Creating Watership Down

Alison Flood | Guardian | 4 January 2015

Conversation with Richard Adams, now 94, about his classic children’s story, Watership Down. “To create his rabbit characters, he drew from people he had met and from the world of literature. Bigwig was based on an officer he had known in the war, a great fighter at his best when given explicit orders, while Fiver was derived from Cassandra, the figure from Greek mythology who had the power of prophecy.”

Inside Putin’s information war

Peter Pomerantsev | Politico | 4 January 2015

The main job of Russian television used to be the relatively simple one of making the president look good: “The news is the incense by which we bless Putin’s actions”. But since the invasion of Ukraine, television has taken on a more devious opinion-forming role at home and abroad. “The aim is to confuse rather than convince, to trash the information space so the audience gives up looking for any truth amid the chaos.”

Matisse at MoMA…in 1931

Ralph Flint | ARTnews | 29 December 2014

As Henri Matisse’s ’cut-outs’ exhibition closes at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, a look back at coverage of the artist’s first major American show, at the same venue, in 1931: “His success is sure on both sides of the Atlantic. He has made a success of his art and an art of his success. His stock will be sent sky-rocketing, and those dealers lucky enough to have even an option on one of his canvases will be reaping their reward.”

What I Did In 2014

Alan Bennett | London Review of Books | 24 December 2014

Diary extracts. Subjects include: Sue Townsend, preaching in King’s College Chapel, Oxford high table, filmmaking, Kim Philby, Debo Devonshire, boa constrictors, Richard Hoggart, Richard Branson, dogs, old age. “Once upon a time when one saw an old couple walking along holding hands the thought was of Darby and Joan. Nowadays one just wonders which of them has Alzheimer’s.”

The best album of the year?

Jeff Peretz | Cuepoint | 23 December 2014

D’Angelo’s Black Messiah is not merely the best album of the past year, it is one of the great albums of all time, on a level with Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life. The songs have “the sophistication of jazz standards”. The influences range from Thelonius Monk to Paul McCartney, and everything falls where it should. It swings. “No one in R&B can make a record at this level anymore.”

North Korea’s American film stars

David Marchese & Paul Fischer | New York | 19 December 2014

North Korea understands well the propaganda value of films. For decades its own film industry has demonised America. It treats foreign films as a serious threat, and rightly so; even the most innocent of them challenges the regime merely by showing how much better people live in other countries. A film such as The Interview, which mocks, deflates and finally annihilates Kim Jong Un, “just couldn’t be allowed”.

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