Latest news with #LandofHopeandGlory
Otago Daily Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
World War 2 tribute in song
Violinist Orla Dunlop Soprano Erin Connelly-Whyte Central Otago Regional Choir is performing in Arrowtown this Saturday in a tribute concert to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War 2. Among the numbers will be favourites the audience will even be invited to join in, including the choruses in The White Cliffs of Dover, It's a Long Way to Tipperary and Land of Hope and Glory. Other standards being sung include Now is the Hour, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and We'll Meet Again. Under the baton of Richard Madden, the accompanists include Peter Doyle (drums), Ariana Knudson-Hollebon (double bass) and Alison Frude (piano). Also appearing are two talented young artists Orla Dunlop (violin), who'll play a movement from Saint-Saens' Violin Concerto No 3 in B minor, and Erin Connelly-Whyte (soprano), last year's ODT Aria Competition winner, who'll sing Franz Lehar's aria, My lips kiss with such heat. Both will be accompanied by pianist Cameron Monteath. Tickets for Saturday's concert, 7.30pm at the Arrowtown Athenaeum Hall, are $30 from choir members, Arrowtown's Lakes District Museum, Arrowtown Pharmacy, Queenstown's Life Pharmacy Wilkinsons and Frankton's Summerfield's Pharmacy.
Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Elgar is the soundtrack to VE Day celebrations — this is his story
With his magnificent moustache, tweed suit and noble air, Edward Elgar looked every inch the proper English gentleman of his day. And as the composer of the Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 — from which comes Land of Hope and Glory, now almost an unofficial national anthem — his music seemed to sum up the spirit of an all-conquering imperial Britain, full of rousing sentiment and flag-waving patriotism. It'll 'knock 'em flat', Elgar boasted of his stirring tune. Here was, at long last, a great British composer to rival Purcell, who gave voice to a proud nation and a swaggering empire. Elgar's flair for pageantry and pomposity served him well. In 1897 he wrote an Imperial March for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee; in
The Independent
27-04-2025
- Sport
- The Independent
FA Cup: Why every neutral will be backing Nottingham Forest at Wembley today
On Sunday at 4.30pm, I will be among 90,000 people at Wembley Stadium to see my football team, Nottingham Forest, play – and possibly even beat – the mighty, moneyed Manchester City in an FA Cup semi-final. 'We' – I don't actually play for Forest, you understand – are also currently fourth in the Premiership, which means we may soon be in the European Champions' League, playing the likes of Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich. Non-football people, please don't stop reading, because this is not really a piece about football at all, but about the way a provincial population can be galvanised and real elation can be had by thousands who have no 'skin in the game' other than fun, pride and romance. Romance not just because Nottingham, my dearly loved adopted city (even though I haven't lived there since I was a student) is sopping with redolent cultural touchpoints – Robin Hood, Lord Byron, DH Lawrence and more. What's happening to its football this season is romantic because, like so much of Nottingham's story, it's also about the unlikely triumph of the underdog. Let me illustrate how improbable our men's team's sudden success is. (Our women, I should say, are doing even better – top of their league and unbeaten). The odds eight months ago on what is now unfolding were between 250 and 500 to 1 – making it between twice and 20 times less likely than the official chances the bookmakers offer on the discovery of sentient alien life by the end of 2025. Fifty years ago, after the brilliant Brian Clough was installed as manager, we became very successful for a short while. But you have to be 60 to remember those times, and football was very different then. Wealthy foreign owners and talented players coming from every which where to earn millions a year were unknown. Our boys were mostly local, had a beer before a game, and included an electrician and a carpet fitter. As money and glamour overtook the sport, Forest were chronic losers for decades. Yet suddenly, and against all expectations, we have become utterly, mesmerically brilliant, acclaimed and admired the world over. We are loved, too. In our distant glory days, opposition fans sang 'We hate Nottingham Forest ' to the tune of 'Land of Hope and Glory'. Today, the pundits who were once unanimous that we would be relegated fall over themselves to say how fantastic we are, and even fans of other teams tell us how much they enjoy watching Forest and wish us well. Perhaps it's the Robin Hood connection, or the peculiarly English name, but Nottingham Forest – a reference, of course, to Sherwood Forest – is loved by the football cognoscenti abroad too, many of whom are barely aware we have been in the doldrums for decades. In Europe, from our appearances there in the 1980s, there is still real affection, and to this day, in Milan the Nottingham Forest Cocktail Bar, which is distinguished, I am told, by having no reference beyond the name to our team. Maybe it has something to do with the club's colour, a shade of red chosen a little randomly at the club's founding in 1865 to honour Garibaldi, the hero of Italian unification. Our arcane attraction also stretches across the Atlantic. As I work partly in New York, I watch Forest games live there in a Forest supporting bar, which attracts many devout fans, some expats, but many Americans. A midday kickoff can mean a 7am start, but it still gets crowded. There is no equivalent venue I know of in New York dedicated to any other British 'soccer' team. The essence of Nottingham is that it's quite idiosyncratic; nobody quite gets it, not even the students who these days come in large numbers from all over the world. Nottingham is not northern, not typically midlands, and definitely not southern. It's a bit rough – always has been – but also rather cultured and elegant, with some marvellous Georgian and earlier architecture and two pubs a thousand years old each. When a notable food critic visited recently to try a much lauded new Japanese restaurant, he described the city as 'a ravaged place of boarded-up buildings and disused churches'. I truly can't imagine where he was referring to. Perhaps it was nearby Derby? For Nottingham Forest fans, our team's transformation has shone like honeyed sunshine over everything. Whatever else is falling apart, there's always the next match to be excited about. And, lord, it's exciting. Nottingham people are not renowned for being the most passionate, but the atmosphere at the club's somewhat decrepit stadium on the River Trent is scorching, the noise level such that my smartwatch regularly warns me that the decibel level is officially dangerous. How this has all happened is frankly baffling. Our owner, Evangelos Marinakis, is an eccentric, corpulent Greek shipping billionaire, currently facing trial in Greece on charges he says are trumped up. Most of the club's hierarchy is also in Greece. The owner has, until very recently, been considered in Nottingham only marginally less useless than the previous proprietor, a Kuwaiti air conditioning mogul who made the players wear shirts advertising his company and whose products are only available in the Gulf. We now, obviously, love Evangelos Marinakis as one of our own. Then there's our Portuguese-São Toméan manager, a gentle equestrian enthusiast who bears the not unflorid name Nuno Herlander Simões Espírito Santo. Nuno, as we know him and adore him by the banks of the Trent, is a former goalkeeper of moderate repute. Before us, he managed a team in Saudi Arabia, then for a bleak four months, Tottenham Hotspur. Nuno is now regarded widely as a genius, and we love him too as one of our own. The players, like the management, would equally have been considered a tad exotic when Nottingham was home (well, sort of) to Robin Hood and our assorted historical all-stars. In our first team of merry men, we have two from Nottingham, four Brazilians, two Nigerians, two from the Ivory Coast, two Welshmen, a Belgian, a German, a Spaniard, an Argentinian, a New Zealander, a German, a Serbian, a Portuguese, a Swede and a Paraguayan. Such a multinational squad would have been inconceivable as late as the 1970s, when almost the only foreign restaurants in Nottingham were Italian and the local tastemaker, Paul Smith, opened his first menswear shop in the city's then embryonic artisan area, the still rather lovely Lace Market. But I suspect it's the Nottingham-ness of Nottingham which accounts for the sheer joy our team's renaissance has caused in what has always felt to me like a slightly glorified country town. The spirit is possibly similar to the Geordiness of Newcastle, where the scenes of joy when they won a pretty minor cup the other day reminded me of how we might be if things get even bigger. So, as we face Manchester City on Sunday, remember that those of us in Garibaldi red feel we're from a bit of an outpost. And also that the idea very much prevails for us of the little guy for the ages, with his quiver full of arrows and sights on the privileged and entitled.
The Independent
25-04-2025
- Sport
- The Independent
Why every neutral should be backing Nottingham Forest at Wembley
On Sunday at 4.30pm, I will be among 90,000 people at Wembley Stadium to see my football team, Nottingham Forest, play – and possibly even beat – the mighty, moneyed Manchester City in an FA Cup semi-final. 'We' – I don't actually play for Forest, you understand – are also currently fourth in the Premiership, which means we may soon be in the European Champions' League, playing the likes of Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich. Non-football people, please don't stop reading, because this is not really a piece about football at all, but about the way a provincial population can be galvanised and real elation can be had by thousands who have no 'skin in the game' other than fun, pride and romance. Romance not just because Nottingham, my dearly loved adopted city (even though I haven't lived there since I was a student) is sopping with redolent cultural touchpoints – Robin Hood, Lord Byron, DH Lawrence and more. What's happening to its football this season is romantic because, like so much of Nottingham's story, it's also about the unlikely triumph of the underdog. Let me illustrate how improbable our men's team's sudden success is. (Our women, I should say, are doing even better – top of their league and unbeaten). The odds eight months ago on what is now unfolding were between 250 and 500 to 1 – making it between twice and 20 times less likely than the official chances the bookmakers offer on the discovery of sentient alien life by the end of 2025. Fifty years ago, after the iconic Brian Clough was installed as manager, we became very successful for a short while. But you have to be 60 to remember those times, and football was very different then. Wealthy foreign owners and talented players coming from every which where to earn millions a year were unknown. Our boys were mostly local, had a beer before a game, and included an electrician and a carpet fitter. As money and glamour overtook the sport, Forest were chronic losers for decades. Yet suddenly, and against all expectations, we have become utterly, mesmerically brilliant, acclaimed and admired the world over. We are loved, too. In our distant glory days, opposition fans sang 'We hate Nottingham Forest ' to the tune of 'Land of Hope and Glory'. Today, the pundits who were once unanimous that we would be relegated fall over themselves to say how fantastic we are, and even fans of other teams tell us how much they enjoy watching Forest and wish us well. Perhaps it's the Robin Hood connection, or the peculiarly English name, but Nottingham Forest – a reference, of course, to Sherwood Forest – is loved by the football cognoscenti abroad too, many of whom are barely aware we have been in the doldrums for decades. In Europe, from our appearances there in the 1980s, there is still real affection, and to this day, in Milan the Nottingham Forest Cocktail Bar, which is distinguished, I am told, by having no reference beyond the name to our team. Maybe it has something to do with the club's colour, a shade of red chosen a little randomly at the club's founding in 1865 to honour Garibaldi, the hero of Italian unification. Our arcane attraction also stretches across the Atlantic. As I work partly in New York, I watch Forest games live there in a Forest supporting bar, which attracts many devout fans, some expats, but many Americans. A midday kickoff can mean a 7am start, but it still gets crowded. There is no equivalent venue I know of in New York dedicated to any other British 'soccer' team. The essence of Nottingham is that it's quite idiosyncratic; nobody quite gets it, not even the students who these days come in large numbers from all over the world. Nottingham is not northern, not typically midlands, and definitely not southern. It's a bit rough – always has been – but also rather cultured and elegant, with some marvellous Georgian and earlier architecture and two pubs a thousand years old each. When a notable food critic visited recently to try a much lauded new Japanese restaurant, he described the city as 'a ravaged place of boarded-up buildings and disused churches'. I truly can't imagine where he was referring to. Perhaps it was nearby Derby? For Nottingham Forest fans, our team's transformation has shone like honeyed sunshine over everything. Whatever else is falling apart, there's always the next match to be excited about. And, lord, it's exciting. Nottingham people are not renowned for being the most passionate, but the atmosphere at the club's somewhat decrepit stadium on the River Trent is scorching, the noise level such that my smartwatch regularly warns me that the decibel level is officially dangerous. How this has all happened is frankly baffling. Our owner, Evangelos Marinakis, is an eccentric, corpulent Greek shipping billionaire, currently facing trial in Greece on charges he says are trumped up. Most of the club's hierarchy is also in Greece. The owner has, until very recently, been considered in Nottingham only marginally less useless than the previous proprietor, a Kuwaiti air conditioning mogul who made the players wear shirts advertising his company and whose products are only available in the Gulf. We now, obviously, love Evangelos Marinakis as one of our own. Then there's our Portuguese-São Toméan manager, a gentle equestrian enthusiast who bears the not unflorid name Nuno Herlander Simões Espírito Santo. Nuno, as we know him and adore him by the banks of the Trent, is a former goalkeeper of moderate repute. Before us, he managed a team in Saudi Arabia, then for a bleak four months, Tottenham Hotspur. Nuno is now regarded widely as a genius, and we love him too as one of our own. The players, like the management, would equally have been considered a tad exotic when Nottingham was home (well, sort of) to Robin Hood and our assorted historical all-stars. In our first team of merry men, we have two from Nottingham, four Brazilians, two Nigerians, two from the Ivory Coast, two Welshmen, a Belgian, a German, a Spaniard, an Argentinian, a New Zealander, a German, a Serbian, a Portuguese, a Swede and a Paraguayan. Such a multinational squad would have been inconceivable as late as the 1970s, when almost the only foreign restaurants in Nottingham were Italian and the local tastemaker, Paul Smith, opened his first menswear shop in the city's then embryonic artisan area, the still rather lovely Lace Market. But I suspect it's the Nottingham-ness of Nottingham which accounts for the sheer joy our team's renaissance has caused in what has always felt to me like a slightly glorified country town. The spirit is possibly similar to the Geordiness of Newcastle, where the scenes of joy when they won a pretty minor cup the other day reminded me of how we might be if things get even bigger. So, as we face Manchester City on Sunday, remember that those of us in Garibaldi red feel we're from a bit of an outpost. And also that the idea very much prevails for us of the little guy for the ages, with his quiver full of arrows and sights on the privileged and entitled.
Daily Mail
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Royal fans notice Prince Louis's adorable mistake during his and Princess Charlotte's national anthem rendition at King Charles's coronation
A staggering 83 per cent of the British public say they do not know the words to God Save The King beyond its first verse, according to research by Babbel. And around 33 per cent of respondents think the 'old-fashioned' and 'militaristic' national anthem should be replaced, suggesting alternatives such as Land of Hope and Glory, Rule Britannia and even Oasis's Wonderwall. But it seems Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis (who celebrates his seventh birthday today) would not count themselves as part of either group. After sitting through King Charles 's two-hour long coronation ceremony on May 6, 2023, the younger Wales children confidentially stood to sing the national anthem. Mature beyond her years, Charlotte looked precious in an ivory Alexander McQueen dress and silver leaf headdress as she delivered a word-perfect rendition of the song. Also belting out the patriotic tune was Louis, then five, who stood in a navy blue outfit from Savile row tailors Dege and Skinner alongside his parents the Prince and Princess of Wales. But his version of the national anthem was not as flawless as his sister's, as eagle-eyed fans spotted the moment he accidentally swapped out 'King' for 'Queen' in the first verse before correcting himself. One royal fan tweeted, 'Prince Louis sang Queen instead of King bless him' as another wrote: 'Prince Louis singing "God Save the Queen" has made my day. He's back!' The Wales Family sit in the front row near the High Altar Young Louis was quickly forgiven, however, as most other five-year-olds are just getting to grips with their alphabet let alone singing the national anthem on live television. Behind the well-rehearsed Wales children, former rugby pro Mike Tindall was seen checking the words to God Save the King - as did Princess Beatrice's husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. 'Such a wonderful, historic coronation,' someone wrote on X (then called Twitter). 'Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte sang the national anthem and behaved perfectly during the service. A credit to their parents.' 'Love Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte belting out the national anthem,' another royalist tweeted. A third added: 'Prince Louis singing was EVERYTHING #soproudofhim' Royal fans across the pond were equally as impressed, with one gushing: 'I'm American and I teared up.' Despite looking the part, the solemn ceremony elicited a yawn or two from Louis - who was also seen pointing things out to his sister Charlotte from their seats near the high altar. Their older brother Prince George had a formal part to play in the event as Page of Honour to their grandfather King Charles Many took to X to praise the youngsters for singing God Save the King so confidently God Save the King lyrics God save our gracious King! Long live our noble King! God save the King! Send him victorious Happy and glorious Long to reign over us God save the King O Lord our God arise Scatter his enemies And make them fall; Confound their politics Frustrate their knavish tricks On thee our hopes we fix God save us all Thy choicest gifts in store On him be pleased to pour Long may he reign May he defend our laws And ever give us cause To sing with heart and voice God save the King Dressed in a knee-length scarlet coat with gold trimmings over a white satin waistcoat, George, who is second in line to the throne, attended to the King with fellow pages Lord Oliver Cholmondeley, Nicholas Barclay and Ralph Tollemache. It marked the first time in modern royal history that a future monarch was officially involved in the two-hour service. While his grandfather King Charles and great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth II both attended their parents' coronations in 1953 and 1937, respectively, as children, they merely watched the ceremony. At Charles's coronation, royal biographer Ingrid Seward told The Mirror that the Prince and Princess of Wales thought long and hard about allowing their eldest son, who is known to be 'shy in public', to take on such a vital role in the coronation. 'After much discussion with him, they all agreed he would regret it if he didn't do it,' Ms Seward said. 'It is his destiny after all to be part of many royal occasions in the future. And he will feel proud to be the youngest person taking part in the historic ceremony.' Despite not having a formal role in the ceremony like her older brother, Charlotte was somewhat of a guiding presence for her younger sibling Louis. Perhaps offering reassurance, or simply ensuring he walked in the right direction, Charlotte held Louis's hand as they processed through the grand building behind their parents. It marked the first time in modern royal history that a future monarch was officially involved in the two-hour service Prince Louis puts on an animated display after the two-hour long ceremony After the ceremony, Charlotte then dutifully took her place alongside George and Louis in the first carriage behind the Gold State Coach. But the young princess seemed to lose control of her cheeky younger brother as the Royal Family stepped out on to the balcony at Buckingham Palace to greet the sea of fans below. Louis impatiently drummed his fingers on the balcony railing before showing off his own version of the royal wave which has been dubbed 'the window wiper'. After pointing and making faces at the crowd, the young prince flung both hands around uncontrollably as his older sister waved gracefully. When the red arrows finally roared across the sky, the little prince appeared to let out a shout of excitement. He made sure to let his parents know that the planes had arrived, pointing excitedly towards the sky.
