David Benedict

Supper is spiced lamb meatballs with sumac-roasted vegetables with lemon and pomegranate. #TheQuickRoastingTin

BBC News just interrupted its coverage to go, live, to Nigel Farage - a man with no contitutional standing in our setup - responding to the budget - a document which nobody has seen yet. WHY

TFW you find yourself at a deliciously leisurely Sunday lunch eating cheese and biscuits on a plate from the 1950s Ambridge tea service. Obviously I shall be featuring this in an article in the Borchester Echo All best, Tristram Hawkshaw #TheArchers

TFW you find yourself at a deliciously leisurely Sunday lunch eating cheese and biscuits on a plate from the 1950s Ambridge tea service. Obviously I shall be featuring this in an article in the Borchester Echo All best, Tristram Hawkshaw #TheArchers

Share who you think looked the hottest anyone has ever looked in a movie!

On #worldoperaday2026 give yourself a treat and succumb to Handel’s astonishingly tender, impassioned mother-and-son duet from Giulio Cesare sung with extraordinary dramatic intent by the great Beth Taylor and Svetlina Stoyanova at Glyndebourne. I saw it live: unforgettable. youtu.be/yIC3iuSUYd4?...

The Miss Marple series starring Joan Hickson is now on iPlayer. And, unlike the last time, episodes will now be on there for a year! #MissMarple

As Dorothy Fields wrote: ‘All I can say is “wow”!’ We all know Jacques Demy’s sensational Les Parapluies de Cherbourg & Les Demoiselles de Rochefort but hands up who knew of Donovan, Jack Wild, Diana Dors and John Hurt in this from 1972? Not me. I suspect it’s unmissably dated. h/t @bcdreyer.social

I'm the ideal person to lecture teachers on hard work, since I’m usually too busy with my 12 side grifts to bother turning up for the full-time job I’m paid to do and because I had the 4th worst attendance record out of 751 MEPs in the EU Parliament.

Take a moment to remember what we promised Brexit would deliver: a well-funded NHS, less immigration, more jobs, flourishing businesses with no red tape, easy to get on the housing ladder, boom time for farming, fishing and steel industries... I do hope you're enjoying it.

Still ageing like milk

What, some people wonder, is the definition of camp? May I present a contender: nb The caption alone gives you some idea… youtu.be/noaN--eSJ0o?...

What, some people wonder, is the definition of camp? May I present a contender: nb The caption alone gives you some idea… youtu.be/noaN--eSJ0o?...

The BBC is set to scrap Radio 4 Extra. 📻 Losing this treasure trove of classic comedy, archive drama, and timeless storytelling would be a massive blow for millions of us. Sign the petition to help save Radio 4 Extra 👇 you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sa...

What the hell? This is shocking. www.theargus.co.uk/news/2665180...

Bloody - and I mean this very sincerely - hell.

As the saying (almost) goes, when Peter Sellars is good, he’s very, very good… www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/perl...

Birthday boy Malcolm Arnold wrote 130+ film scores and tons of orchestral music including 9 symphonies, the best of which is 5. I was at this performance at The Proms. At the end, conductor Sakari Oramo brandished the score at us in delight. It’s hugely varied marvel! youtu.be/jHidl3IXo-o?...

For no apparent reason, I’ve suddenly conceived a passion to re-watch a St. Trinians film. Plenty of reasons, Ronald Searle’s credits, Malcolm Arnold marvellously jocular score among them. I remember my brother Robin and I giggling helplessly at Dora Bryan. Might I be hideously disappointed?

How marvellous that Colin Jeavons is still with us at 97 and a day. Terrific actor and unforgettable amid a dynamite cast (Helen Mirren, Janine Duvitski etc) in Dennis Potter’s groundbreaking Blue Remembered Hills.

Please note: this is (technical term) bloody delicious.

I've always held that The Devils was just a rerun of The Boy Friend, with ketchup.

Caryl Churchill's new sharp short Triumph is a triumph of timing. www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/triu...

Anne Billson is, of course, right (as usual). I am a sci-fi-phobe yet I adore this film. Everyone in it is splendid but it’s Alan Rickman in excelsis who steals my heart.

Caryl Churchill's new sharp short Triumph is a triumph of timing. www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/triu...

Thanks to everyone who packed out my @elysiansingers.bsky.social gig last night: a joy to sing for you all. And anyone who loved Amy Norrington’s superb cello playing as much as we did should hotfoot it to @wigmore-hall.org.uk this morning to hear her quartet. www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/202...

SATURDAY! Free night or plans cancelled? Hear us premiering James MacMillan’s Elysian Ode for double choir & cello alongside lush, lustrous music from Kerensa Briggs, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Joanna Marsh, Caroline Shaw, Judith Weir, @willtoddmusic.bsky.social, @ericwhitacre.bsky.social & more.

My latest gig!

It’s not just Jonah who lived in a whale. Whalefall tells a different tale. And how is Kristin Scott Thomas in The Cherry Orchard? And what if 30 women retold the life of Gustave “Madame Bovary” Flaubert? @murielzagha.bsky.social @tds153.bsky.social & I chew the fat. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

It’s Angela birthday tomorrow. 📸 Yousuf Karsh (1946)

It’s not just Jonah who lived in a whale. Whalefall tells a different tale. And how is Kristin Scott Thomas in The Cherry Orchard? And what if 30 women retold the life of Gustave “Madame Bovary” Flaubert? @murielzagha.bsky.social @tds153.bsky.social & I chew the fat. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Into BBC Broadcasting House to review The Cherry Orchard with Kristin Scott Thomas and Stephen Mangan, the movie Whalefall and the new novel from Elif Shafak. Front Row BBC Radio 4 7.15pm

‘Booker win was “disastrous and life-changing” for Anita Brookner.’ Hermione Lee’s interview with Andy Miller at the Cheltenham Literature Festival makes page 3 of The Times today.

Jack Clayton’s THE INNOCENTS screens in 4K at the PCC next Wed 21st Oct at 1pm. Deborah Kerr stars as a governess sent to care for two children at a remote country estate, where she becomes convinced something supernatural is taking hold. 🎟️: buff.ly/sqjRuQW

To the snooty commentator who so loftily replied to my post months ago urging people to support this cause and told me the cinema must clearly be being mismanaged and that trying to persuade the owners was a fool’s exercise… HOORAY!

It’s PG Wodehouse’s birthday so please note he wrote the book & lyrics of many musicals incl. 1917’s forgotten Oh, Lady! Lady!! for which he wrote this tender song with Jerome Kern. It was cut. A decade later Kern reused it, with a little lyric revision by Oscar Hammerstein. youtu.be/N7q43uU6lEs?...

FTR shattering letter about how the Conservative Government ignored the entirely credible threat from Putin in favour of feeding The City (& Tory Party) roubles👇 March 23 2022 Carl Scott, Air Commodore (Retired), UK defence attaché in Moscow for five years, 2011-2016 www.ft.com/content/857d...

Wow.

67 genuinely unforgettable seconds of Zack Polanski. x.com/ifindwankers...

67 genuinely unforgettable seconds of Zack Polanski. x.com/ifindwankers...

Wordle is so exasperating over words it does and doesn’t allow. Neither of my first two words ORDINAND and PARD are deemed acceptable. Pah.

Yesterday evening I picked up two packets of sage leaves half-price in Waitrose. (Is sage not the most underrated of herbs?) What, I wondered, could I do with them? And lo! As Tennessee Williams wrote: “Sometimes - there’s God - so quickly.”

Was that the same security services you dumped to visit ‘ex’ KGB colonel Alexander Lebedev and party in Umbria just after the Novichok Salisbury attack? Or the same security services whose advice you defied to put his son Evgeny in the House of Lords? Those security services?