Britain's biggest exam board has removed a poem by Carol Ann Duffy from the GCSE syllabus and asked schools to destroy the anthology it is contained in because it makes a reference to knife crime. This followed a complaint made by Pat Schofield, an exam invigilator. Duffy responded with the poem: Mrs Schofield's GCSE. [more inside]
posted by ninebelow on Sep 12, 2008 - 78 comments

Constant Lambert, born 100 years ago this week, was briefly the biggest star in British music in the 1930s, famous for the jazz-tinged choral piece, The Rio Grande. The BBC are playing a retrospective of his music, together with pieces by his contemporary Alan Rawsthorne, every day this week at 11:00 GMT, repeated at midnight a week later, as part of their Composer of the week slot (buttons on this page for the live stream, plus the previous five programmes). Unfortunately they aren't playing the whole of his masterpiece, the Concerto for Piano and Nine Players, dedicated to his late friend Peter Warlock, which can be read as a elegy for the Jazz Age itself.
A heavy drinker, Constant died in 1951; his son Kit Lambert, who managed The Who during their rise to fame, also died young after drug troubles. Andrew Motion wrote a biography of three generations of the Lambert family, and reflects on Constant here.
posted by gdav on Aug 22, 2005 - 2 comments

A fight between the heavyweight champion of the world and a poet - Lennox Lewis and Andrew Motion, now I'd pay to see that.
posted by johnny novak on Mar 12, 2001 - 17 comments