Fairytale of New York is a 1987 hit Christmas song for Irish-British band The Pogues. Fairytale, although having an enduring popularity in Britain and Ireland, only peaked at No. 2 in the British charts that Christmas, beaten by Pet Shop Boys’ song Always on My Mind. This song was a cover of a song previously released by Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley, one of the best known singers of the 20th century, originally became popular in the 1950s, a decade synonymous with the emergence of many singers and entertainers, including Little Richard, Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin. Darin, an actor as well as a singer who died in 1973, was the subject of a 2004 biopic Beyond the Sea, which was co-written, directed and starred the actor Kevin Spacey. Spacey was, as of the time of writing, a subject of many allegations of impropriety and, as a result, was recast in the film All the Money in the World just weeks before its theatrical release, and was replaced with Christopher Plummer. “All the Money in the World” is the story of the infamous kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, grandson of the industrialist J Paul Getty. Getty was, in his day, one of the wealthiest men in the world, and is remembered for his frugality. John D Rockefeller is similarly remembered as one of the world’s wealthiest men; he was, in fact, the wealthiest American of all time. Rockefeller opened the Rockefeller University in New York and endowed his new foundation with part of his fortune. Rockefeller University was not the only university in the United States to be founded by a magnate; Carnegie Mellon University was formed through the merger of Mellon Institute of Industrial Research and Carnegie Institute of Technology, which was founded by Andrew Carnegie, a man as well-known for his business acumen as for his philanthropy. Carnegie donated large sums of money to various good causes,...

Francesco Goya was a Spanish painter and portraitist whose career reached its peak in the late eighteenth century. He was a contemporary of another painter, a British one, Joseph Wright of Derby. Another British artist you might have heard of is Mick Jagger and despite what some of you think, Wright and Jagger were not contemporaries. However, one of Wright’s most famous paintings is called An Experiment with a Bird in the Air Pump. Now, you might have heard of the word “pastiche” and in case you haven’t I tell you what it is: it’s a work of art by one artist that closely resembles that of another’s, but in a respectful way – this differentiates it from a parody. The Rolling Stones’ 2005 album, A Bigger Bang, features as its cover a portrait of the band but with strong resemblances of Wright’s aforementioned painting. On that album is a song called Back of my Hand. It’s a song about a clairvoyant, a visionary who can “read [the future] like the back of [his] hand” but specifically he see “paranoias” and, yep, you’ve guessed it – Goyas, that it is to say, paintings by Francesco...