Channel 4 has been making much this week of re-discovered 3-D footage of the Queen's coronation. I didn't have the special spectacles needed to get the full effect, but the reviews I've read suggest I didn't miss that much.

At times, the deferential narration and gushing reminiscences of those who were there gave the feeling that we'd never really left 1953. It was also jarringly anglo-centric. The news that Everest had been conquered, for example, was seen as a fitting start to England's new Elizabethan age. Never mind that it was a New Zealander and a Nepalese who did all the hard work.

The one amusing moment came when the programme turned its attention to the Queen of Tonga. Queen Salote, we were told, endeared herself to the crowds by riding to Westminster Abbey in an open carriage in the pouring rain. Weighing over 350 pounds, Salote was accompanied by a very small man. Asked who this might be, Noel Coward replied: "Her lunch."

I overslept this morning, and it was all Meryl Streep’s fault. Well, her and Kathy Burke. And Brian Friel.

I stayed up late watching “Dancing at Lughnasa”, the movie version of Friel’s luminescent play. Set in 1936 Donegal, the story revolves around the five Mundy sisters. Times are hard, but the sisters do their best to scratch a living, Kate as a schoolteacher, two others knitting gloves.

But outside forces start threatening to tear the family apart. A knitwear factory spells the end of one strand of their income, and the loss of Kate’s job adds to the grim tidings.

In spite of the gloom, the movie contains many uplifting moments, not least when the sisters engage in a manic, unrestrained dance that echoes the paganistic rites taking place in the nearby hills.

The title arises from the pagan festival of Lughnasa, which initially caused some amusement. When the play first opened in London, the box office began getting enquiries about “Dancing at Lasagne”. Some say the movie is a shadow of the theatre version, but having seen both, I think the film holds its own. It may be set in Ireland, but its themes are universal, and translate well on to the screen.

Meryl Streep gives a stern, bossy and sensitive portrayal of Kate, while Kathy Burke is just delightful as the bawdy, Woodbine-smoking Maggie Mundy. Michael Gambon also puts in a fine performance as the sisters’ slightly unhinged brother. But to single any of them out is invidious. It’s an ensemble piece, and the Donegal landscape is shown at its wild and wonderful best.

It was made in 1998, and I watched the closing credits as the clock struck 3am, so in more ways than one I came late to it. But it was definitely worth the wait.

"If you enjoy long relaxing walks along clean sandy beaches, swimming in the surf on a warm sunny day, or perhaps lazing on a beach towel while watching the world go by, then a visit to the Sunset Coast in Perth is for you."

So says the Perth Tourist Office.

Unfortunately, the very idea of lazing on a beach towel in the Perth I visited today would have given me triple pneumonia. The Scottish version is a very different kettle of fish to its Aussie namesake.

That said, it does have its own distinctive charms.

I walk past this every day, but it was only last night I noticed how photogenic it might be. What do you think?

Schicksalstag is what they call today in Germany - the day of fate. Several important anniversaries coincide, all of which had a profound impact on the country. This year, of course, the day has special resonance, with the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fatal breach.

If there’s one thing Berlin isn’t short of it’s history, and that's been brought home to me whenever I've been there. In Schoeneberg, I happened across the Nollendorfstrasse apartment that Christopher Isherwood once called home. A modest wall plaque explained that Isherwood’s Berlin stories would one day be transformed into a musical called “Cabaret”.

Schoenberg is an instantly likeable district where respectable residences rub shoulders with trendy boutiques and gay bars.  It’s here that Marlene Dietrich made merry in twenties, and David Bowie made music in the seventies.

Around the corner from Isherwood’s apartment, I found another plaque, this one recalling Berlin’s darker past. A passer-by offered a translation of the inscription on the pink marble triangle: “Quickly killed, quickly forgotten. As many as 55,000 gay men were deemed criminals by the Nazis, 15,000 of them died in concentration camps.

The killing didn't end with the war. In the Berlin Wall's hideous history, over 200 people died attempting to reach the West. There are still remnants of the Wall around the city - the example above is near the Martin Gropius architecture museum.

This memorial, close to the Brandenburg Gate, commemorates those who lost their lives trying to escape the DDR.


Back in Schoenberg, I spent an evening getting quietly sozzled in Woof. At the bar, the locals roared at the tv monitor as a rubber-clad Dafyd declared – in perfect German – that he was unquestionably the only gay  in the village.

I got chatting with some of the regulars about the night the Berlin Wall came down. “I was a student in Stuttgart”, said Peter, now an architect, “so I listened to it all on the radio.”  His partner, Kurt, shook his head, “I just went to bed. I knew it would be repeated for days.”

Then Michael spoke up. Now in his fifties, with a full, bushy beard, Michael's’s eyes sparkled as he recalled that historic night.  “I went straight to Brandenburger Tor. it was great just being with all the happy people, and I stayed there until the sun came up.”

Michael arrived home next morning to find his boyfriend unexpectedly back from working in Hamburg. “Martin wasn’t interested in the Wall, he just wanted to know where I’d been all night – and who I’d been with.”  It was the beginning of the end of their relationship. Just as one union was being reforged, another was falling apart. 

As Michael paused to remember Martin, I thought of Isherwood, of Dietrich, of Peter Fechter, and all those persecuted for swimming against the tide.

We raised our glasses to Berlin, and to absent friends

My usual Sunday morning listening was interrupted today because BBC Radio changed its schedule to accommodate the Remembrance Sunday ceremonies. 

So, instead of my normal news magazine programme, I was treated (if that's the word), to The Archers.  This is a venerable radio soap that goes back to the days when Harry Truman was still in the White House. It's set in a the fictional village of Ambridge, and like most soaps it relies on its cast of characters and storylines to keep listeners tuning in.

I hadn't heard it for years, and I don't think I'll be beating a path to its door again.  Even the most trivial event seems to be worked up into a major panic.  the big story today was that someone broke a teapot, resulting in much overeacting and even more overacting.

An insurance company here used to promote itself by promising: "We won't make a drama out of a crisis." But in The Archers, you can be sure that they'll take every opportunity to make a crisis out of a drama.

Not so much a whistlestop tour as a journey on the history express.  That’s Andrew Marr’s Making of Modern Britain, which started its run on the BBC television this month. It charts our history from the death of Victoria up to World War II, which is a lot of ground to cover.

One moment we’re on the battlefields of the Boer War, the next on stage with music hall heroine Marie Lloyd.  But there’s no sense of information overload. That’s largely thanks to the presenter’s informal style. Marr  is an engaging broadcaster with an arresting turn of phrase.  The Boer War he calls “Britain’s very own imperial Vietnam”. He describes King Edward VII as a “sleepy-eyed avocado-shaped man” whose appetite for the female form gave him the sobriquet “Edward the Caresser”.

The programme doesn’t shrink from the less palatable aspects of British history. It’s sobering to learn that concentration camps were born here, and that Sir Francis Galton’s theory of eugenics paved the way for a central tenet of Nazi ideology.

The visuals are just as compelling.  Scratchy pictures of Edwardian ladies enjoying a “golden, dappled summer” are contrasted with images showing the filth of the slums endured by the masses.  Accompanying all this, is a musical score that ebbs and flows with the mood of the moment.

But it’s Marr’s sense of drama that sets the programme apart from so many other yawnumentaries.  In Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip fired “the starting pistol for armageddon”, a conflict that committed Britain to “the greatest bloodbath the world had ever seen.”

Few broadcasters can pull off a combination of the the dramatic, the disturbing and the daft, but Andrew Marr is surely among them. He’s in danger of becoming a national treasure.

The Brussels rumour mill suggests the smart money for European President is going on Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy. 

He's got his own blog, but rather than discussing the finer points of the European Directive on Animal By-Products, he uses it  to post his own haikus. 

The latest seems to be a reference to the race for the presidency.

Drie golven rollen
Samen de haven binnen
Het trio is thuis

which means:

Three waves are rolling
Together to the port
The trio is at home

The Financial Times, clearly the journal of choice for aspring poets, says this is a reference to the interaction between the president of the European Commission, the foreign policy supremo and the future EU president.

There are precedents for poetic presidents.  Angola's first leader, Agostinho Neto wrote poems, some of them transformed into liberation anthems. And when Senegal's first president, Léopold Senghor died in 2001, Jacques Chirac remarked: "Poetry has lost one of its masters". Meanwhile, Portugal's 1915 leader, Teófilo Braga wrote a work called Visão dos Tempos (1864; “Vision of the Ages”) that  was inspired by Victor Hugo’s Légende des siècles.

So why not a poet for President? Perhaps he could make even the Common Agricultural Policy sound interesting.

And so Glasgow Green hosted its last big event of the year, the annual fireworks night. The Deputy Lord Provost of Glasgow (I didn't even know we had one of them) told the assembled multitude that there were 50,000 people present. I'm never sure how they work these things out. All I know is it was bloody busy.