The Wurzels’ drummer died in hospital after catching Covid-19 while on tour in the United Kingdom. Following the Wurzels’ performance at Manchester Academy earlier this month, Somerset guitarist John Morgan, originally from Lydney, Gloucestershire, got sick with coronavirus and died at the age of 80 on Friday at Gloucester Royal Hospital, accompanied by his family. […]

My family performed okay through the first lockdown, which was medium-to-spicy. It was only myself, my husband Mark, [my daughter] Tash, and Oliver, Tash’s boyfriend. “Is it OK if Oliver and I come down?” Tash said as the kids were escaping university in London. “Of course!” Mark and I answered, assuming they’d be gone for […]

According to research, Covid-19 has resulted in the loss of 393,000 employment in the night-time economy, including 86,000 in the “night-time cultural economy” (NTCE), which includes nightclubs and theaters. The study, commissioned by the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) and carried out by leisure consultants CGA and night-time economy researchers Make, discovered that the sector […]

In the opening act of the Royal Opera’s new staging of Verdi’s Rigoletto, Titian’s alluring Venus of Urbino dominates the sumptuous court of the greedy Duke of Mantua. Later, it is replaced by the same artist’s Rape of Europa. We know that the 16th-century duke was a renowned collector – and that when Mantua was […]

I met Ben and the rest of the band in a bar in Sants, the neighborhood in Barcelona where Ben currently resides.  It’s a rainy evening and masks are enforced everywhere, but the bar isn’t crowded and we find a comfortable nook where we can chat over drinks and (almost) forget we are in the […]