Humphrey Lyttelton, 1921—2008

Steve Bowbrick — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:42:14 +0000

Humphrey Lyttelton, who died earlier this evening, loved Buddy Bolden, a troubled, almost mythical jazz trumpeter from turn-of-the-century New Orleans. In his later life, Humph attempted a kind of reconstruction of Bolden’s music, which can’t have been easy because it was never recorded in his lifetime. I’d like to have featured one of Humph’s Bolden videos here by way of a tribute (there are lots on YouTube) but embedding is switched off for these videos. So here, more obliquely, is a six-minute introduction to Bolden from Ken Burns’ famous 2001 documentary series Jazz.

Dan Cruickshank’s Adventures in Architecture: Death

kimplowright — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:57:13 +0000

A bit of a delay on this one, as the iPlayer stream didn’t appear for a good couple of hours after broadcast yesterday.

If you can cope with an hour of Dan Cruickshank’s oooh-gosh-blimey-cripes presenting style – truly, he is what Molesworth would have grown up to be – this second programme in his culture and architecture series is a macabre little gem.

Ruin-bibbing at its best, Dan bounces round the globe looking at the architecture of death – from the temple of Hatshepsut (who, despite being a queen was always shown as a bloke with a beard… you can add your own joke here) to cremation sites on the banks of the Ganges.

The jaw dropping bit is a visit to the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic. Fourty thousand skeletons, arranged by a mad genius of a woodcarver in to coats of arms, chandeliers and… oh, just watch it for the bit where the bloke hoovers a skull.

As Dan would say, golly! Amazing!

Watchification » death

Humphrey Lyttelton, 1921—2008

Dan Cruickshank’s Adventures in Architecture: Death