What A Forensic Psychiatrist Says About Gesualdo, The Wife-Murdering Composer

Don Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa is even more famous for killing his wife and her lover in flagrante than he is for his surpassingly weird madrigals. But he didn’t simply dispatch the pair himself: he brought along three men armed with guns and double-headed axes and he energetically mutilated the dead bodies. Dr. Ruth McAllister considers what might have driven Gesualdo to such extremes (and then tortured himself over them for the rest of his life) when a couple of bullets or sword thrusts would have done the job.

The Sad, Sorry Story Behind The Fraudster “Japanese Beethoven”

“The irony is that Mamoru Samuragochi didn’t have to lie. His story was compelling without embellishment. He was the child of Hiroshima survivors; he did have hearing problems; his brother did die young. If he and Niigaki had simply billed themselves as a team, they might have still shared fortune and fame. Instead, Samuragochi cultivated the image of a solitary genius.”

Workers Of The Word Unite! – Language And Class At The Copy Desk

“The truth is that the work of the copy editor is largely disdained. And because their work is so undervalued, copy editors (and fact checkers) routinely work significantly longer hours for much less money … The popular image of the copy editor as a usefully malfunctioning person justifies the natural order of things: In the Calvinistic world of magazines, maladjusted grammar weirdos simply fall to their natural station.”

How Much Do Britain’s Top Arts Institutions Get From Corporate Sponsors? And What Do The Sponsors Get For Their Money?

“Details of specific deals are usually secret, because neither arts organisations nor sponsors want their rivals to know exactly what is changing hands. So we looked at the accounts of 10 top arts organisations – Royal Opera, English National Opera, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Southbank Centre, British Museum, Science Museum Group, Victoria and Albert Museum, Natural History Museum and National Gallery – and asked them how much money they get from sponsors overall.”