I went to a fab production of Oklahoma! last night. Our local theatre, the Gordon Craig, can put on some brilliant stuff when it is free to (sadly, pop / rock tribute acts pay the bills – and I can hardly complain, having hugely enjoyed Think Floyd here). Anyway, off we went to Broadway, 1944, and the musical that the pundits say reinvented the genre (I always thought Show Boat did that, but maybe not). There were beautiful songs ('People will think we’re in love' is simply b

I’m reading and enjoying Sapiens, by Israeli academic Yuval Noah Harari. I've just reached the point where he discusses the existence of two essential but clashing political desiderata, freedom and equality. I think there are more interesting rival basic desiderata. One is what I call Self-creation. We make ourselves and our worlds: we have to. Whether our ancestors had to is a moot point. In the old days, there were template roles one could live without thought. But even the