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Author Archives: A S H Smyth

Two plays, one critic

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Review of The War Reporter and One Small Step.

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Second Thoughts

Monday, April 5, 2010

Very Short Stories* by ASH Smyth (et al.) * inspired by the Galle Literary Festival’s Opening Lines Project Antony Beevor In history, as in politics, intellectual honesty is the first casualty of moral outrage. In both disciplines, the first casualty of intellectual honesty is one’s wallet. David Blacker ‘He hit the morning, running, Benzedrine and […]

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Any ‘umbrella of tranquillity’ in a storm

Sunday, April 4, 2010

In the first of the Great Artist Series, presented by the Chamber Music Society of Colombo, acclaimed French pianist Jean-Bernard Pommier performed three meisterwerk sonatas to a sell-out Goethe-Institut crowd. Mozart’s Sonata in D Major is a lightish confection, perhaps slightly more icing than cake, from an era when pianos were still quite piano and […]

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Paths less travelled by

Monday, March 22, 2010

(Unexpurgated) review of the Chamber Music Society of Colombo’s Troubled Seas and Forest Paths concert I appreciate it must be tiresome – not to say slightly unnerving – listening to middle-aged boffins frotting over high-grade music, and that it’s not much better when the middle-aged boffins are actually in their 20s. But what to do? […]

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Sarnath Banerjee has his own aesthetics

Monday, March 15, 2010

only they’re a bit… wonky. Interview and slide-show with Delhi’s finest graphic novelist. — For theartsdesk

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“Obvious pitfalls were not routinely blundered into.”

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Glowing review of the SOSL Guest Conductor concert, 2010. [In which we learn, also, that it is better to file one’s copy at the absolute last minute, thereby precluding the editor from tampering with the text.]

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Beer, Roving, and getting to write your own headlines

Monday, March 1, 2010

Letter from the Galle Literary Festival 2011. — For theartsdesk

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“What’s so wrong with having a sense of humour?”

Sunday, February 28, 2010

ASH Smyth meets his poetic heroin(e) and suffers a Dictaphone malfunction   When you step outside, perhaps you’ll see an envoy from the Nobel Literature Committee; though it’s unlikely. This was my attempt at ‘finishing’ Wendy Cope’s contribution to the GLF’s Opening Lines Project. I figured it did the job, a fragment of Cope-style (Copious?) […]

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Heil, Mary…

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Review of voice-and-piano, at the Goethe-Insitut.

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The Canterbury Tale-teller

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Interview (and beers) with Rana Dasgupta, enfant génial of Indian letters.

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