December 12


Amber pages


Impossible not to have days whose memorials are just, well, let's admit it, better than those of other days. The first four of these fit into that category for today's date. But the fifth - how could you beat that? Tiger Woods having a golf masterclass from Jack Nicklaus? That dinner at Matisse's house when Picasso and Max Jacob saw African masks for the first time and thought up Cubism? Maybe. There must be others of the same order, but this will probably take the 19 cent biscuit.


Gustave Flaubert, French novelist, born today in 
1821


Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter, born today in 
1863


Kenya declared independence, today in 1963; and if I have included this one in this Book of Days, but left out many of the others, it is because the British leaving Kenya really was the symbolic beginning of the end of colonialism on that continent, even though it wasn't actually the first (click
here for a full list of dates for the start of Africa's "Long Walk to Freedom")


John Osborne, English playwright ("Look Back in Anger"), born today in 
1929


But then this:


Today in 1792, Ludwig van Beethoven paid Joseph Haydn 
8 Groschen (about 10p English, in today’s reckoning; probably it was quite a lot back then) for his first music lesson.





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