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

Monday, March 28, 2022

G. F. Watts by G. K. Chesterton

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GK meets GF sounds like the title of one of those mid-twentieth century albums when a producer with an eye for a buck teamed up some ancient...

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Time Regained by Marcel Proust

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All we have is the present. Our future, if it might exist, is a mere proposition of whose eventual reality none of us can be sure, may only ...

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Marin Alsop, Kian Soltani and Vienna RSO play Eisendle, Schumann and Dvorak in ADDA

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It’s hard to describe what a complete success this concert was. For the first time I have heard Marin Alsop conduct a live concert. I expe...

Monday, March 14, 2022

Memorias de mis putas tristes by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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G abriel Garcia Marquez may have invented magical realism, a writing style that stresses realism in language to the extent that images becom...

Sunday, March 13, 2022

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Through the emotions – Soler, Valero and Gandía at ADDA in Alicante

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Gala Lirica, Opera Gala or merely Song Medley often labels an admixture of showcase snippets, offered, it seems, primarily to advertise a vo...

Friday, March 4, 2022

The Fugitive by Marcel Proust

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Reaching the end of The Fugitive, volume six of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche de temps perdu , I begin to realise – not quite at last – h...

Sunday, February 27, 2022

Costa Blanca arts update - No superlatives - L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Alicante with Jonathan Nott and Emmanuel Pahud play Ibert and Mahler

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There are insufficient superlatives to describe the experience. L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Alicante under Jonathan Nott played Ma...

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About Me

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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