A Day Of Continental Pleasures

It has been a remarkable first week of the Tour de France - eight stages down and five of them have been won by Britons. The teak tough Chris Froome won yesterday with a sequence of grinding climbs followed by an audacious final descent. He even found time to lamp one of those barmpot spectators who run alongside the competitors. For sustained drama and sheer bloody human endeavour Le Tour takes some beating. Allez Froome.

In the evening after a day of making some actual progress on my thesis (the mooted humanism of Bagehot and Shakespeare was bothering me) I followed the Tour highlights (introduced by the brilliant Gary Imlach - why does he not get more time on the major channels?) with a film I've been meaning to try for ages. The wait was worth it - Cinema Paradiso is a beautiful little movie. A peaen to the lost power of cinema and to the poignant imperfectability of first love, it is at its best in the scenes of Toto's childhood with Salvatore Cascio effortlessly stealing every scene he graces. 8/10.