Well, due to work commitments mainly, I haven’t been able to keep up with the Culture Club blog for, what, eight months (oh dear), so it’s more than due an update.

Our last assignment was on the theme of ‘madness’ and included the following works:

• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (novel)
• King Lear by William Shakespeare (play)
• Woyzeck by Georg Buchner (play)
• Wozzeck by Alban Berg (opera)

This was quite a challenge – Don Quixote alone is 1,000 pages, and King Lear is considered one of Shakespeare’s most challenging plays.

As always it was highly rewarding. I found Don Quixote a total revelation. I hope to go into more detail at some stage, but for now suffice to say that it changed my view of the novel (Milan Kundura’s The Art of the Novel defines Don Quixote as the originator of all novels) and even (risking exagerration) life itself.

New year’s resolution – to try to keep up with the Culture Club blog. More soon.