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Ebrahim Raisi – a shock for Iran + Ayatollah April 39
Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash comes when the country is faced by unprecedented external challenges as well as an approaching regime change at some point as the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in poor health, reaches his mid 80s. Raisi, a hard-liner, was loyal to the supreme leader who is … Read more
Ian Rankin, Mick Herron – Grand Trine + yod
Crime novelist Ian Rankin has a new incarnation of his best-selling middle-aged detective Rebus in a prequel TV series with a hunkier lead casting of a younger version in Outlander actor Richard Rankin. Ian Rankin is now the most widely-read crime novelist in the UK, as well as having his novels translated into many languages. … Read more
Golf – small ball, small hole, long club = fun for some
Golf is having a moment with various eyebrow-raising headlines from Saudi’s sportwashing to Rory McIlroy’s divorce and Scottie Sheffler’s Louisville arrest on the way to the PGA. The beginnings of golf are lost several centuries back though in 1457, King James II, in an Act of Parliament banned citizens from playing football and golf … Read more
Ben & Jen – both Leo Sun Scorpio Moon
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez appear to have hit a marital stumbling block according to reports which will upset devoted fans of BenJen and evoke told-you-so nods from cynics. Both are Sun Leos with Scorpio Moons which is a tricky enough combination individually and as a twosome would raise the emotional temperature considerably, both positively … Read more
Francis Ford Coppola – the courage to take risks
Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project Megalopolis has premiered at Cannes film festival with reviews divided between “staggeringly ambitious”, “absolute madness”, and “bafflingly shallow”. The film’s premise is about “political ambition, genius and conflicted love” where “the fate of Rome haunts a modern world unable to solve its own social problems”. It stars Adam Driver as … Read more
Kevin Spacey – is a redemption on the cards?
Kevin Spacey unceremoniously dumped by Netflix in 2017 over allegations of sexual harassment and shunned since despite being cleared by courts in the UK and the US of allegations is being supported by fellow thespians who insist he has been badly treated. Stephen Fry accepted Spacey had been ‘clumsy’ and ‘inappropriate’ but should not be … Read more
Slovakia – assassination attempt raises tension
Slovakia is in turmoil after an assassination attempt on its pro-Russian prime minister, Robert Fico, by a disturbed, possibly politically-motivated pensioner. Slovakia is a landlocked country in Central Europe, bordered by Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic from which it split in 1993. A developed country with an advanced high-income economy, it is … Read more
Anita Pallenberg – a walk on the dark side
‘Dazzling, beautiful, hypnotic and unsettling’ was how the ‘wicked Anita’ Pallenberg was described by her friend Marianne Faithfull. The epitome of the 1960s sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, she ricocheted amongst the Rolling Stones, from Brian Jones, to Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. She did stupendous quantities of heroin, indulged in a fascination for … Read more
Alice Munro – a connoisseur of ordinary life
Alice Munro, the Canadian Nobel Literature Prize-winner, renowned as the master of the modern short story and compared to Chekhov, has died at 92. She drew on the lives of her neighbours for stories which became parables about the tests of character faced by people everywhere and managed to invest the humdrum events and parochial … Read more