Philip Spires commonplace book

I have kept a commonplace book for many years. It's a place where scraps of impressions are filed for future reflection. It's not a diary, it's just a mental scrapbook, concentrating on book reviews, concert reviews, visual arts and some occasional pieces on travel. It is also a place where I occasionally reflect on what I write. Details of my books can be found at http://www.philipspires.co.uk

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Alicante enthuses over Joshua Bell, Alan Gilbert and NDR Elbphilharmonie in Bruch and Bruckner

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  It looked like a middle-of-the-road program of Romantic staples. Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy and Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony were both written...
Tuesday, October 26, 2021

SPQR by Mary Beard

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  I have just finished Mary Beard’s SPQR. I have just started Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation. The connection? Susan Sontag’s essay de...
Monday, October 25, 2021

The Umbrella Men by Keith Carter

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  In The Umbrella Men, Keith Carter directs various characters in a plot to act out the financial crisis of 2008. The author specifically wa...
Monday, October 18, 2021

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

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  The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is a novel about loss. It deals with the idea that bereavement changes the living, opens a hole in surviv...

Costa Blanca Arts Update - ADDA presents Garcia Abril and Kallinikov

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ADDA Simfonica’s second concert of the season something of a rarity, in that it featured just two works, neither of which would have been f...
Thursday, October 7, 2021

Costa Blanca Art Update - Alicante's ADDA Symphony Orchestra begins a new season

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A new season of orchestral concerts in Alicante’s ADDA opened with a blast, rather than a bang. The blast in question came at the end of the...
Tuesday, September 28, 2021

A Postillion Struck by Lightning by Dirk Bogarde

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  A Postillion Struck by Lightning is the first part of Dirk Bogarde’s seven volume autobiography. First published as long ago as 1977, it h...
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philipspires
I was born in Wakefield and was brought up in Sharslton, a mining Village. I went to London University and then became a maths teacher, working initially as a volunteer teacher in Kenya. I spent sixteen years in London, in Balham and Islington. In 1992, I left Britain for Brunei and then Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. I currently live in La Nucia, near Benidorm in Spain. I am interested in the relationship between nature and nurture, birthright and experience. Themes of culture and identity and their relation to economic and social roles underpin my writing. What we are born into relates to what we become, but we are rarely in control. What others do, our interests and intellects and the way we choose to earn a living, all of these shape us into what we become. It may be that culture is the sum of all assumptions that others make on our behalf, whereas identity represents our reactions to them. I did a PhD on the effects of education in economic development in the Philippines. I was President of Alfas del Pi Music Society for twelve years.
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