For the record - and with apologies for any disappointment caused - Member ahinton's intense dislike of all things beer-related is so immense and deep-seated that he of all people could not possibly be onto anything by reference to a brewery in the above context...

Well, by all means do so, if you can; are you by chance able to recall its authorship from 10½ years' distance? What was it actually about and what was its principal thrust? If you or anyone else unearths it, I trust that it won't lead me to be reminded (as something else did on here very recently) of a minor adaptation of Richard Ingams' adage, namely "it must become true: I read it in The Daily Telegraph"...

Oh, PLEASE not on my account!

Do you suppose that he'd even need such an excuse to sidestep that poisoned chalice? He surely didn't marry Camilla for that reason?! But then perhaps William V - or Le Roi Arthus Deux - might want to pass that parcel as well, in which case it'd be a case of "hooray for Harry, England and - er - um..." (well, now, there's a poser - Helmand provice doesn't actually have a patron saint, does it?...). Anyway, who's to say that Queen Elizabeth might not outlive Charles in any case? What then? The main thing in the present context is that she herself seems to have escaped inclusion on Mr al-Fayed's hit list - which is just as well, really, for the spectacle (unlikely though it might seem, for all that Michael Mansfield QC is not exactly short on professional adroitness and wizardry) of her being detained at her own pleasure would be somewhat bizarre, to say the least...

Jings, JW, you're some philistine...

Á propos Le Sacre is possibly the single most important document of a composer's own thoughts on his work in his own voice that was ever issued as a commercial release. It really ought to be in the complete Stravinsky box: not only is it a fascinating essay, but that accent! It's thanks to having heard that LP so many times that I knew much of it off by heart that I cornered a little market in Russian character-parts about twenty years ago. I can still hear the end now; (approximately) "I churrd, and I wrote vot I churrd: I vos the vesselle trew vitch Le Sacre passed". (I heard, and I wrote what I heard: I was the vessel through which Le Sacre passed)

Oh dear - I'm about to hang, draw and quarter myself here (well, at least I'm doing it in public!). Leaving aside Sorabji's essay Beer and British Music (to which I should point out none of my comments about my dislike of all things beery have any personal connection whatsoever), I have to admit that Stravinsky mostly doesn't do it for me either. Le Sacre is, of course, unquestionably an immensely great work and a seminal one in the music of the past century and I love it as well as respect it, but all too much of what its composer did from the post-WWI years onwards really leaves me at best unmoved and at worst irritated beyond measure. But please don't alter your avatar again! In his eighties, Stravinsky - not naturally the most generous-spirited of men at the best of times - heaped praise on what Elliott Carter was up to; let no one dare suggest that, whatever else he was or did, Stravinsky, even as he approached his final years, was anything other than capable of recognising music of importance - OK, he may not exactly have made a habit of so doing, but he really could do it when it hit him and I believe that his encouragement of Carter (who, after all, had long beforehand felt catapulted into music by his experience of Le Sacre) was as genuine as it was welcome.

OK - neither the Excellent Elliott nor the Igrigious Igor has anything to do with the thread topic (not even Ronde des Princesses could quite force that!), for my digression from which I apologise! - and I am quite sure that neither the deceased Princess nor the accusing department store owner nor any of those accused of conspiracy / complicity in the murder of the former would have/have had the remotest interest in or knowledge of either composer.

To return to my regret that I ever so much as  thought to mention breweries in this discussion, I think that, on reflection, I might have been wiser had I instead referred to inability to organise a piss-up in a road tunnel...

This from Simon Hoggart's Guardian column last Saturday:

Someone, I forget who, aptly pointed out that when the princess died she had just left a Fayed hotel in a Fayed car, and was being taken to a Fayed house by a Fayed driver, protected by a Fayed security guard and sitting next to Fayed's son.

And yet Fayed is blaming everyone else!   He seems to reckon that even his own driver was apparently in on the conspiracy. And, no doubt, the Grauniad too ...

I saw on the headlines of a tabloid that the present Princess of Wales (for that is what she is) went on a recent holiday with her ex-husband.

Dr Williams did not "flirt" with sharia law.  I know someone who was at the lecture in question, and was horrified at the  vicious and uninformed reaction.

If Charles was concerned about the divorce aspect, the person whose strong views he would have to take account of would be his mother.

As ever, the strangeness of what emerged from the press coverage had me baffled and a little bit upset. The complete and total lack of reflection and self-examination of the soundbites that, from some quarters, conflated the idea of British values with Christian (and only one particular 'take' on Christianity at that) values and furthermore couldn't see anything wrong with this way of thinking... I was a little surprised not to have seen more posted here on the subject but I suppose it's like dinner party etiquette where you don't talk religion. I've killed threads before by doing just that so perhaps I should keep 
Perhaps it was more important that he took into consideration the views of the C of E as well. Although he's not keen on the rôle of fides defendor (with fides in the singular at least), he's going to have to keep at least the House of Bishops sweet if he wants to change anything when he gets the job. The fact that the Church of England went through a fairly comprehensive consultation on the subject of divorcees remarrying a few years before the announcement of the engagement was rather telling. It showed (IMO) that these things could be done with a relative minimum of fuss. Never mind, the sun is shining and the birds are singing (probably somewhere, even if I can't hear them outside my flat).