An actual majority of young people see no objection to the censor­ship of unpopular ideas and would be perfectly content, if they can continue to live in the style to which the boom has accustomed them, to be ruled, from above, by an oligarchy of assorted experts. Aldous Huxley

I’ll explain. Dear Barron, Your father will not attend your graduation. Not because he’s on trial for 34 felony charges in New York. Not because he tried to hide his dalliance with a porn star while your mother was pregnant with you. Not because he’s been denied leave by

I've cleaned for you this amazing salt print photo of London, taken nearly 200-years ago from Blackfriars Bridge by Henry Cundell. It was taken in 1844 and is the earliest photo of St Paul's and one of the earliest of London itself. Taken only a couple of months after the

In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. — Marcel Proust

"Dark" Durrell, 6 July "There's a certain Slant of light": Slanting Perspectives Chair: Paul Lorenz, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff David Nigel Lloyd, Folksinger "The Dark Anvil of the 1/3

At the biennial International Lawrence Durrell conference early this month in Athens.

Just back from London, Athens, Edinburgh, Orkney, and Midgely [nr: Halifax]. Tim Moon interviewed me in North Yorkshire. Says Tim: "If you go to bcbradio.co.uk look for Listen Again, specialist programmes. It’s Folk Us! Monday 9pm. Should be there for 50 days."

Human character? I imagine that what we call personality may be an illusion, and in thinking of it as a stable thing we are trying to put a lid on a box with no sides. Human beings are really walking question marks — hows and whys and perhapses. — Lawrence Durrell

Recent and brief report

davidnigellloyd.com/blog/18-month-…

"However hard I think ― Still it's the same, Walking on fallen leaves." Santoka (images: hasui Kawase/ Kogyo Tsukioka )

NEW RELEASE: The Assassin of Venus: a Meta SciFi Rock Operetta

Salmon return to lay eggs in historic habitat after largest dam removal project in US history yahoo.com/news/salmon-re… via @Yahoo News

This is a one-of-a-kind recording I began 50 years ago and completed earlier this year. It's a science fiction rock opera about science fiction rock operas. I promise [a] nothing else exists like it and [b] it's damn good. davidnigellloyd.com/blog/watthef-t…

What a loss to music! He seemed to specialize in making the audience think he had gotten lost in a solo only to remind the audience, at the solo's end, of how incredibly found he was —a quality I don't remember in his father's playing. bbc.com/news/articles/…

Fritz Kreisler b otd 150 years ago! Great man, great artist - if somewhat unorthodox in his methods: 'I am of the opinion that a master musician is he that does not practise at all... 3 minutes' immersion of the hands in hot water is as good as three hours' practice.' Hmm...!

Friends always meant much to him. They were the cast of a private mythology, each with his immutable sum of characteristics; several, subtly changing on the way, wandered in and out of his books in various disguises. — Paddy Leigh Fermor, recalling his old friend, Larry Durrell

Natibe kids kayak thr Klamath nytimes.com/2025/06/17/us/…

You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. Fall in love with some activity and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about and it doesn't matter. - R. Feynman

A new documentary about Shostakovich is available online on ARTE in English from today, the date marking the 50th anniversary of the composer's death. Shostakovich, Symphony in Red, examines the life and work of the innovative Russian composer, who left a breathtaking body of work. 1/2