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Michael Byrne as Brian Haw |
15 minutes of frame for Brian Haw?
I SHOULD have seen the link before but it wasn’t until Saturday that it fell into place.
It was while watching a play at the Edinburgh Festival on the life of a lone anti-war protester outside Parliament that it dawned on me that he had so much in common with Goya and Picasso.
Both artists were tormented by the cruelty of war, expressing their horror in great works of art.
But then so was Brian Haw whose lonely anti-war vigil in Parliament Square enters its eighth year this week.
I saw a play at the Festival about such a man by TV writer Zia Trench, played so magnificently and so eerily close to the character of Brian Haw himself, by Hampstead actor Michael Byrne.
The character, like Brian Haw, is pained by the horrors inflicted on women and children in Iraq. But in his search for grace, like so many seekers, the protester, paradoxically, casts off from his wife and children leaving them fatherless.
A couple of hours later I became absorbed by another outcry against the stench of war – an exhibition of Goya and Picasso paintings at the National Galleries of Scotland. Here, too, were some of the Goya’s and Picasso’s most famous works, especially the Weeping Woman and drawings by Goya.
Here Goya strides ahead of his time, and in his drawings doesn’t shirk from showing the savagery of war – images that if they were photographs today would be kept off the pages of family
newspapers.
If Brian Haw is our conscience today, his hoardings bloody testament of political decisions by purblind MPs in the Commons, where are canvases by today’s artists?
Where today another Guernica painted by Picasso of a “Spain sunk in an ocean of pain and death”? This painting, still so powerful, had to be covered up in the UN headquarters in case it offended US diplomats.
Is the silence of our canvases today a reflection of consumerist Britain?
Hugh? Idol’s poet son
FANS of old black-and-white movies should be able to conjure the features of the matinee idol, Hugh Williams, who resided in Hampstead.
His son Hugo, who lives in Islington, in search of his past and his father, has brought out a collection of poems, West End Final, mainly about his father, and with the 80-year-old great poet, Peter Porter – who lives in Paddington – filled a Festival marquee on their book launches.
WEST END FINAL
His girlfriend, half his age/thought he was the leading man/ He imagined her a virgin./ ‘I am like Kipling’s trunkless elephant’/ he told me once, ‘full of insatiable curiosity,’/ Then he poured a bucket of water over himself/ and went on stage crying out/ that his mistress had been drowned,/ I wish I knew where he’d gone/because he left his make-up tin behind/ and a monogrammed coat-hanger/ presented to him by the management.
l From Hugo Williams’ West End. Faber, £9.99.
Trevor Carter bench tribute
THE life of Trevor Carter, an inspirational teacher, as well as a warm human being, is being commemorated by a bench in a Highgate park.
I can think of no better memorial for a man who, among other things, would often walk from his Archway home to Waterloo Park, especially after his retirement.
Trevor, who died early last year at 77, was part of the Windrush generation who migrated from Trinidad to England after the last war.
An idealist, he worked for Cheddi Jagan, the radical chief minister of Guyana in the early 1960s.
Later he worked as a teacher in London, but was better known for his work in helping to organise the Notting Hill Carnival as well co-founding the Caribbean Teachers’ Organisation.
In his later years he was active in the Islington Labour party and became friends with the Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn.
Trevor’s wife Corinne – an actress who has appeared in the TV soap EastEnders – will accompany Mr Corbyn on September 4 at 11am for a ceremony at the bench – it stands near the Swains Lane entrance to the park.
Left in a spin by Gwyn diet tips
FEELING confused by Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s decision to build a celebrity “superhome” by knocking together their two Belsize Park properties?
Perhaps you need some Su Jok therapy or a little acupuncture. Those many little needles have helped Gwyneth through many an ailment, according to her lifestyle website, the aptly titled goop.com.
Bearing the tagline “Nourish the inner aspect”, the site is an ode to unusual dietary fads, “healing modalities” and dance cardio workouts.
The actor professes her “obsession with Vegenaise” – that’s Vegan mayonnaise in case you’re wondering – and recommends restaurants and five-star hotels that are kid-friendly.
Carnival Queen Jean’s plea
SHE has invested £3,000 of her life savings to keep her Carnival dreams alive – now 83-year-old Jean Bernard needs your help.
The former Camden social worker is the mastermind behind one of the street party’s oldest bands, the Pioneers and Their Offspring (PATO) Carnival Club.
Recession blues have hit the family-run outfit this year, and the Bernards are making a last-minute plea for financial support.
Sponsors have been difficult to find but Jean told me she was determined to “come out with a great mass of colours to show the world who we are”.
Anyone interested in helping PATO Carnival Club, please contact the newsdesk on 020 7419 9000.
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