Patrick O’Connor
The Power of Dance
Different Drummer: The Life of Kenneth MacMillan
By Jann Parry
Faber & Faber 2784pp £30 order from our bookshop
When Kenneth MacMillan was fourteen, as he related forty years later, ‘I woke up one day … to find that everything had crystallised. I had to be a ballet dancer.’ He screwed up his courage and went to see the local dancing teacher in Great Yarmouth. He tapped on her door and blurted out, ‘I want to be a ballet dancer. I want to get a scholarship to the Sadler’s Wells School.’ The kindly Miss Adams looked at him and said, ‘Oh, do you really? In that case you’d better come in.’ When, a few months later, he went to audition for Ninette de Valois in London, she was too busy to spare any extra time, so she just instructed him to join in the company’s regular morning barre practice. MacMillan was placed between Margot Fonteyn and Beryl Grey. De Valois wrote to MacMillan’s teacher, ‘I was extremely impressed with the boy from every angle.’
This was during the winter of 1944–5; once the war was over, De Valois arranged the scholarship for him, and within months he was dancing on stage. Once in the main company, he found that Frederick Ashton paid special attention to him during rehearsals, ‘He’d ask me, “What
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘He has become a kind of global guru, public intellectual and consultant to the great. He is the ultimate geopolitical gerontocrat.’
From July 2022: Piers Brendon on Henry Kissinger.
Piers Brendon - Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her
Piers Brendon: Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her - Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
Peter Marshall - Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
literaryreview.co.uk
Offer ends soon! Take advantage of our best ever Black Friday offer and get a year's subscription for £29.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/blackfriday/