Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Faster and More Furious
"Just...be better."
1986 S.A.N.F.L GRAND FINAL – GLENELG v NORTH ADELAIDE This was to have been North’s revenge year. The Roosters had been put to the sword by the Tigers in 1985 and ahead of the Big Replay, the Roosters’ Coach Michael Nunan (a man popular with Bay fans as a bubonic plague) stated that “we want to level the scores.” The North fans settled in the Spring sunshine of bleak Football Park, licking their chops and rubbing their hands, channelling Madame DeFarge, wanting to be in at the kill. Glenelg was not quite the same team as 1985. One young fellow*, who…
Continue Reading →We should be kind
Statue of Philip Larkin at Hull by Martin Jennings; photo by Paul Harrop
Philip Larkin (1922-1985) The cult of celebrity infects the quest for perfection: how can we expect the best from a human endeavour if we require general perfection of those that strive? You could play a parlour game and cite ceaseless examples of the highest art that would never been born had its creator been held to some prevailing standard of conduct (or thought). Take Philip Larkin, the best English poet of his time. We find from certain biographies* and the gleeful poring over of unguarded correspondence that he had thoughts, impulses and views. [*We except the very accomplished and mature book, Philip Larkin,…
Continue Reading →The Wagner Operas
"Should be bigger...?" (Unveiling the Wagner Memorial in Berlin by Anton von Werner, 1908)
(Ernest Newman) This ‘earnest new man’ was a precise and authoritative Wagner enthusiast, but he stowed away gush and did not indulge in panegyric. Newman certainly had the measure of Wagner the man (as his 12 cassette audiobook Wagner As Man and Artist shows). Yet his love and appreciation of Wagner’s work shines in this single-volume complete Opera companion, the kind of work to thoroughly research beforehand if you want to accentuate the payoff of seeing a Wagner, or to skim afterwards to clarify any nuance or symbol left opaque by a particular production. As Newman says in his introduction, whilst “…a…
Continue Reading →Pride of the Bay
The Story of the Glenelg Football Club (Peter Cornwall and John Wood) (1999) Why be a Glenelg supporter? Why indeed? Objectively, it seems less a badge of pride than a sentence, a millstone, a curse from the abyss of Hell. We started life with a vote down at the Glenelg Council Chambers, when Glenelg was a half days buggy ride from Adelaide, on March 10, 1920. It made a debut in the SAFL, then the second tier, beating South Adelaide by a single point (for the uninitiated, the narrowest winning margin) in its first game. Then it entered the Big League, the…
Continue Reading →A Unique Gent Joins the Great Majority
R.I.P.
Sir Christopher Lee (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) This imposing and elegant actor was often the best thing about the films he made. Whether as Dracula in a series of Hammer Horror films, the equally formidable baddy Saruman in the Lord of the Rings saga, the dotty impressionist Seurat in Moulin Rouge, the nasty aristocrat Evremonde in A Tale of Two Cities, or an unbilled spear carrier in Hamlet, he had a real presence that enlivened the great and petty villains he generally brought to life on screen. Of his 200 odd appearances over his 93 years, The Varnished Culture‘s favourite Lee role…
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