Meryl Streep inhabiting Margaret Thatcher Meryl Streep’s impersonation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady is almost frightening in its accuracy, believability, naturalness and depth. How did Streep dig down and find that character and then make her live so vividly on [...]

“Am I in love? – Yes, since I’m waiting.” The other never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn’t wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, [...]

Bascove: Reading in Bed I found myself yesterday, rather to my own surprise, urging a client to read The Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a book which was written more than 250 years ago and which I last read about 350 years ago. This is how it begins and I think you can read a Uranian [...]

I moved into this house four years ago and, what with one thing and another, up until December half my books had been packed in boxes up in the attic. This has been a source of grievous discontent to me, but the ingress of action planet Mars into bookish Virgo saw a couple of boxes […]

Heaven – gawping at Edina and Patsy. Last night, my beautiful daughter came downstairs trembling in her pyjamas after having gone to sleep hours earlier. “I heard a witch laughing and it scared me awake.” “Oh,” me, sheepishly. “I think it was me.” [...]

I still get a small thrill when I walk past number 20 Northmoor Road after dropping my kids off at school. Half a century ago, JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings in that unprepossessing suburban house. I’ve often wondered if there were [...]

Listen to this. You wouldn’t think that the British singer Adele turned 21 last May, would you? She has the voice of, well, experience. When I hear a voice like hers, I ask myself where’s the Capricorn? Nina Simone…what a voice This is because I’ve noticed that Sun [...]

I love this time between Christmas and New Year. I like to stay quiet in my lair and think and talk and stare at the fire. It’s a pause in the year’s activity like the white space at the end of a paragraph. It’s deeply, profoundly, awesomely yin – that is dark, [...]

Heart was purring, but you wouldn’t think so to look at him! Hey, it’s rather an auspicious Christmas this year. Who’d have thought it! Astrologically, it’s a pretty thrilling couple of days – with a New Moon in earthy, sensible Capricorn today (Christmas Eve) at [...]

Truthfulness is a Sagittarius quality — for good or bad. Maybe that is why they make such brilliant self-portraits. There is the German-Swedish painter Lotte Laserstein with a tabby cat comfortably nestled on her arm. Her gaze is a little sardonic, but quite confident thank you, as [...]

You’ve been making one of these right. This is from Bean Town Handmade in Nebraska How do you choose something really special without breaking the bank? Well, clearly you should have spent the last 12 months handcrafting a variety of exquisite crocheted garments for all your friends and [...]

Are you tired of giving Great Uncle Matthew a bottle of port and a piece of your mind? Are you bored with buying your sister yet another useful kitchen utensil?  Would you really like to get all your Christmas shopping done now? Or do you simply know someone who could really do with an [...]

The ugly step-sisters flank Cinderella in last year’s panto at the Oxford Playhouse. What is it about our brothers and sisters? It’s the longest relationship for most of us. And so often it is a knot of jealousy and loyalty, love and loathing, betrayal and trust. We share a [...]

Film director Ken Russell made big, messy pictures with a lot of sex and music in them. His fluid, emotional, freewheeling camerawork is still like no one else’s. Yesterday at the age of 84, the old maverick was taken by his maker (Uranus Returns, Jupiter conj Chiron). His [...]

George: Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Venus in water signs.Marty: Sun, Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter in water signs. “Who’s your favourite Beatle?” When I’m feeling difficile I like to reply Yoko Ono, but the truth is, for me, it’s always been George.  Why? [...]

Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood Hollywood legend Natalie Wood – beautiful, talented, passionate – died in mysterious circumstances 30 years ago. She was 43 years old and had spent the previous 39 years working, loving and living smack in the public eye. She drowned after a drunken row with her [...]

Jeff Buckley, of the astonishingly beautiful voice, the soulful eyes and the strange and tragic death would have been 45 today (Nov 17).   Jeff Buckley (1966-1997) His natal chart is compellingly simple. Almost everything is tightly aspected, He was born in the vortex of the mid-60s clash [...]

Francis Bacon, Oct 28 Don’t expect to find this an easy bunch of pictures to look at. We are in the land of Scorpio this month – and this sign like to deal with deeper truth. Not for Scorp the polished surface of a Gemini or the gorgeous patterns of Libra. No, Scorpio prefers to [...]

Artist Georgia O’Keeffe born 15 Nov 1887 – Sun, Moon, Mercury, Jupiter in Scorpio opposite  Neptune (illusion, glamour)-Pluto (death again). Scorpio – death, archeology, digging deep, the bare bones – and sex. Scorpio rules the genitals, of course.

Equally beautiful, equally deadly. Alain Delon (Nov 8) and Monica Vitti (Nov 3). It took a Libra, Michelangelo Antonioni, to put them together in  L’Eclisse (1962). Rather appropriately for our times he plays a shallow, materialistic stockbroker unable to connect emotionally. She is [...]