➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣

❚ A POWERFUL BLACK-AND-WHITE widescreen film version of Hamlet captured my interest in 1964 at the Academy cinema on Oxford Street because it was made in Russia, and shot mainly outdoors.

FRONT PAGE

❚ 1983 – “Have you been to the cubism exhibition at the Tate?”

❚ All you need to know about the New Romantics revolution of the 1980s is covered in each of these books which is definitive in its own way. . . * 78-87 LONDON YOUTH, by Derek Ridgers (Damiani, 2013) – … Continue reading →

❚ IMPOSSIBLE to imagine how many tears have been shed in the past three weeks since the violent murderous death of Finbar Sullivan on his 21st birthday while testing his new camera in broad daylight on grassy Primrose Hill.

MOLLY PARKIN 3 FEB 1932 – 5 JAN 2026 ❚ SO SAD TO HEAR OF MOLLY’S PASSING AGED 93.

❚ TRIBUTES HAVE POURED IN following the death of our greatest contemporary playwright Tom Stoppard, aged 88.

❚ BEST NEWS OF THE WEEK is to hear of the return of a legendary restaurant… The place I grew up in when eating out was cheap and cheerful, and the one that confirmed my taste for classic British farmyard … Continue reading →

❚ DESPITE NOT BEING A FAN of Me-Me-Me George O’Dowd, I found the compelling new TV documentary Boy George & Culture Club an astonishing revelation on every level at its premiere this week in the Waterloo Imax cinema.

❚ DURING THE SWINGING 80S two seasoned eye-witnesses watched Britain’s young ignite a glittering New Romantics revolution… As a Fleet Street journalist I explored their intriguing carnival of style-setting cults across Britain, Paris and New York, while s…