As thousands of future ticket-buyers, on either side of the Atlantic, enjoy their first live entertainment experiences this week, we celebrate the shared DNA of two seasonal showbiz staples… Last week, in common with thousands of other inhabitants of these islands, I attended a pantomime, the perfectly pitched ‘children’s version’ of Jack and the Beanstalk at the iconic King’s Head Theatre, Islington. But try explaining Panto to anyone beyond these shores, and you’ll likely receive that...

A paper published this week* suggests five key turning points that define distinct epochs in brain development. So where are our audiences on this new roadmap? 2,500 years before Batman, Spiderman (and Martin Lewis) Theban Superhero Oedipus made his entry into annals of The Business of Pleasure by allegedly solving The Riddle Of The Sphinx, which went something like: “What creature has four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three in the evening?”  The answer, for which Oedipus...

On the 115 th anniversary of the death of the novelist who wrote: “ Music is the shorthand of emotion ,” (L. Tolstoy RIP/W&P) we peel, core and juice the Creative Process to learn how it gets down the gist of the matter… Way back in the patchouli-scented ‘seventies, over far too much Macallan single malt for a sixteen-year-old, an affable Ealing solicitor pulled his paper Christmas hat up from around his bloodshot eyes and burbled:  “What is your special place, David?  That one place, and...