BeaconLit 2022 – this coming Saturday, 16 July, Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire. The literary festival was launched in 2013. People keep coming back, to be inspired, informed and to enjoy the beautiful mystery of what happens when you turn a page (in books both physical and virtual). http://www.beaconlit.co.uk In this year’s event former Chief Crown Prosecutor Nazir Afzal will be… Continue reading
When The Story of Holly and Ivy was first published, it was set in the Buckinghamshire market town of Aylesbury. In later editions the location was switched to somewhere called Appleton. (There is a village of Appleton in Oxfordshire, but the descriptions in the book don’t fit it.) Has the book lost something as a result? “And where does your grandmother… Continue reading
“The itinerant, ultra-sociable Thomas would have been the last person to be constrained by social distancing, red and amber lists, and isolation. He was a man of the pub. It’s hard to see how he could have survived as a writer without beer-fuelled social interaction.” Dylan Thomas knew Under Milk Wood was good, even in… Continue reading
One of the highlights of the 2020 TV Christmas schedule is sure to be the three-part adaptation of Rumer Godden’s Black Narcissus, which she wrote in 1939. It’s the story of a group of nuns setting up a mission in the Himalayas, and stars Gemma Arterton and Diana Rigg. It is sure to attract big… Continue reading
Mr Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland, with James Norton, Vanessa Kirby and Peter Sarsgaard, is now streaming on Netflix and other movie platforms. “A few feet away [from me] sits Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany and leader of the most volcanic nationalist awakening which the world has seen. Six thousand feet beneath us, hidden by… Continue reading
The fourth season of The Durrells is underway on ITV1, (Sundays) and is available on catch-up. The programme, set in the late 1930s, follows Louisa Durrell’s attempt to make a new life for herself and her family in Corfu, after her husband died. The series stars Keeley Hawes, Josh O’Connor, Daisy Waterstone, Milo Parker, Callum Woodhouse, Leslie Caron, Yorgos Karamihos, Alexis… Continue reading