
himself to the cast and crew each day until he had been turned into Johnson, he
told the newspaper.
“When
you’re playing Shakespearean kings, the main part of the performance is given
to you by those who react to you in the way they might to a king. I found that
was the case in this instance. I didn’t really see another actor as myself, so
when I came on the set people responded a bit like their characters might [to
the prime minister].”
Branagh
also revealed he had to actively stretch himself out at the end of each day
after hours of playing the politician, who was beleaguered on the political and
personal front at the time – his first months as the country’s prime minister
and addressing the demands of Covid-19 coinciding with his divorce, and the
imminent birth of his child with girlfriend Carrie Symonds.
“He has a
top-heavy, barrelling physicality heading into the world,” Branagh told The Times,
describing Johnson as a “very hunched-forward kind of guy.”
This
England, like many other British TV series, has had its debut on Sky Atlantic
in the UK delayed by a week after a national period of mourning for the Queen
was declared. It will now be aired on Sky Atlantic and Now early next month.
Thursday, 23 February 2023
Wednesday, 22 February 2023
Tuesday, 21 February 2023
How is the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral going? | Focus on Europe / A High-Maintenance Relationship for 637 Years, but Milan’s Duomo Is Still Adored
A High-Maintenance Relationship for 637 Years,
but Milan’s Duomo Is Still Adored
The care for Milan’s cathedral has been nonstop since
1386, but despite the constant need for refurbishment, the beloved landmark’s
hold on the city is unbreakable.
By
Elisabetta Povoledo
Feb. 19,
2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/19/world/europe/milan-italy-duomo-cathedral.html
MILAN —
Even in a city with La Scala, the glorious opera house, Milan’s cathedral
unquestionably reigns as the most beloved landmark in Italy’s fashion and
financial capital.
But the
Duomo, as it’s known, has also been an extraordinarily high maintenance icon
for six centuries, demanding constant care essentially since construction began
in 1386.
The
cathedral, along with the 3,400 or so statues and carvings adorning its
countless nooks and crannies, and its buttresses and pinnacles and spires, is
crafted from rare pink-hued marble mined from a single quarry on the slopes of
the Alps, some 60 miles to the north.
The stone’s
unique physical and chemical characteristics make it particularly beautiful.
But the stunning coloration also comes with a flaw: The marble is particularly
fragile.
“The marble
can shatter suddenly,” said Francesco Canali, the site manager for the
Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, the association that has been responsible for the
restoration and preservation of the monument since 1387. Veins in the marble
contain traces of ferrous materials, and when they, or the iron pins placed
through the centuries to link the stones together, oxidize, they expand and
shatter the marble into “little pieces or even chunks,” Mr. Canali explained.
“Interaction
with the environment has left profound consequences,” said Mr. Canali, an
engineer by training.
The
record-breaking heat waves of recent summers mean that the differences in
temperature between the parts of the cathedral most exposed to the sun and
those in shadow to the north can put additional stress on the monument.
Pollutants
like nitric oxide and sulfur dioxide build up black crusts on the marble, “like
tartar that preludes cavities in teeth,” Mr. Canali said.
The cost of
all this cleaning and upkeep has always been steep, and now the cathedral,
which is “owned by the Milanese,” as its archpriest, the Rev. Gianantonio
Borgonovo, likes to say, has been looking to boost aid from the private sector
to cover some of the nonstop expense.
This has
led to an “Adopt a Statue” program, which allows companies to finance the
restoration of one of the Duomo’s thousands of statues and, in exchange, take
it home to show it off for three years.
That’s how
a striking marble statue of King David holding a harp wound up on proud display
in a corporate atrium.
Until the
1960s, the marble statue of the biblical king, carved by an unknown sculptor in
the first half of the 16th century, had adorned the Gothic-style Duomo in the
center of the city. But after the statue languished in a restoration workshop
for decades, part of its repair was paid for by a Milan-based adhesives and
chemical products company.
“We thought
that a Milanese company just had to have a little piece of the Duomo, so it
seemed like a wonderful and symbolic project,” said Veronica Squinzi, the chief
executive of the company, Mapei.
Officially,
the cathedral was finished in 1965, 579 years after it was started, explaining
the Italian saying for something that is never ending: “è come la fabbrica del
Duomo,” or “like the construction of the cathedral.”
But the
continuing need for marble for repair work has been good news for the quarry in
Candoglia, a hamlet of 200 people, which has managed to stay operational thanks
to its sole customer.
“There’s
always plenty of work,” said Marco Scolari, who oversees the Candoglia quarry
and its marble restoration laboratories, of which there are two, one in
Candoglia, the other in Milan.
The
laboratory of the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, the institution
responsible for the conservation, restoration and development of the Milan
Cathedral.Credit...Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York Times
Experts at
the Veneranda Fabbrica closely monitor the Duomo’s structural well-being, with
the entire monument wired with sensors that provide constant digital
measurements of varying kinds, “like a constantly working electrocardiogram,”
Mr. Canali said.
Twice a
year, too, the cathedral’s statuary and decorative elements are given a
physical checkup by specialized workers who swing from cranes, inspecting them
for fractures and fissures.
When
repairs are necessary, the marble is now pre-worked by machines, but
specialized training is still necessary for the stone workers called on to
replicate the handiwork of long-dead sculptors. “The human hand is essential,”
Mr. Scolari said.
Fabio
Belloni, a stone carver at the Milan laboratory, said he had once worked on a
single block on the facade of the Duomo for 18 months.
“You have
to know the material, where to put your hands; there can be no margin for
error,” Mr. Belloni said. “You need patience,” he added, and one wrong move
“could betray months of work.”
A large
part of the decorative stonework on the Duomo dates to the past two centuries,
a flurry of activity that followed the completion of the facade — which
Napoleon Bonaparte insisted be done by 1805, so he would have an appropriate
setting for his crowning as king of Italy.
The
Milanese of the time didn’t embrace that facade, but it didn’t stop them from
loving their cathedral. The work of the Veneranda Fabbrica was subsidized for
years by the donations and legacies of wealthy Milanese, but also by locals of
more modest means who would drop valuables in boxes on the construction site
that would then be auctioned off.
As recently
as a century ago, there was a cafe at the top of the Duomo where Milanese would
meet to socialize and gossip. On the ground, the cathedral’s construction
workers discovered that the saffron they used to color stained glass yellow had
a savory side purpose when added to the vats of risotto cooked up for lunch,
now known as risotto alla Milanese.
“The Duomo
has always been the house of the Milanese,” said Fulvio Pravadelli, general
director of the Veneranda Fabbrica.
If saints
and martyrs have dominated for centuries as favored subjects, carvers over the
years have sneaked in more contemporary figures, including the boxer Primo Carnera,
a world heavyweight champion in the 1930s, and even a small head of Abraham
Lincoln.
Over time,
hundreds of statues and decorative motifs have been replaced, the originals
ending up in an ersatz cemetery on the city’s outskirts.
For the
stone carvers in Milan and Candoglia, even the smallest decoration — which can
take months to replicate — is worth the effort.
“The beauty
of our work is to bring forth from a piece of marble something that wasn’t
there,” said Paolo Sabbadini, a stone carver at the Candoglia laboratory, who
said that when a piece he was replicating was especially worn, he would add a
personal touch to the decoration, even though he knew that at hundreds of feet
off the ground, it was unlikely to be noticed, “even with a zoom lens.”
“But in
theory, we’re not working for ourselves,” Mr. Sabbadini said. “It has to be
done well even if you can’t see it, otherwise we’d have no reason for being
here.”
Elisabetta
Povoledo is a reporter based in Rome and has been writing about Italy for more
than three decades. @EPovoledo • Facebook
Monday, 20 February 2023
Salman Rushdie, Brian Cox slam Roald Dahl publisher for inclusive book edits / Roald Dahl rewrites: edited language in books criticised as ‘absurd censorship’
Roald Dahl rewrites: edited language in books
criticised as ‘absurd censorship’
Author Salman Rushdie among those angry after some
passages relating to weight, gender, mental health and race were rewritten
Associated
Press
Mon 20 Feb
2023 04.05 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/20/roald-dahl-books-rewrites-criticism-language-altered
Critics are
accusing the British publisher of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s books of
censorship after it removed colourful language from works such as Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory and Matilda to make them more acceptable to modern
readers.
A review of
new editions of Dahl’s books now available in bookstores shows that some
passages relating to weight, mental health, gender and race were altered. The changes
made by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Random House, first were reported
by Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Augustus
Gloop, Charlie’s gluttonous antagonist in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
which originally was published in 1964, is no longer “enormously fat,” just
“enormous”. In the new edition of Witches, a supernatural female posing as an
ordinary woman may be working as a “top scientist or running a business”
instead of as a “cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman”.
The word
“black” was removed from the description of the terrible tractors in 1970s The
Fabulous Mr Fox. The machines are now simply “murderous, brutal-looking
monsters”.
Booker
prize-winning author Salman Rushdie was among those who reacted angrily to the
rewriting of Dahl’s words. Rushdie lived in hiding for years after Iran’s Grand
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 issued a fatwa calling for his death
because of the alleged blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Verses. He was
attacked and seriously injured last year at an event in New York state.
“Roald Dahl
was no angel but this is absurd censorship,’’ Rushdie wrote on Twitter. “Puffin
Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.’’
The changes
to Dahl’s books mark the latest skirmish in a debate over cultural sensitivity
as campaigners seek to protect young people from cultural, ethnic and gender
stereotypes in literature and other media. Critics complain revisions to suit
21st century sensibilities risk undermining the genius of great artists and
preventing readers from confronting the world as it is.
The Roald
Dahl Story Company, which controls the rights to the books, said it worked with
Puffin to review the texts because it wanted to ensure that “Dahl’s wonderful
stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today”.
The
language was reviewed in partnership with Inclusive Minds, a collective working
to make children’s literature more inclusive and accessible. Any changes were
“small and carefully considered”, the company said.
It said the
analysis started in 2020, before Netflix bought the Roald Dahl Story Company
and embarked on plans to produce a new generation of films based on the
author’s books.
“When
publishing new print runs of books written years ago, it’s not unusual to
review the language used alongside updating other details, including a book’s
cover and page layout,’’ the company said. “Our guiding principle throughout
has been to maintain the storylines, characters, and the irreverence and
sharp-edged spirit of the original text.”
Puffin
didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Dahl died
in 1990 at the age of 74. His books, which have sold more than 300m copies,
have been translated into 68 languages and continue to be read by children
around the world.
But he is
also a controversial figure because of antisemitic comments made throughout his
life.
The Dahl
family apologised in 2020, saying it recognised the “lasting and understandable
hurt caused by Roald Dahl’s antisemitic statements”.
Regardless
of his personal failings, fans of Dahl’s books celebrate his use of sometimes
dark language that taps into the fears of children, as well as their sense of
fun.
PEN
America, a community of 7,500 writers that advocates for freedom of expression,
said it was “alarmed” by reports of the changes to Dahl’s books.
“If we
start down the path of trying to correct for perceived slights instead of
allowing readers to receive and react to books as written, we risk distorting
the work of great authors and clouding the essential lens that literature
offers on society,” tweeted Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of PEN America.
Laura
Hackett, a childhood Dahl fan who is now deputy literary editor of London’s
Sunday Times newspaper, had a more personal reaction to the news.
“The
editors at Puffin should be ashamed of the botched surgery they’ve carried out
on some of the finest children’s literature in Britain,” she wrote. “As for me,
I’ll be carefully stowing away my old, original copies of Dahl’s stories, so
that one day my children can enjoy them in their full, nasty, colourful glory.”
Salman Rushdie, Brian Cox slam Roald Dahl
publisher for inclusive book edits
by Emily
Jacobs, Weekend News Editor
February 20, 2023 02:58 AM
The decision to revise some of Roald Dahl's classic
children's books to make them more inclusive was met with widespread
condemnation over the weekend.
Dahl's
publisher, Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Random House, and the Roald Dahl
Story Co., which manages the works’ copyright and trademarks, told Britain's
Telegraph for a report published Friday that the two collaborated with
Inclusive Minds, a collective that works on making children's literature more
inclusive, to make the hundreds of changes. Critics of Dahl, who remained a
vocal anti-Semite until his death in 1990, have argued that some of his works
are bigoted.
Renowned
author Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses led Iran’s Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa in 1989 calling on all Muslims to kill him,
denounced the changes to Dahl's works.
"Roald
Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship," Rushdie tweeted
Saturday. "Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed."
Actor Brian
Cox, who currently stars in HBO's Succession and has worked with the Royal
Shakespeare Company, decried the revisions by likening them to McCarthyism.
"I
really do believe [these books are] of their time and they should be left
alone," he told the Times of London in a radio interview. "Roald Dahl
was a great satirist, apart from anything else. It's disgraceful."
"It's
this kind of form of McCarthyism, this woke culture, which is absolutely
wanting to reinterpret everything and redesign and say, 'Oh, that didn't
exist.'" he continued. "Well. it did exist. We have to acknowledge
our history."
Suzanne
Nossel, the CEO of PEN America, a nonprofit that defends free expression in
literature and other art, said her organization was "alarmed" by news
of the changes.
"If we
start down the path of trying to correct for perceived slights instead of
allowing readers to receive and react to books as written, we risk distorting
the work of great authors and clouding the essential lens that literature
offers on society," Nossel wrote on Twitter.
Laura
Hackett, a lifelong Dahl fan who serves as deputy literary editor for London's
Sunday Times newspaper, vowed to collect old, unaltered copies of Dahl's works
for her children while condemning the revisions.
"The
editors at Puffin should be ashamed of the botched surgery they’ve carried out
on some of the finest children’s literature in Britain," Hackett wrote.
"As for me, I’ll be carefully stowing away my old, original copies of
Dahl’s stories, so that one day my children can enjoy them in their full,
nasty, colorful glory."
Sunday, 19 February 2023
Paris a une nouvelle attraction touristique... Les toilettes rénovées de La Madeleine / Restored Paris art deco public loo worth every penny of €2 charge
Restored Paris art deco public loo worth every
penny of €2 charge
Lavatory de la Madeleine, opened in 1905, has been
closed for 12 years but has been renovated to full belle époque glory
Kim
Willsher in Paris
Sat 18 Feb
2023 05.00 GMT
Paris
authorities promise it will be worth every penny spent renovating France’s
first ever public convenience.
The
Lavatory de la Madeleine, a belle époque jewel that opened in 1905, will cost
€2 (£1.80) to use when it reopens on Monday.
It was
fitted out in art deco style with the finest materials: varnished mahogany
woodwork, stained-glass windows, ornate ceramics, mosaics, brass taps and floor
to ceiling tiles and has been listed as a historic building since 2011 when it
closed.
It was
originally an exclusively ladies’ lavatory – the nearby gents’ constructed at
the same time is now used by the public transport body RATP – but became mixed
sex when several of the cabins were turned into urinals in the 1990s.
The
lavatory, shut because of disuse and lack of maintenance, has taken 12 years to
restore. The restoration of the woodwork, glass and tiles were finally
completed last month but the toilets, sinks and taps have been replaced with
similar modern models. An old shoe-shine chair, preserved on the site, adds to
the impression of entering a grand “throne room”.
The idea of
a public lavatory was inspired by those in London introduced in the 1880s. The
underground facilities were intended to be not only useful but beautiful and
luxurious. Only six such toilets still exist in Paris, one of which is on the
Champs-Élysées.
“It’s a
journey back in time; a dive into the Paris of the belle époque,” Karine Taïeb,
the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of heritage, said as she conducted a party
of journalists around the conveniences this week. She said regrettably the
toilets were not accessible to disabled people because they were too small.
The mosaic
tiled entrance to the lavatory is still cracked and will undergo further
restoration next year when the cause of the damage has been identified.
The
Lavatory de la Madeleine will reopen to the public on Monday and remain open
between 10am and 6pm every day. The €2 charge is to cover the cost of an
attendant and cleaning. Paris city hall says there are 435 other free public
toilets in the city.
Saturday, 18 February 2023
Friday, 17 February 2023
Wednesday, 15 February 2023
Lord To The Queen Risks Losing His Family Home | Country House Rescue | ...
14 Oct 2022
#abode #renovation #mansion
Colbrook
Park has belonged to the Brookeborough family since the 1600s. The current
Brooks residents are on the brink of losing the house. Entrepaenur, Simon
Davis, is on a mission to help them keep their doors open. However, with every
idea being shot down, it seems like the couple don't even want to help
themselves. Can Simon save this historic house?
Tuesday, 14 February 2023
Monday, 13 February 2023
Largest collection of Johannes Vermeer paintings on show in Amsterdam –Vermeer review – one of the most thrilling exhibitions ever conceived
Review
Vermeer review – one of the most thrilling exhibitions
ever conceived
Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam
Moments of profound absorption, a glance, a letter…
the mystery and stillness of the Dutch master’s work deepens the closer you get
in this near-perfect show
Laura
Cumming
@LauraCummingArt
Sun 12 Feb
2023 13.00 GMT
The scene
is unassuming – rinsed cobbles, whitewashed walls, a woman stitching in an open
doorway as the Dutch gable facade ascends towards motionless clouds. Yet every
visitor stands before it amazed. Perhaps the spell has something to do with the
Advent calendar of open and yet to be opened windows, or the chain of absorbed
and absorbing figures, or the abstract arrangement of frames and arches, or the
brickwork that seems made of the very thing itself? The eyes and mind,
beguiled, search the image for answers. How can Johannes Vermeer’s painting be
so infinitely more beautiful than the scene it depicts?
The Little
Street (c.1657) hangs at the beginning of one of the most thrilling exhibitions
ever conceived. Vermeer, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, brings together more
of his paintings than ever before – and possibly ever again, given the cost and
their fragility – 28 of the 37 known works. The show is superbly dramatic: a
sequence of darkened chambers, where the paintings (like their subjects) appear
sometimes alone, occasionally in twos or threes, each in its solo spotlight.
The design reflects the revelatory aspect of Vermeer’s art at every turn.
Revelatory
– and yet profoundly mysterious; that is where the show starts. It opens
outdoors, with the View of Delft and The Little Street, and then turns inwards,
asking us to look ever closer at the interiors. A box of light, a figure, some
props, occasionally a framed picture: the means appear so restricted, yet the
scenes are mesmerisingly various.
Vermeer’s
is a world on hold; not suddenly frozen in the moment so much as bypassing
motion altogether. The maid pours her milk – but only in theory. In fact the
liquid is not flowing at all, its passage (even in a gigantic magnification in
the foyer) entirely imperceptible.
Nor do
people come and go from these rooms, always lit from the left. Girls in ermine,
yellow velvet and lace, men in cloaks and beaver hats are depicted, but they
have not arrived from elsewhere. There is no conversation, no matter that
transactions may be implied. All those musical instruments, and still no sound.
Equally, you are not supposed to work out what is going on in these scenes, but
instead to let each fine mystery hover before you undisturbed.
Vermeer
takes from Pieter de Hooch’s shining interiors, but rarely shows women at work
to make them so immaculate. A brush lies idle on a floor, maids have brought,
or wait for, letters. But only the marvellous Lacemaker, from the Louvre, bends
over her intricate task. Time is held in profound and productive absorption,
which feels far more significant than the creation of any lace.
This is
surely where the notion of secular madonnas enters in. For what is the girl
there for, in Vermeer, if not to receive the extraordinary beneficence of his
light – a light like no other, more than any real room could contain. For some
it is supernatural, to others sacred; it feels the very essence of grace.
Vermeer’s
annunciations – news from nowhere, by letter – have a stillness and quietude
that does not seem related to the proposed scenario, any more than the reading,
writing, gazing or weighing of (completely empty) scales. The sense of
prolonged meditation seems to come from the creative act itself. The curators
show (in panels set at a tactful distance from the art) how often objects,
clothes and even people were moved or excluded in Vermeer’s protracted
deliberations. He is known to have made only one or two paintings a year.
And then,
quite suddenly, the show pivots and a tremor disrupts one’s sense of Vermeer.
Three apparently similar interiors appear in one gallery. Stand in the middle
and you witness a thousand differences. This scene is jewelled with raised
pinpricks of crackling light; that one is soft and subdued; a third far less
intimate, with a blazing expanse of bare wall. The Rijksmuseum slows the pace
down to show how Vermeer might have thought about the making of each picture.
Sometimes
the view is partially blocked by a man with his back to us, or a heavy chair.
Perhaps the girl appears remote, on the other side of a table, or way across
the room. Or she is brought into abrupt closeup: such as the girl with the red
hat, the flute or the veil (all three tiny) or the life-size girl with the
pearl earring turning to us out of pitch darkness with her cinema flash.
Young Woman
with a Lute, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is so spectral
she might be a memory or a ghost, unlike the solid objects all around her. The
window is unusually narrow and small, the sheer curtain arranged so that the
light falls sidelong, illuminating the studs in a leather chair like bright stars
but dissolving the girl in blurry haloes, as if she were herself a secret.
In the
Rijksmuseum’s own entrancing Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, there is no window
and the whole scene is suffused with the blue of the dress, as if it were an
extension of her mind. The letter she holds is now just a sliver of light.
Surely this is the same girl from a picture painted about five years earlier,
borrowed from Dresden, her face slightly older, her absorption now deeper.
Vermeer’s wife gave birth to 15 children. Perhaps some of his daughters appear
in these pictures?
Everything
changes, and yet remains. One maid looks out of the window with cool (or is it
wry?) impatience, as her overdressed mistress labours over a letter. Another
looks Flemish, as if hired from elsewhere. The letter may be folded, inscribed,
worn thin as silk with repeated readings, or passed unopened by maid to
disaffected mistress in a distant scene viewed through a door – like a
momentary glimpse in Alfred Hitchcock.
Details are
enigmatic: a single red drop on the floor (perhaps sealing wax), a playing card
brandished as if in warning by a cherub, friezes of Delft tiles that existed in
reality but look as if they might be decoded. One girl has a curiously flat
moon face, another appears androgynous, still others are stalled like
sleepwalkers, held still by a kind mystical gravity.
For reasons
unknown, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna refused to send Vermeer’s The
Art of Painting – with its artist-magician turning his back upon us, even as he
paints the scene – so that we might have entered even further into the chamber
of his mind. But everything else about this show is as perfect as it could
possibly be. More paintings, greater (and more condensed) visions and
variations, it offers every opportunity to look longer, slower and more keenly
than ever before. Yet Vermeer’s paintings have the mystery of their own making,
their beauty and meaning as part of their content. The closer you get, the
stranger he seems.
Vermeer is
at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, until 4 June
Saturday, 11 February 2023
Friday, 10 February 2023
Burt Bacharach | 60 Minutes Archive / Burt Bacharach obituary
Burt Bacharach: an astonishing creator of
impermeable classics and supersmooth pop
Alexis
Petridis
He was dubbed ‘easy listening’ but this was nonsense.
His dazzling music, a result of classical tuition and nights in bebop clubs,
defied categories – and made stars of soul singers, rock bands and mum-friendly
crooners
Thu 9 Feb
2023 16.19 EST
With the
arrival of rock’n’roll, pop music divided, broadly speaking, into two
categories. There was music aimed squarely at the recently discovered teenager
that frequently seemed to have the specific intention of alienating their
forebears. And then there was the music that carried on much as it had in the
years between the end of the second world war and the appearance of Bill Haley,
Elvis Presley, Little Richard et al. Look at the charts from 1952 or 1953, and
they’re packed with songs that seem to target an older demographic, who didn’t
want shock or rebellion or white-hot excitement, but something to soothe or
buoy them along, what eventually became known as easy listening.
The twain
very seldom met: if anything, the divide became more pronounced as the 1960s
wore on and a cocktail of new technology and new drugs meant the music aimed at
teenagers became more adventurous, strange and innovative. Look at the charts
from 1966 or 1967 and you’ll find a stark split: Strawberry Fields Forever and
Purple Haze v Engelbert Humperdinck and Ken Dodd’s Tears.
Dionne
Warwick sued both Bacharach and Hal David for damaging her career by splitting
up
But Burt
Bacharach’s music existed somewhere in the middle. He often got lumbered with
the term easy listening. You could see why – his own albums, such as 1965’s Hit
Maker! or 1967’s Reach Out, tended towards syrupy arrangements and cooing vocal
choruses. Usually compilations of songs other performers had already made
successful, they seldom showed off his compositions to their best effect. But
in reality, the easy listening label was lazy to the point of being
nonsensical, not least because – as any musician will tell you – Bacharach’s
songs were seldom easy.
No matter
how mellifluous the melody, he dealt in changing meters, odd harmonic shifts,
umpteen idiosyncrasies that were perhaps the result of Bacharach’s eclectic
musical education, which variously took in studying classical music under the
French composer Darius Milhaud, listening to bebop musicians in the jazz clubs
of New York’s 52nd Street and hanging out with avant-gardist John Cage.
The truth
was that no obvious label or category could contain what Bacharach did: his
style was once memorably summed up by Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen as Ravel-like
harmonies wedded to street soul. He could come up with Magic Moments for Perry
Como, but he could also write for the Drifters, Gene Vincent, Chuck Jackson and
the Shirelles.
Listen to
Herb Alpert’s version of This Guy’s in Love With You. An unbelievably
beautiful, lushly orchestrated ballad, introduced to the world via a light
entertainment TV special on which Alpert sang it to his wife, it’s the epitome
of grownup, sophisticated 60s pop: you can imagine it floating around in the
background of a cocktail party entirely populated by people who agreed with
James Bond’s assessment that the Beatles were best listened to wearing
earmuffs.
Then listen
to Love’s 1966 version of My Little Red Book, a song originally recorded by
Manfred Mann: it’s raw, distinctly strange garage rock, complete with a
pounding, descending riff that inspired Pink Floyd’s even stranger psychedelic
opus Interstellar Overdrive. Bacharach wrote them both. He made music that was
genuinely sui generis: rock bands could record his songs, so could mum-friendly
crooners, so could soul singers and jazz musicians.
He
occasionally seemed to have an affinity with artists that similarly resisted
categorisation. How would you label Dionne Warwick, perhaps the most celebrated
Bacharach interpreter, who recorded the definitive versions of Walk on By, Do
You Know the Way to San Jose?, A House Is Not a Home, and – with all respect to
the late Cilla Black – Anyone Who Had a Heart, and who described her
relationship with Bacharach and the lyricist Hal David as “a triangle marriage
that worked”? Was her music and her approach soul, or pop, or easy listening or
something else?
He first
had hits in the 1950s, Magic Moments among them, but it was as the 1960s
dawned, and his partnership with David blossomed that his career ignited. They
started writing one impermeable classic after another – to the songs already
mentioned you can add The Look of Love, I Just Don’t Know What to Do With
Myself, Wives and Lovers, I Say a Little Prayer, (There’s) Always Something
There to Remind Me, Make It Easy on Yourself and I’ll Never Fall in Love Again
among umpteen others. The songs came in such profusion, and were of such an
astonishing quality, Bacharach and David made amassing a catalogue the equal to
anything written in that decade look weirdly effortless.
Perhaps
after that, anything would seem anticlimactic, but the 1970s proved trickier.
The hits started to dry up, and the increasingly fractious Bacharach and David
partnership ended in a flurry of lawsuits in 1973.
For good
measure, Dionne Warwick sued them both for damaging her career by splitting up.
It wasn’t until the early 1980s, and a new partnership with Carole Bayer Sager
– later to become Bacharach’s third wife – that his career was reinvigorated,
although this time around, his writing seemed to fit more easily into a niche
of supersmooth, sophisticated adult pop: Christopher Cross’s Oscar-winning
Arthur’s Theme (The Best That You Can Do), Neil Diamond’s ET-inspired
Heartlight, Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald’s 1985 duet On My Own.
At the
other extreme, his 1960s oeuvre was attracting lavish praise from some unlikely
sources: at the height of their early riot-provoking notoriety, the Jesus and
Mary Chain announced that if they ever wrote a song as good as This Guy’s in
Love With You, they would immediately split up, perfection having been
achieved.
One school
of thought had it that interest in Bacharach had been boosted by the 1990s’
interest in 1960s kitsch, of which the Austin Powers films formed a part, but
the truth was that the oeuvre of Bacharach and David had never really needed
reviving. Even in the years when Bacharach’s latest songs had failed to make
the charts, you were never too far away from hearing something the pair had
written in their imperial phase: either someone was covering them or the radio
was playing the vintage versions, or they were appearing on TV or film
soundtracks. It’s a state of affairs that’s true today, and a state of affairs
that seems unlikely ever to change.
Obituary
Burt Bacharach obituary
Songwriter whose hits, including I Say a Little Prayer
and Walk on By, became classics of easy-listening pop
Adam
Sweeting
Thu 9 Feb
2023 11.03 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/feb/09/burt-bacharach-obituary
Few
songwriters have been able to enjoy hits across six decades, as well as the
bonus of a dramatic revival of interest in their work during the later years of
their careers. Burt Bacharach, who has died aged 94, could claim both.
With his
writing partner Hal David, Bacharach launched himself into the front rank of
pop songwriters with a brilliant streak of hits for Dionne Warwick during the
1960s, beginning in 1962 with Don’t Make Me Over and proceeding through (among
others) Walk on By, Anyone Who Had a Heart, I Say a Little Prayer, Trains and
Boats and Planes, and Do You Know the Way to San Jose. All became standards in
Bacharach’s chosen pop-easy-listening genre, their apparent simplicity
concealing his mastery of different rhythms and metres.
He had
soaked up the music of the jazz big bands and bebop, and also studied with the
French composer Darius Milhaud, who urged his pupil to “never ever feel
embarrassed or discomforted by a melody that people can remember or whistle”.
Bacharach’s melodies were not only memorable but also frequently suffused with
melancholy and regret. His gifts as an arranger allowed him to exploit all the
resources of an orchestra with precision, and his use of plaintive “Bacharach
trumpets” became a distinctive trademark. Meanwhile he was turning out
imperishable classics for a string of different artists. Tom Jones never
particularly liked What’s New, Pussycat?, the Oscar-nominated theme from the
1965 film of the same name, but acknowledged its enduring popularity.
Herb Alpert
topped the US chart with the winsome ballad This Guy’s in Love With You, Jackie
DeShannon did likewise with What the World Needs Now Is Love, and BJ Thomas was
the lucky recipient of Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, from the film Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (which brought Bacharach and David Oscars for best
theme song and best original score). Bacharach was an Oscar-winner for a third
time in 1982, with Arthur’s Theme from the film Arthur.
The son of
Bert Bacharach, a sports star turned nationally syndicated newspaper columnist,
and Irma Freeman, an artist and songwriter, Burt was born in Kansas City,
Missouri. The family moved to Kew Gardens in Queens, New York, when he was a
child. At the insistence of his mother, Burt studied the cello, drums and
piano. His ears were opened by the innovative harmonies and melodies of jazz
musicians of the day such as Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker, and he played
with several jazz combos before enrolling in music courses at the Mannes School
of Music, New York, and at McGill University in Montreal.
He served
in the US army (1950-52), and while acting as a dance band arranger in Germany
he met the singer Vic Damone. Back in the US after his discharge, Bacharach
worked as piano accompanist to Damone and to numerous other artists on the club
circuit. One of them was the actor and singer Paula Stewart, whom he married in
1953.
He was
fortunate to fall into one of the all-time great songwriting partnerships with
David, whom he first met at the New York songwriting beehive, the Brill
Building (also to be the home of other renowned songwriting duos including
Leiber & Stoller, Goffin & King and Pomus & Shuman). David had been
writing hits for such luminaries as Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra since the
late 40s. Bacharach and David scored their first big commercial coup when the
country singer Marty Robbins took their song The Story of My Life into the US
Top 20 in 1957. A cover version by Michael Holliday reached No 1 in the UK the
following year, and Perry Como brought them another smash with his recording of
Magic Moments, which spent eight weeks at No 1 in Britain.
After the
breakdown of his marriage (he and Stewart divorced in 1958), Bacharach
travelled to Europe to become pianist and bandleader for Marlene Dietrich, a
role he would sustain until 1964. By 1961 he was back in New York, and wrote
some material for the Drifters, as well as the Chuck Jackson hit Any Day Now
before resuming his partnership with David. Their song (The Man Who Shot)
Liberty Valance, inspired by the John Wayne/James Stewart western, became a US
No 4 hit for Gene Pitney in 1962. Pitney did better still with the duo’s
composition Only Love Can Break a Heart, which reached No 2 later that year.
Then came
Bacharach and David’s historic hook-up with Warwick. She was a member of the
Drifters’ backing group, the Gospelaires, and the songwriters invited her to
make some demo recordings at their office at the publishers Famous Music, in
the Brill Building. One of them was for Make It Easy on Yourself, which became
a big hit for Jerry Butler. David recalled: “She said, ‘I thought that was my
song!’ We said, ‘No, you just made a demo’. She was really very hurt and angry.
Then we realised here’s this wonderful singer and we’re using her to make demos
– she could be a star!”
So it
proved, and the hits with Warwick became their calling card. They wrote and
produced 20 American Top 40 hits for her over the ensuing decade, including
seven that reached the Top 10. One of these songs, I Say a Little Prayer, also
gave Aretha Franklin a US Top 10 hit and her biggest solo hit in Britain, where
it reached No 4. Throughout the 60s anything Bacharach and David touched became
commercial gold dust. They wrote film scores for What’s New, Pussycat?, Alfie
and Casino Royale, and scored the successful Broadway musical Promises,
Promises, whose title song provided another hit for Warwick and spun off a
chartbuster for Bacharach himself with I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.
The writers
always had a soft spot for the UK, probably because so many British-based
artists had No 1 hits with their material, including Cilla Black – whose
version of Anyone Who Had a Heart was her breakthrough hit – Sandie Shaw, the
Walker Brothers and Frankie Vaughan.
The
Carpenters ushered in the 70s with (They Long to Be) Close to You, a US No 1
which also reached No 6 in the UK, but although Bacharach’s 1971 album (called
just Burt Bacharach) became a sought-after collector’s item, the decade would
prove disappointing. In 1973 Bacharach and David collaborated on a new musical
version of the 1937 film Lost Horizon, but it was a commercial disaster that
prompted angry splits between Bacharach, David and Warwick, and involved them
in a spate of lawsuits. The writers parted company after a disagreement over
royalties. Bacharach’s second marriage, to the actor Angie Dickinson, whom he
had married in 1965, began to come apart, although they did not divorce until
1980.
It was not
until the early 80s that Bacharach’s magic touch returned, when he won the
Oscar for best original song for the chart-topping theme from the film Arthur,
which he had also scored. One of its co-writers was the lyricist Carole Bayer
Sager, whom Bacharach married the following year. The couple went on to write
Making Love for Roberta Flack and Heartlight for Neil Diamond. In 1986,
Bacharach enjoyed one of his best ever years, achieving two US No 1s with
That’s What Friends Are for, recorded by Warwick with Elton John, Gladys Knight
and Stevie Wonder as a charitable fundraiser for Aids, and the Patti
LaBelle/Michael McDonald recording of the lachrymose On My Own.
In 1991 his
marriage to Bayer Sager ended, and two years later he married Jane Hansen. In a
2015 interview, Bacharach – who was nicknamed “the playboy of the western
world” during the 60s – admitted: “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody, but when you
wind up being married four times, there are a lot of bodies strewn in your
wake.”
During the
90s, Bacharach and David reunited with Warwick for Sunny Weather Lover, from
her album Friends Can Be Lovers, and Bacharach wrote songs for James Ingram and
Earth, Wind & Fire. In 1995 he co-wrote God Give Me Strength with Elvis
Costello for Allison Anders’ film about the Brill Building era, Grace of My
Heart, and this resulted in the Costello-Bacharach album Painted from Memory
(1998).
Bacharach’s
contribution to pop history was acknowledged in a 1996 BBC documentary, Burt
Bacharach – This Is Now, and he would find himself being hailed as an icon of
cool by bands as varied as Oasis, REM, Massive Attack and the White Stripes. In
1997, an all-star cast including Costello, Warwick, Chrissie Hynde, Sheryl Crow
and Luther Vandross banded together at the Hammerstein Ballroom, New York, for
a serenade of Bacharach’s songs called One Amazing Night, and the Rhino label
issued The Look of Love, a three-disc compilation of his music.
Bacharach’s
profile received a huge boost from his appearances in all three of Mike Myers’s
60s-spoofing Austin Powers films. He earned an Oscar nomination for the song
Walking Tall, his first collaboration with the lyricist Tim Rice, which was
performed by Lyle Lovett on the soundtrack of Stuart Little (1999).
His 2005
album At This Time unusually found Bacharach writing lyrics as well as music
and even provoking some controversy by touching on political themes. “All my
life I’ve written love songs, and I’ve been non-political,” he said. “So it
must be pretty significant that I suddenly have strong feelings of discomfort
with the state of the world, and what our [US] administration is doing.” This
did not prevent the album from winning the 2006 Grammy award for best pop
instrumental album.
In 2008 he
opened the BBC Electric Proms at the Roundhouse, in London, with Adele and
Jamie Cullum among his supporting musicians. His autobiography, Anyone Who Had
a Heart: My Life and Music, was published in 2013, and in 2015 he performed at
the Glastonbury festival. He continued to tour past his 90th birthday, with
concerts in the UK, US and Europe in 2018 and 2019.
He returned
to movie soundtrack composing with his score for A Boy Called Po (2016), featuring
the theme song Dancing With Your Shadow. The film concerned a child with
autism, and inspired Bacharach to write the music in memory of Nikki, his
daughter from his second marriage, who took her own life in 2007 having been
affected by Asperger syndrome. In 2018 his song Live to See Another Day was
released, its proceeds donated to families affected by the shootings at Sandy
Hook Elementary School in 2012.
In addition
to his Oscars and six Grammy awards (plus a lifetime achievement award in
2008), he was awarded the Polar music prize in Stockholm in 2001. In 2011, the
Library of Congress awarded Bacharach and David the Gershwin prize for popular
song.
He is
survived by Jane, their son, Oliver, and daughter, Raleigh, and another son,
Cristopher, from his third marriage.
Burt Freeman Bacharach, songwriter, singer and
musician, born 12 May 1928; died 8 February 2023
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