Leif Solberg lived much of his long life in the Norwegian provincial town of Lillehammer. Our eclectic colleague Martin Anderson recalls that ‘when he turned up at the Christmas party of the Norwegian Composers’ Union in the early 1980s, they didn’t know who he was.’
But Martin heard a local tape of Solberg’s neo-classical symphony and decided over time to produce a recording on his label, Toccata Classics. The conductor Paul Mann called it ‘undoubtedly one of the most compelling symphonies of the post-War years’.
Leif died this week, aged 101. He lived just long enough to achieve recognition.
January 27, the anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, is widely commemorated as Holocaust Memorial Day, a moment to remember the victims of Hitler’s regime.
In Iran it is the occasion of the annual Holocaust Cartoon Contest, under the patronage of the nation’s ‘moderate’ president, Hassan Rouhani.
Let’s remember for a moment who we’re dealing with in Teheran.
Paul Hamilton, was awarded a doctorate at Birmingham University last July for his thesis on Shakespeare’s influence on American literature in the 19th century.
On January 17, he was arrested at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon and informed that he was to be repatriated.
Dr Hamilton, 42, a US citizen, has been held since then in a cell at Morton Hall Immigration Removal Centre in Lincolnshire.
He tells the THES: “All they had to do was serve me papers and say: ‘I’m sorry your application was rejected – you need to leave the country.’ But to be arrested is just unbelievable.”
It had been “absolutely heartbreaking to be arrested and thrown into a cage…in the back of a police vehicle in front of my neighbours”, he added.
There are several layers of injustice to this case. Dr Hamilton had applied for an extension to his stay. He was not in the UK illegally. His arrest and humilation appear to be excessive. A petition for his release is being rallied here.
