Wedding charts can be surprisingly informative about the course and nature of the marriage that follows. Charles and Diana’s wedding, 29 July 1981, bizarrely six days before Meghan Markle was born, had the same flamboyant Leo Sun conjunct the North Node but also the emotionally volatile Mars in Cancer conjunct Moon square Saturn Jupiter … Read more
Hall & Oates, the most successful musical duo of all time, has ended up in a heap on a Nashville court room floor as Daryl Hall sued John Oates for breaching their half century partnership by trying to sell half of their joint operation. The aim was to make long term gains from streaming royalties, … Read more
War weariness has hit Ukraine with the counter-offensive not producing the expected results and international backers being distracted by their own internal problems. EU leaders are facing deadlock over a promised €50bn lifeline for Kyiv with Hungary digging in its toes and Germany being forced to curb borrowing. At a time when the flow of … Read more
Playwright and artist John Byrne, who wrote the BBC series Tutti Frutti, Your Cheatin’ Heart and plays including The Slab Boys, has died. He had a prolific career, writing comedy as well as painting and designing; and married actress Tilda Swinton whom he met while she was performing in one of his series. He … Read more
The death of Henry Kissinger has brought obituaries that stepped across the usual plaudits to describe him as a “notorious war criminal” and “state murderer” according to Rolling Stone, responsible for every death in the final seven years of the Vietnam War. Elsewhere he was described as a “colossus on the world stage”, a “dominating … Read more
A grim trial is on in France to establish whether the widow of the late Michel Fourniret, France’s most infamous murderer known as the “Ogre of the Ardennes”, was a participant in his crimes or just an enabler. He was eventually caught and jailed for life in 2008 for the murder of seven girls and … Read more
500,000 sheep and 3600 inhabitants on the UK colonial outpost the Falkland Islands cost the UK £60 million a year to defend, roughly £2.5bn for the 40 years since the war with Argentina. What is all the more idiotic was that a diplomatic handover was in the works in the 1970s which would have saved … Read more
Leonard Bernstein, the great American composer, conductor and humanitarian, renowned for West Side Story as well as classical pieces and his orchestral career, is under the spotlight in Bradley Cooper’s Maestro. Less of a biopic, it is more a study of the unknowability of celebrity with the focus being on his complicated marriage to Felicia, … Read more
JFK was shot on 22 November 1963 sixty years ago this week, an event which shook the USA and the world and gave rise to innumerable conspiracy theories. Astrology won’t solve the mystery but the aspects of the moment were extraordinarily apt. The previous Solar Eclipse in July 1963 at 27 degrees Cancer was … Read more
Cliff Richard having shimmied back into the limelight with a concert tour and no doubt a Christmas song up his sleeve, managed to put his foot in it with comments about Elvis Presley’s obesity. Not that he was wrong but saying it in an interview with a not-inconsiderably-sized Alison Hammond was hardly sensible and relating … Read more