by hedgecoe | Oct 4, 2018 | Blog
Imagine you’re an ordinary guy, a writer and editor, say, who has a relatively low public profile but who is deeply committed to a political cause. Then imagine that one day you are plucked from your life of books and culture and are instantly transformed into a...
by hedgecoe | Aug 3, 2018 | Blog
A few months ago, production company PBS invited me to contribute to a documentary they were making about Francisco Franco as part of their ‘Dictators Rulebook’ series. The series has now been shown on the National Geographic channel and is well worth...
by hedgecoe | Jul 24, 2018 | Blog
Has there ever been such a sudden, passionate love affair between a city and a newcomer as that between Madrid and James Rhodes? The pianist-writer moved to Spain last year with an armful of hit classical albums, two bestselling books and a dodgy command of the...
by hedgecoe | Jun 7, 2018 | Blog
“You shouldn’t mistake voting for democracy” – Jonathan Bernstein So, off he goes. Mariano Rajoy, the man nobody could move, Spain’s political pachyderm, has been unseated. During his nearly seven years in power an aura had built up around the...
by hedgecoe | Feb 23, 2018 | Blog
February 25th is the anniversary of the death of Paco de Lucía, the greatest flamenco guitarist of modern times and, for many, the greatest who ever lived. I wrote the following essay a couple of years ago about Paco de Lucía, the modernist and traditionalist tensions...