This is one for the music history fans, and/or those with an interest in church music. This definitely includes me - I've sung in choirs since I was about 10 and this kind of music is amongst my favourite listening. Andrew Gant does a brilliant job of digging into English church music throughout history, though almost inevitably the biggest focus is from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. This might seem a very dry subject, but Gant brings it alive, helped by his even drier sense of humour. This is obviously a matter of taste, but if you find amusing his remark on Prince Albert's compositions 'He certainly did not possess a strong enough musical personality to overcome the prevailing tendency to write bad Mendelssohn, but he did it quite well. His Te Deum and Jubilate contain some quite good bad Mendelssohn,' you will enjoy it as I did. Inevitably the Reformation and subsequent switches of England between protestant and Catholic features heavily with its fascina...

REVISIT SERIES -  An edited post from January 2015 I was interested to see  on the BBC News site  that a link has been shown between biodiversity and human wellbeing. It seems widely accepted that exposure to the countryside is good for most people's wellbeing (though some can't stand it, and I wouldn't want to perpetrate a lazy stereotype), but biodiversity is a whole different kettle of fish. Nonetheless here's a direct quote of the subtitle of the piece on the BBC site: Scientists need to capitalise on a growing body of evidence showing a link between biodiversity and human wellbeing, a US review has suggested. Now, there are several issues here. Luckily (and, sadly, still rarely), the original review paper Exploring connections among nature, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human health and well-being: Opportunities to enhance health and biodiversity conservation (snappy title) is open source and you can  read it here for free . I have three issues: What is...

There's quite an industry involved in producing new Sherlock Holmes stories, some excellent, others less-so. I was recently somewhat disappointed by a Holmesian Christmas novel , but reflecting that I've always preferred Doyle's short stories to his full length Holmes cases, I gave this collection of 12 stories a go, and was generally impressed. The approach is to primarily cover the early days and last days of the Holmes-Watson duo, effectively filling in gaps, which works well. Inevitably with each story written by a different writer there is some variation in the skill with which they match 'Dr Watson's' writing style in the originals - some get it spot on, others feel a little out of place. This is more notable in the early-set stories, as by the end we've reached the 1920s and it wouldn't be surprising if Watson had adopted a slightly more modern approach to his storytelling. I was surprised how much consistency there felt to be between the stories,...

This is the last of my Christmas murder mystery reviews for this year (though there will be more crime). It's a very engaging, if distinctly implausible story. The implausibility is a result of the contrived setting. Maddie, a Scottish journalist working in Manchester is heading home for Christmas, but when her car breaks down she gets stranded in a pub in the Yorkshire Dales in a heavy snowstorm. During an in-pub treasure hunt, one of those present gets murdered - in effect it's a classic country house murder mystery with a modified setting. What makes the situation more than a little contrived is that there happen to be a DI and his detective constable sidekick in the pub, so they can contact an investigation (with Maddie's help) while they're snowed in. Once you get past this unlikely setup (plus one weak restriction of which more in a moment) though, Noelle Albright keeps the action going in good page-turning fashion. For the first few pages the writing tends to be ...

REVISIT SERIES -  An edited post from January 2015 There is a usage that is becoming more and more common, verbally and in writing, which I hate. The most frequently used verbal form is 'so-called', and though it can also appear this way in writing, the usual written approach is what I call embarrassment quotes - misused quotation marks. The reference that set me off on this bijou rantette was a comment on the  Today  programme on Radio 4, when they referred to 'so-called exoplanets'. Exoplanets exist. There is no doubt about this. Yet according to the OED, 'so-called' means 'called or designated by this name or term, but not properly entitled to it or correctly described by it'. In other words, by saying 'so-called' the speaker implies that there's no such thing. Now, admittedly, the OED does qualify this definition by saying 'More recently, and now quite commonly (esp. in technical contexts), used merely to call attention to the descrip...

In previous books by Richard Coles, such as A Death in the Parish , it has been clear that the former pop star and current Anglican priest has a far better grasp of describing period village life and the church than he has of murder mysteries. That is even more obvious here: despite the title of this novella, murder hardly features - in fact the death occurs very near the end of the book. Once again, Coles' observations of the niceties of 1980s village and church life are delightful - with the added special dusting that Christmas brings. Perhaps his finest creation is the central character Daniel Clement's mother Audrey, who personifies the period middle class's obsession with the delicacies of status and admiration of the upper classes. One of the stars of the book is Audrey's bread sauce, a turkey accompaniment that dates back to when English cooking embraced plainness, to the extent that the recipe is published at the back of the book. Coles handles nicely the relat...