Telegraph Blogs

Floods of Spring: Rachmaninov (transcribed Earl Wild) I’ve just heard the sad news that Earl Wild has died.  One of the great pianists of the 20th century, his website gives lots of information about his amazing career.  I met him a number of times, and once had dinner with him; he was one of the most… Read more

This week’s editorial in The Catholic Herald deserves to be reproduced in full. The practical steps taken by Pope Benedict XVI are doing more to achieve Christian unity than ARCIC’s decades of earnest and disingenuous waffle. Some professional ecumenists may be unhappy, which is a shame, but there you go. When Jesus prayed that his followers… Read more

Trafalgar Square was lit up by flash bulbs this lunchtime as thousands of photographers demonstrated against police use of stop and search. The event was organised by the campaign group, I’m a photographer, not a terrorist, following a series of high-profile detentions of photographers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Official estimates indicate that… Read more

UPDATE: Reading have just beaten Burnley, so gloating text to Alastair Campbell duly sent! With the week over, I have to say how much I’ve enjoyed my first excursion into the world of blogging for the Torygraph – every MP’s favourite paper! Amongst the usual array of frothing, sleep-deprived, Right-wingers that inhabit these spaces, it has… Read more

Some friends took me to Jihad! The Musical the other night. The Edinburgh fringe show is now showing in London at the Jermyn Street Theatre and runs for another couple of weeks. On the way out, I overheard one of the noticeably smart crowd remark with amazement that we had even been allowed to see what… Read more

More mistakes about Himalayan glaciers seem to  have been uncovered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC)  latest report, further threatening its credibility and undermining the position of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. Scientists are reported today as identifying four further blunders in the same part of the report as the now notorious claim that… Read more

Freddie Roach has spoken to Telegraph Sport in depth about his exasperation in dealings behind the scenes in getting the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight to come to fruition. Roach told me: “The bottom line is that we don’t really need him, Manny could have two more fights, in  between go to the election in the Philippines, make… Read more

Is Dave planning to use “green” taxes (robbing Peter) to support marriage (paying Paul), despite his henchmen’s denials? Who – least of all Dave – knows any more? He is all over the place. It seems the template of Tony Blair is no longer sufficiently leftist for Dave and his Tory Trots. Chairman Dave recently… Read more

An interesting spat over Jesus has erupted in the Jewish world. Recently, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the Chief Rabbi of Efrat in the West Bank, posted a YouTube video declaring he was “truly fascinated by the personality of Jesus, whom certainly to myself I have always referred to as ‘Rabbi Jesus’ ever since taking a university… Read more

The Commons Science and Technology Committee has launched an inquiry into “the unauthorised publication of data, emails and documents relating to the work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA)” – ie Climategate. (hat tip R. Campbell; Platosays).

On 1 December 2009 Phil Willis, Chairman of the Science and Technology… Read more

For the past 12 years he has been one of the mainstays of the World Economic Forum in Davos. First as Morgan Stanley’s chief economist, then as the head of the investment bank’s Asian operations, Stephen Roach has been one of the Forum’s key figures. So it is a shame to reveal that Mr Roach,… Read more

Dateline Belfast - where the sun is shining, and Ian Paisley is giving a lunchtime sermon outside City Hall. I’m very much looking forward to hearing the effervescent and highly talented young soprano Elizabeth Watts sing Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été later. The other highlight of the weekend will be a big plate of traybakes, alongside a steaming… Read more

It may well be that Mr Cameron regards any discussion of the EU as “banging on about Europe”, but here in the Telegraph blogosphere – to judge from the over 350 comments on my last blog post – it does seem to be a matter of some interest. However, I should first say to Gary… Read more

There is little more that I can add to this blogosphere row about whether the Telegraph misreported comments by internet founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee yesterday. In a nutshell, we asked him if his new Government data site (data.gov.uk) would create “ghettoes” in different areas of the UK by releasing information about crime rates, school standards and pot holes… Read more

More than 1,000 photographers have pledged to gather in Trafalgar Square tomorrow to call on the government to repeal controversial anti-terror legislation. The event has been organised by a campaign group called I’m a photographer, not a terrorist. So far, more than 1,500 people have indicated via Facebook that they plan to attend. The campaign was started… Read more

David Cameron has a lot more work to do if he is serious about “de-contaminating the Conservative brand”, to quote his election strategist. It seems that as well as an expensive private education and a lucrative personal portfolio of outside business interests, the other factor that binds Dave’s Shadow Cabinet together is a tendency to… Read more

The New York Times announced this week that it will be putting its website behind a metered paywall, starting next year. The “metered” approach is similar to that taken by the Financial Times, which allows unsubscribed readers free access to a certain number of articles each month before confronting them with a request to register… Read more

So, London’s West End is soon to be blessed by the arrival of Spice Girls: the Musical. Waggish types are already saying that this is the first time the words “Spice Girls” and “musical” have featured in the same sentence. But they’re wrong. They’ve forgotten the commonly heard sentence, “The Spice Girls aren’t very… Read more

If you want to see a spectator sport with a difference, head up to the Scottish Highlands this weekend, where the  27th annual Aviemore Husky Sled Dog Rally is taking place. Over 200 teams of dogs will be pulling their owners at up to 20 miles an hour over a four-mile track through woodlands and… Read more

There are a few different ways of looking at sport - as a hobby, as a route to better health and wellbeing and these days as a massively lucrative business.  My love of sport is manifold; sport has enabled, provided, challenged, frustrated, disappointed and injured me at various times in my life.  Mainly, it has opened… Read more

There is something about Buckfast tonic wine that makes it the beverage of choice for a certain kind of heavy-drinking young Scot who goes on to commit senseless acts of violence. Kenneth Macdonald’s investigation for BBC Scotland this week demonstrated it beyond doubt – a strong association between Buckfast, the super-strength wine-based drink made by… Read more

Wildlife photography isn’t the first place you’d look for a scandal. Geeks crouched shivering in hides before dawn don’t really seem the types to cheat. But the world’s biggest wildlife photography competition has been the focus of unwanted attention this week after last year’s winner was stripped of his award. Jose Luis Rodriguez’s photograph of a… Read more