‘The Devil and the Dark Water’ by Stuart Turton

28 November 2025

Having really enjoyed Stuart Turton’s remarkable novel ‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ (reviewed here in April 2019) - a murder mystery in which the narrator appears to be reliving the day of the murder, each time inhabiting the body of a different person - I was keen to read more by Stuart Turton. I have now finished reading his 2020 novel ‘The Devil and the Dark Water’ - a brilliant historical epic set in 1634 on a Dutch East India Company sailing ship on a journey from Batavia back to Amsterdam. It’s a wonderfully entertaining mix of detective fiction, thriller, period drama and ghost story - a bit more conventional in narrative structure than ‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ but just as inventive and with a similarly well-drawn cast. It reminded me of Matthew Kneale’s marvellous comic historical novel ‘English Passengers’, 'The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet’ by David Mitchell (reviewed here in August 2011) and ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. ‘The Devil and the Dark Water’ is a long book that gripped me throughout and seemed to whizz by. More Stuart Turton please! 

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

18 November 2025

I have been a member of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra for 25 years but last Saturday’s concert was special for me as it was the first concert programme I was involved in choosing. I joined the orchestra’s programming committee in August 2024 to help to decide the repertoire for our 2025-26 season. As we approached the first concert of the season I was surprised how responsible I felt. In particular I had pushed for the inclusion of the ‘Sunrise Orchestral Suite’ by the Finnish composer Ida Moberg - which had been suggested by a member of the orchestra and I had really enjoyed listening to. Rehearsing the suite over the past 10 weeks I began to worry that it wasn’t quite as strong as I had thought, but it provided a beautiful opening to the concert and seemed to go down well with our audience at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton. 

Peter Donohoe, who joined us to play the Bliss Piano Concerto, has been one of the UK’s best known pianists since winning the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow in 1982. I played the Grieg Piano Concerto with him as a member of the Didsbury Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in 1983. So it was fascinating to discover that his first performance of the Grieg Concerto was in the Spinney Theatre in 1977 - the year it opened. The last time Peter Donohoe played with NSO was in our 125th anniversary concert at the Derngate in June 2019 when he performed Tchaikovsky’s ‘Piano Concerto No 2’. I remember the final movement as a frenetic romp with Peter Donohoe racing the orchestra to a thrilling finish. Sir Arthur Bliss is now best remembered for his music for the 1936 science fiction film ‘Things to Come’. His Piano Concerto was premiered in 1939 in Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. It was dedicated “to the people of the United States of America” and shows significant American influence, including echoes of Gershwin and Korngold, as well as a touch of Stravinsky and some recognisable appearances of the march theme from ‘Things to Come’. It is a spectacular showpiece concerto with two muscular outer movements and a beautifully delicate slow movement. Peter Donohoe gave a stunning performance and our conductor John Gibbons did a brilliant job of holding this complex piece together. There were excellent duets with the piano from Corinne Malitskie (‘cello), Richard Smith (violin) and Keith Crompton (timpani). It was wonderful to hear, after the concert, that Andrew Burn, Chair of the Bliss Trust, was astonished by the quality of the orchestra. As an encore Peter Donohoe treated us to the ‘Intermezzo in A major op.118 no.2’ by Brahms - an achingly beautiful performance that moved many of us to tears. 

We completed the concert with Dvořák’s ‘Symphony No 8’, which I have always adored as it was one of the first symphonies I played on joining the Didsbury Symphony Orchestra in my teens. I can still remember our conductor telling us, definitively, that the third movement of the symphony is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. Whether or not you agree, the confidence of his statement made a big impression on me as a teenager. It was lovely to rediscover this gorgeous symphony - a great way to show off the wonderful NSO ‘cello section (though the haunting opening unison theme in the first movement is played by the horns, 1st clarinet and 1st bassoon as well as the ‘cellos). And there were many perfect flute solos throughout the piece by Graham Tear who always seems to make the most intricate passages sound easy. It was a really enjoyable concert and felt like one we will fondly remember for a long time. 

The Postal Museum

14 November 2025

For the majority of the seven years I worked for Making Music our office was in Rosebery Avenue in London, just a few hundred yards from the massive Royal Mail Mount Pleasant Sorting Office. Despite walking past the building every day it was only last weekend, more than 20 years later, that I got around to visiting the Postal Museum. The museum houses a fascinating and entertaining exhibition which walks you through the history of the UK postal service - from 1516 when Henry VIII established a ‘Master of the Posts’ to the present day. I realised I have now reached an age when I spend too much of my time in museums exclaiming “I remember having one of those”! But the main attraction at the Postal Museum is the opportunity to ride in the tiny Mail Rail train under central London. London's Hidden Postal Railway runs for 6.5 miles from Paddington to Whitechapel. It opened in 1927 and only ceased being used in 2003. Now you can squeeze into new passenger carriages and travel around one loop of the railway line, passing through narrow tunnels and disused station platforms, accompanied by an audio-visual history of the service. It’s an eerie and intriguing experience - a mixture of ghost train, theme park ride and archeological dig. 

'The Captive' by Ned Beauman writing as Kit Burgoyne

6 November 2025

Ned Beauman is one of my favourite contemporary authors: I have enjoyed all his novels, with ‘The Teleportation Accident’ (reviewed here in July 2013) and ‘Madness is Better Than Defeat’ (reviewed here in October 2017) my particular favourites. I was intrigued to discover that Ned Beauman’s new novel ‘The Captive’ is written under the pseudonym Kit Burgoyne. Reviews have suggested that this signals a shift of genre into fantasy/horror but I found ‘The Captive’ (which I read as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Sam Stafford) remarkably similar in tone to Beauman’s earlier novels. It was wonderful to rediscover his very careful, precise, and incredibly funny writing. I’m not sure I would describe ‘The Captive’ as horror: though there is some rather graphic satanic violence, the book feels more like a thriller - its kidnap plot gripping from the opening scene. The gradual introduction of supernatural elements to an otherwise accurately described present-day London reminded me of the magical realism of David Mitchell’s brilliant novel 'The Bone Clocks' (reviewed here in October 2014). The plot to expose and topple a mysterious, evil family who seem to control all of Britain’s public services reminded me of ‘What a Carve Up’ by Jonathan Coe. But despite these multiple elements, I think ‘The Captive’ is actually Ned Beauman’s most straightforward novel - a scary pacy thriller with a linear narrative that doesn’t outstay its welcome and comes to a proper conclusion. 

'Mrs Warren's Profession' by George Bernard Shaw

29 October 2025

This year we’ve made two visits to Shaw's Corner - the house where George Bernard Shaw lived in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire - at Easter and on the weekend of the playwright's birthday in July when we saw an open-air production of his play 'Arms and the Man' (reviewed here in August 2025. This Monday we were at the Odeon in Milton Keynes to see a NT Live recording of Dominic Cooke’s new production of ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’ at the National Theatre in London. Shaw wrote more than 60 plays and only a handful are still regularly performed but ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’ has struggled for performances since it was written in 1893 - not receiving its first public performance in England until 1925. This is because of its subject matter which explores the links between sex and society. The new National Theatre production stars Imelda Staunton as Mrs Warren and her real-life daughter Bessie Carter as Mrs Warren’s daughter Vivie. It’s a fascinating play. Initially the relationships between the characters feel confusingly odd, with the suggestion of something going on beneath the surface of the dialogue reminding me of the style of much more recent plays by Sam Shepard, Caryl Churchill and Edward Albee. But as the reasons for their behaviour towards each other becomes clearer it turns into a compelling series of arguments about morality, exploitation, and women’s rights which genuinely manages to make strong cases for opposing points of view. Imelda Staunton was wonderful but this was Bessie Carter’s play and she was brilliant. Our only disappointment was that this play that struggled for performances for so long hadn’t reached a larger audience: we were the only two people in the Odeon to see it.

'Born With Teeth' by Liz Duffy Adams

24 October 2025

In 2016 the Guardian reported new evidence, based on computational analysis, that Christopher Marlowe collaborated with William Shakespeare on parts of the Henry VI trilogy of plays - a collaboration subsequently endorsed by the New Oxford Shakespeare imprint of Oxford University Press which now also credits Marlowe. Liz Duffy Adams’ new play ‘Born With Teeth’, which we saw at Wyndham’s Theatre in London on Saturday, imagines Shakespeare and Marlowe working together on the Henry VI plays. It’s an entertaining and intriguing two-hander which, in this Royal Shakespeare Company production, directed by Daniel Evans, provides a star vehicle for two very successful TV actors, Ncuti Gatwa (as Kit Marlowe) and Edward Bluemel (as Shakespeare). Both actors entirely justify their casting with impressive stage performances, showing (across three short acts) the shift in power in the relationship between the two playwrights. The script is clever, witty and often very funny - using contemporary English in a period setting to make the interactions between the two writers believable and relevant. But, even at just 90 minutes without an interval, the play feels too long for its material. It’s an interesting thought-experiment which might have made a really strong 60 minute fringe play but doesn’t have enough content to sustain itself but is worth seeing for the performances by Gatwa and Bluemel. And it helped with my ongoing game of Doctor Who bingo: Ncuti Gatwa is the fifth Doctor I have seen on stage (following Peter Davison, David Tennant, Christopher Eccleston and Jodie Whittaker, since you ask!). 

'Clown Town' by Mick Herron

24 October 2025

It was wonderful to return to the world of Jackson Lamb and the Slow Horses in Mick Herron’s new spy novel in the Slough House series, ‘Clown Town’, which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Sean Barrett. The previous book, ‘Bad Actors’ (reviewed here in June 2024) felt like the climax of the series, so I was intrigued to see where ‘Clown Town’ would take us. As usual the book starts with a confusing violent opening scene involving unfamiliar characters. This is followed by a perambulation around the offices of Slough House - MI5's dumping ground for disgraced operatives - to slowly reintroduce us to each member of the team. After several chapters of what seems like entertaining but trivial sub-plots you begin to wonder when the main story is going to start, only to realise that the collision between those sub-plots is going to be the main story. Mick Herron frequently plays with the reader - keeping us hanging on for ages towards the end of the book before finally revealing who died in the big set-piece confrontation. But he also manages to create a cast of hopeless, helpless losers who are surprisingly likeable and sympathetic. 

Bologna

17 October 2025

We had a wonderful holiday in Bologna - the culinary capital of Italy and the location of the oldest university in the Western world, founded in 1088. It is a beautiful and very distinctive city, with most of the buildings conforming to a colour palette of warm tones of yellow, red and orange, and miles and miles of porticoes (wide arched covered pedestrian walkways) - more than any other city in the world. If you are visiting Bologna I would recommend reading John Grisham's 2005 novel 'The Broker' while you are there. It's a gripping thriller and its descriptions of Bologna - and the experience of learning to speak Italian - were the perfect companion to our holiday. We were lucky to see a Bologna Festival concert by the MDI String Quartet in the magnificent Oratorio di San Filippo Neri - one of the grandest places I have ever seen a classical concert. We had day trips, by train, to Milan, Ravenna and Venice. Milan was nicer than we were expecting with some stunning buildings, particularly the Castello Sforzesco. The town of Ravenna was a little less picturesque than we had imagined but its famous Byzantine mosaics were amazing. And it was wonderful to return to Venice, 24 years after our previous visit, and to manage to find the little hotel where we had stayed all those years ago. You can see a selection of my holiday photos at: https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/Bologna2025 

'Top Hat' by Irving Berlin

1 October 2025

Last Friday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see the Chichester Festival Theatre production of Irving Berlin's 'Top Hat'. The show is based on the 1935 film starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, adapted for the stage in 2011 by Matthew White and Howard Jacques, and is directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall (who was also responsible for the glorious Barbican production of 'Anything Goes' by Cole Porter, reviewed here in September 2021). It's a feast of Irving Berlin songs, including 'Puttin' On the Ritz', 'Let's Face the Music and Dance' and 'Cheek To Cheek' as well as 'Top Hat, White Tie and Tails'. There is nothing more joyous than an old-fashioned tap-dance musical and the big dance numbers are brilliantly performed by a large cast, squeezed onto a relatively small stage. Phillip Attmore (as Jerry Travers) is a stunning dancer - incredible in the fast tap numbers but equally graceful in the ballroom dances. The prototype romcom plot is typically slight and forgettable, and the book is desperately in need of a modern rewrite, but you can just wallow in the beautiful costumes, stylish set (by Peter McKintosh) and an amazing display of dancing. 

'Measure for Measure' by William Shakespeare

23 September 2025

'Measure for Measure' - which we saw at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon last Saturday - has never been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, but I seem to have been gradually warming to it. I think I had seen it three times before and my comments here on two previous RSC productions (in January 2012 and July 2019) suggest my growing understanding and appreciation of the play. Emily Burns' new RSC production is the best of the lot. Not only does it give the play a contemporary setting (with a great set by Frankie Bradshaw), the production made me realise what a modern play it is - despite having been written around 1603. It has a different feel to most Shakespeare plays: the language is less poetic, more realistic, and it consists mainly of a series of claustrophobic two-hander scenes. Watching it on Saturday we could almost have been at the National Theatre or the Royal Court at the premiere of a new play about power, misogyny and corruption. 'Measure for Measure' is a dark tale but this version made the narrative clearer than I remembered it, allowing you to focus on the parallels between the behaviour of Angelo and the Duke and their modern equivalents. (The play starts with a montage of recent news footage featuring Bill Clinton, Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock et al). The play was cleaner and clearer for its very sparing (and effective) use of music. And the introduction of hand-held video cameras projecting live-feeds onto two giant screens heightened the climax of the final scene by showing us close-ups of the main characters' reactions. The principals - Adam James as the Duke, Tom Mothersdale as Angelo and Isis Hainsworth as Isabella - were all excellent. It was a really impressive production.  

‘Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark’ by Gwenifer Raymond

19 September 2025

‘Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark’ is the new album by the Welsh guitarist and banjo player Gwenifer Raymond. It's a fascinating set of solo instrumental tunes that features compelling rhythms, hypnotically repetitious lines and some impressive fast picking. The tunes include echoes of Appalachian mountain music, some nods to slide guitar and a range of moods. She creates a fascinating sound world in which it's often easy to forget that the music is being generated by a single player. It's a lovely, unusual and engaging album. You can listen to the title track here.

‘The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley’ by Sean Lusk

12 September 2025

‘The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley’ by Sean Lusk (which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Bert Seymour and Clare Corbett) is a captivating, curious, charming historical novel. Set in the mid-18th century it has the language and feel of a novel of that period, though with some more contemporary themes (it was published in 2022). I loved encountering the story of the Cloudesley family with no idea where it was going to take me so I won’t say too much about the plot but Sean Lusk creates a likeable ensemble of Dickensian characters before taking them off on an international adventure. Alongside the realistic period detail there is a Victorian steampunk feel to the clockmaker’s amazing automata that form an important strand of the plot. The book also reminded me of Andrew Miller’s brilliant period novel ‘Now We Shall Be Entirely Free’ which is set in the early 18th century (reviewed here in April 2020). ‘The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley’ is incredibly enjoyable, surprising, thrilling and beautifully written. Highly recommended.

'Inter Alia' by Suzie Miller

12 September 2025

Suzie Miller’s remarkable one-woman play 'Prima Facie' (reviewed here in August 2022) was a captivating, compelling masterclass in dramatic storytelling, featuring an extraordinary solo performance by Jodie Comer. Last Saturday we were at the Vue cinema in Bedford to see the NT Live screening of Suzie Miller’s new play at the National Theatre in London, ‘Inter Alia’, which reunites her with director Justin Martin. ‘Inter Alia’ stars Rosamund Pike as a London Crown Court Judge, juggling the challenges of being a working mother when a shocking event threatens her and her family. It’s a clever, thoughtful play, with Rosamund Pike both narrating and playing her part in the story, and it raises important questions about modern masculinity and motherhood. But, although this is not a one-woman play, otherwise it felt too much like a repetition of the ‘Prima Facie’ formula. ‘Inter Alia’ was brilliantly acted, inventive, thought-provoking and moving: if I hadn’t seen ‘Prima Facie’ I might have been similarly blown away by it. But, for me, it didn’t quite match the devastating power of the earlier play.

'You Call That A Career? - Memoirs of a Festival Organiser' by Steve Heap

3 September 2025

My first job in the arts, in 1996, was at The British Federation of Festivals - the national umbrella body for amateur competitive festivals of music, dance and speech. In the office at Festivals House in Macclesfield we often got phone calls from people who actually needed one of the other two national organisations supporting festivals. Our rule of thumb was to redirect callers interested in the larger professional arts festivals (such as the Edinburgh International Festival or the Brighton Festival) to the The British Arts Festivals Association (BAFA) and anyone calling about "a festival in a field" was referred to "the lovely Steve Heap" at the Association of Festival Organisers (AFO), then based in Aylesbury on the offices of Steve's company Mrs Casey Music. I'm not sure when I first met Steve but I clearly remember, in my next job at Making Music (the National Federation of Music Societies), how distraught my folk music-loving colleague Caroline Wright was in 2004 when Steve retired as Director of the legendary Sidmouth Folk Festival after 18 years, marking the end of a glorious era. When I became Chief Executive of Creative Lives (formerly known as the Voluntary Arts Network) in 2005 Steve was already a strong supporter of the organisation and I have had the pleasure of working with him on many occasions over the years. Last year Steve retired as AFO General Secretary, 35 years after setting up the association. And this summer he published his book 'You Call That A Career? - Memoirs of a Festival Organiser' which I have just finished reading. It was fascinating to learn about Steve's childhood in Rawtenstall, his early experiences as a folk singer, drummer and actor and his extensive achievements as festival organiser, promoter, record label owner, visiting lecturer and activist. The book even explains who Mrs Casey was. Steve's voice sings clearly from the pages of the book which is, like its writer, kind, funny, passionate, generous and humble. You can buy a copy from www.mrscasey.co.uk  

NSO Play Weekend - Shostakovich 'Symphony No 4'

1 September 2025

Shortly after I joined Northampton Symphony Orchestra (NSO), in 2000, the orchestra ran a great one-day workshop with members of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra on 'An Alpine Symphony' by Richard Strauss. I have since taken part in several similar workshops organised by Milton Keynes Sinfonia (reviewed here). These 'play-days' provide the opportunity to tackle a work that the orchestra would not normally be able to perform in a concert - because of its scale, complexity and the additional players needed. They are also very sociable occasions, bringing together the orchestra and guest players to practice, eat together and chat, usually finishing with a full performance of the piece. 

 

Last weekend the NSO ran its first Play Weekend - a two-day workshop on Dimitri Shostakovich's 'Symphony No 4' - for which we gathered a massive orchestra of 120 people. Like most of my NSO colleagues I have played the much more famous 5th Symphony several times (most recently with NSO, reviewed here in November 2016) and a few of Shostakovich's other symphonies but I had never even heard the 4th before. In 1936, when Shostakovich's opera 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk' (described by Pravda as “muddle instead of music”) was banned, apparently at Stalin's behest, the composer assumed it was only a matter of time before he would be forced to surrender his life. His 'Symphony No 4', which was then in rehearsal for its first performance, was quickly withdrawn. Instead Shostakovich produced 'Symphony No 5', subtitled ‘A Soviet Artist's Response to Just Criticism’ - a stunningly powerful symphony that appeared to conform to the Soviet state's requirements for triumphalist music (though with many cleverly concealed elements that provide a cynical sting in the tail). The 4th Symphony didn't receive its premiere until 1961. [The Origin Story podcast recently produced an episode on 'Shostakovich and Stalin – The Composer and the Dictator' which gives an overview of Shostakovich’s life in a clear, accessible way - reviewed here in August 2025.]

 

'Symphony No 4' is a long, complex piece. At first it feels brutal, angry, strident and quite difficult to listen to. But as I have got to know it better over the past few weeks it has really grown on me. It's a fascinating work full of contrasts and contradictions, with moments of gentle beauty, lyricism and playfulness alongside its terrifying sheer power. Beginning to appreciate its homage to the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, and Shostakovich's reverence for JS Bach, helped me make more sense of its structure and themes. Above all, you need to think about the context of Stalin's Soviet Union to understand both the angst and the occasional whimsy of the music and I was grateful to have read 'The Noise of Time' by Julian Barnes (reviewed here in March 2016) which outlines how Shostakovich found himself a reluctant collaborator with Stalin's regime.

 

The NSO Play Weekend attracted guest musicians from far afield, including players from Newcastle, Norwich and Shrewsbury and one of my fellow horn players who was visiting the UK from Kentucky. It was wonderful to be part of a powerful section of 9 horn players. It was also lovely to see several former NSO members rejoining us for the weekend. I found it a really enjoyable experience - a great mixture of challenging music-making, alongside excellent food and a very friendly atmosphere. Congratulations to everyone involved in organising the weekend - a huge and complicated event which was ingeniously designed and went incredibly smoothly. 

 

There were so many outstanding performances across the orchestra it would be risky to try to name them all for fear of missing some. I particularly enjoyed the 'ticking clock' percussion at the end of the middle movement, the great use of duetting tubas, and the double sets of timpani at the climax of the last movement. But the standout for me was our principal bassoon Sian Bunker, returning to the orchestra after a break, who sounded fantastic in the symphony's many bassoon solos.

 

Our full performance of the symphony on Sunday afternoon felt truly epic and emotional. Being part of such a huge collective endeavour - as one member of a team of 120 people - was very special. NSO Conductor John Gibbons expertly guided us through an impressive rendition of the piece which may have included a few mistakes but avoided any major pitfalls and held together well through its full 65 minutes. Afterwards many of the wind and brass players admitted they were holding their breath while the strings played the impossibly challenging lengthy frantic fugue passage, but it went amazingly well - a real triumph of concentration and counting.

 

The climax of the final movement was a thrilling moment of brilliance but its quiet surrender to the gentle melancholic ending of the symphony was truly stunning. In 'The Noise of Time' Julian Barnes talks about Shostakovich's use of the musical instruction 'morendo' (dying away), pointing out that "few composers finish their lives with a major chord played fortissimo". The long silence that John Gibbons held, following the final quiet chord of the 4th Symphony, was poignant and devastating. I felt proud of what we had achieved, in awe of Shostakovich and utterly exhausted. I can't wait for the next NSO Play Weekend.

 

 

Edinburgh Festivals 2025

29 August 2025

We had a great time at the Edinburgh Festivals last week, seeing 21 shows across a wide variety of genres, topics and venues. There were many highlights but I'll just mention a few favourites:

'Down to Chance' is a great piece of fringe theatre from the Cornwall-based theatre company Maybe You Like It. A two-hander with Ellie Jay Cooper (also the writer) and Robert Merriam playing multiple roles, it tells the story of the Great Earthquake that hit Anchorage, Alaska, on Good Friday 1964. The earthquake took out all communications apart from the local radio station, where female reporter Genie Chance was left in sole charge, broadcasting through the night to reunite missing people and coordinate the volunteer efforts. A gripping true story, entertainingly told.

'Lady Macbeth Played Wing Defence' by West Australian company Crash Theatre Co. and House of Oz reimagines the Scottish play as the story of a high school netball team. ‘Mac’ is determined to become captain of the team, even if it means dispensing with her teammates by murdering their reputations. It's great fun, and very silly, but the occasional actual Shakespearean speeches are surprisingly moving.
'The Queen Is Mad' is a musical/chamber opera, by Amy Clare Tasker and Tom James McGrath, about Joanna, elder sister of Catherine of Aragon and daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who inherited the thrones of Castile and Aragon but was prevented from ruling either by her father, her husband and her son who imprisoned her, claiming she was mad. It's beautifully sung by a cast of three, featuring Maria Coyne as Joanna, and a fascinating piece of history.  

We were very lucky to see the Aurora Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Collon, at the Usher Hall, playing Shostakovich's 5th Symphony from memory. Memorising this titanic work for a huge orchestra is an incredible feat but it's not just a party trick. The whole orchestra standing, without any music stands, and moving with the music, was an amazing sight. And it sounded fresh and incredibly exciting. They had played the symphony at The Proms in London a few days before and it's well worth watching on BBC iPlayer, but it only gives you a flavour of the live experience. It was a thrilling performance. 

'Origin Story: Shostakovich and Stalin – The Composer and the Dictator'

15 August 2025

2025 is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. I’m currently preparing to take part in a Northampton Symphony Orchestra weekend workshop at the end of August which will see an orchestra of nearly 120 players tackling Shostakovich’s massive ‘Symphony No 4’. And next week I’m going to see the Aurora Orchestra performing Shostakovich’s ‘Symphony No 5’ (from memory) at the Edinburgh International Festival. So I’ve been reading a lot about Shostakovich and the extraordinary challenges he faced as a composer in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. I particularly enjoyed a recent episode of the ‘Origin Story’ podcast on ‘Shostakovich and Stalin – The Composer and the Dictator’. Presenters Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt give an overview of Shostakovich’s life in a clear, accessible way which doesn’t require much knowledge of classical music. They refer to Julian Barnes’ novel about Shostakovich, 'The Noise of Time' (which I reviewed here in March 2016) and Armando Iannucci’s 2017 film ‘The Death of Stalin’. They also tell the incredible tale of the first performance of Shostakovich’s ‘Symphony No 7’ in the Leningrad Philharmonic Hall during the siege of Leningrad in 1942, which I learned about when I played the Leningrad Symphony with Northampton Symphony Orchestra in 2013 (reviewed here in November 2013). You can listen to the podcast here.
 

'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' by Jack Thorne

6 August 2025

On Saturday we were at the Palace Theatre in London's West End to see 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' - Jack Thorne's mammoth theatrical realisation of 'what happened next' to Harry, Ron and Hermione, based on an original story by Jack Thorne, J. K. Rowling, and John Tiffany. Split into two full-length plays (each around 2 hours 40 minutes long) it requires a significant commitment. One review called it "not so much a play as a weekend mini-break, a theatrical experience that lasts longer than some relationships". We saw both parts on the same day (with a meal in between) and returned to the same seats in the evening to see almost all of our neighbours had done the same. I liked that the stage show was a conventional play - not a musical, no need to break the fourth wall or make it a play about putting on a Harry Potter play etc. And the magic was stunningly realised without any digital technology or projection, just old fashioned stage effects which created some wondrous 'wow' moments. John Tiffany's production has a large cast who are all very strong. Excellent movement choreographed by Stephen Hoggett and a clever set by Christine Jones combine to create beautiful balletic scenes around two sets of staircases on wheels which swirl around the stage causing characters to just miss each other. The plays have an incredibly complicated plot which does require knowledge of the Harry Potter books - particularly 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'. But it was actually surprisingly easy to follow and was a very enjoyable and entertaining tale with some unexpected twists. 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' has been running in London for nine years and it was interesting to see that the audience seemed to be mostly adults. There was one lovely moment towards the end of the evening when a particularly serious and poignant scene involving two parents discussing their concern for their son ended with the couple movingly parting with a kiss, prompting a young voice in a row just behind us to loudly exclaim "eww!" causing great laughter around us - and confusion across the rest of the auditorium.  

Tom Robinson

6 August 2025

On Friday we were at Esquires - a small live music venue in Bedford - to see the Tom Robinson Band. We've seen Tom Robinson so many times that we don't just know all the songs, we know all the stories he tells about them and have to restrain ourselves from spoiling the punchlines. But we still love seeing him perform and Tom and the band (including excellent new drummer Siân Monaghan) were on top form last weekend. It always surprises us how many people cheer when he asks if there is anyone in the crowd who hasn't seen him before. It's wonderful to see him continuing to grow his fanbase at the age of 75. And each time we see him I am reminded what a good songwriter Tom Robinson is, and what an extensive back catalogue of songs he has to draw on. 

'The Winter's Tale' by William Shakespeare

1 August 2025

On Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the new RSC production of 'The Winter's Tale', directed by Yaël Farber, with Bertie Carvel as Leontes. Soutra Gilmour's stark set features a large dominant moon overhead, constantly changing its colour and features, and a shallow trench of water around the three edges of the stage through which many of the characters paddle. It is also the first time I have seen a stage with two separate revolves. This is a thoughtful, serious production that explores the classical and folkloric origins of Shakespeare's story. Trevor Fox plays 'Time The Thief' - an additional ever-present background character who contributes songs and poetry to the play, as well as giving Time's speech at the start of Act 4 (to explain that 16 years have passed) and playing Autolycus. While this was a clever device it did make the scenes with Autolycus - which usually provide great comic relief - less funny. Overall this is a high quality production but I felt it didn't always manage to convey the complexities of the plot clearly enough. 'The Winter's Tale' can be a slightly awkward disjointed play of two halves but I think it works best with a more playful approach - such as Edward Halls's glorious Propeller production which we saw in Canterbury many years ago (reviewed here in April 2012) which featured singing sheep (‘The Bleatles’) and beatboxing shepherds. 

'Arms and the Man' by George Bernard Shaw

1 August 2025

At Easter this year we visited Shaw's Corner - the house where George Bernard Shaw lived, with his wife Charlotte, in the pretty Hertfordshire village of Ayot St Lawrence. Now a National Trust property, Shaw's Corner provides a fascinating insight into the life of the first person to win both an Oscar and a Nobel prize (both of which are on display in the house). While we were there we noticed that Shaw's Corner was going to host an open-air production of one of Shaw's plays to mark the weekend of the playwright's birthday in July. So last Friday we returned to Ayot St Lawrence to see the Rumpus Theatre Company performing 'Arms and the Man' against the backdrop of Shaw's house. I had seen 'Arms and the Man' twice before, including a great production at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle in 2002. It sits in a line of genteel but subversive comedy that stretches from Jane Austen via Oscar Wilde to Alan Ayckbourn. When it was first performed in 1894 it was billed as an 'anti-romantic comedy' but there is something romantically charming about Shaw's removal of the artifice of manners and performative chivalry. The play also deals with the realities of war and soldiering, albeit through civilised drawing-room discussion rather than actual fighting. The Rumpus production, directed and designed by John Goodrum - who also played The Man - was great fun. The strong cast managed to convey both the apparent comic caricature of the characters and the realistic sympathetic people behind the masks their positions require. And Shaw's Corner was a lovely setting on a beautiful sunny summer evening. 

'Long Island' by Colm Tóibín

24 July 2025

My first encounter with the Irish author Colm Tóibín was watching the 2015 film of his novel 'Brooklyn' which follows Eilis Lacey, a young Irish woman who immigrates to New York in the early 1950s. So I was intrigued to see that he had written a sequel, 'Long Island', which revisits Eilis twenty years later when family events take her back again to her childhood home of Enniscorthy in County Wexford. I've just finished reading 'Long Island' (as an unabridged audio book, brilliantly narrated by Jessie Buckley) and it has made me long to read more by Colm Tóibín. His writing is very careful and delicate, beautifully constructing the period detail of 1970s New York and Ireland - such as the practicalities of coin-operated telephone boxes but also the attitudes and behaviours of the people in each community at that time. I was very lucky, a few weeks ago, to have the opportunity to see Colm Tóibín speaking about 'Long Island' at the University of Manchester, as part of the Manchester Literature Festival. He gave a fascinating description of his writing process, explaining how he likes to put characters into a particular situation to see how they would react. And he spoke about the recurring feature of the book which tells the reader what each of the main characters are thinking they should say to each other, before they actually say something quite different. This creates an often painfully polite, sometimes funny and occasionally achingly sad 1970s Irish comedy of manners. 'Long Island' is a measured, gentle story of impossible decisions put-off and the inevitable consequences - a slow motion collision of jigsaw pieces that are never going to quite fit together. 

'Walk the House' by Do Ho Suh

23 July 2025

On Wednesday, I was at Tate Modern in London to see 'Walk the House', an exhibition by the Korean artist Do Ho Suh, which was recommended to me by Gavin Stride. Do Ho Suh grew up in a traditional 'hanok' Korean house, a wooden structure that can be disassembled and moved to another location, literally 'walking the house'. But as he has moved across the world and lived in a variety of places, the artist says he feels his childhood home is still following him and walks with him.

Nest/s by Do Ho Suh

The exhibition includes beautifully delicate translucent pastel-coloured fabric recreations of rooms from Do Ho Suh's various houses, complete with fabric versions of the light switches and doorknobs. But the highlights of the exhibition for me were the rubbings. He covers buildings with paper and then takes a rubbing (like a brass rubbing) of the walls. He then uses the paper to recreate each building in the gallery. The most impressive of these is a one-to-one model of his childhood hanok in paper. 

The exhibition makes you think a lot about home: the place where you live and the fabric of the buildings - particularly those fittings, light switches, and handles, of which you have a tactile memory, and which remain once your possessions have been removed. The home walks with you. 

'Walk the House' makes an interesting companion piece to ‘Come As You Really Are’ by Hetain Patel (reviewed here in September 2024) and Samantha Manton's 'Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen' (reviewed here in March 2025). All three exhibitions explore and celebrate everyday lives and everyday creativity.
 

Le Vent du Nord

23 July 2025

On Tuesday evening we were at the giant Spiegeltent in Campbell Park, Milton Keynes, to see the legendary Québécois folk group Le Vent du Nord, performing as part of the Milton Keynes International Festival. The five-piece band were formed 23 years ago and have an amazing reputation but I had never seen them live before. Most of their tunes are upbeat rhythmic masterclasses, with frantic fiddles and rasping hurdy-gurdy, accompanied by hypnotic rapid percussive foot-tapping on sound boards by the two seated fiddle players (which is visually compelling to watch). Many of the songs feature typical French Canadian call and response vocals. The occasional slower ballads were very beautiful. Canadian folk music has a lot in common with Scottish and Irish folk, feeling pleasingly familiar yet different. I was also reminded of another great Canadian folk band, The Bills, who we saw many years ago (reviewed here in May 2006). Le Vent du Nord were on great form - a toe-tapping delight.

'Mars' by Luke Jerram

22 July 2025

On Sunday we were at the Open University in Milton Keynes to see 'Mars', an artwork by Luke Jerram which is part of the Milton Keynes International Festival 2025. This seven metre sphere, looking like a tethered balloon in a courtyard outside the main Open University building, is covered with high definition NASA photographs of the surface of Mars, giving you the opportunity to walk around it and look directly at the surface of the red planet. Each centimetre on the internally illuminated surface corresponds to 10 kilometres on Mars. We also went inside to the main lecture theatre for a talk by Dr Elliot Sefton-Nash, a planetary scientist working at the European Space Agency. He is currently working on the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Rover, which is scheduled to be launched in 2028 and should arrive on Mars two years later, as part of a series of missions to study the potential for life on Mars. He explained how the conditions on Mars mean that the surface of the planet provides a clear, detailed record of its long history in a way that the ever-changing surface of the Earth doesn't. Exploring the surface of Mars is therefore an opportunity to understand its past in detail and to look for evidence of whether Mars has ever supported life. Although his talk treated us as scientists, and was quite hard to follow in parts, he was still a very engaging, clear speaker, and answered audience questions at the end very effectively. It was a fascinating afternoon, and after the talk we went back outside to look again at Luke Jerram's miniature version of Mars. 

 

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

16 July 2025

On Sunday I was at Christchurch in Northampton for the annual Northampton Symphony Orchestra end-of-season Friends' Concert. This short Sunday afternoon concert and buffet for the Friends of the Orchestra is our way of saying thank you for their support over the past year. As usual we performed a selection of shorter pieces. Our programme included the 'Waltz from Masquerade' by Khachaturian, the 'Overture to The Barber of Seville' by Rossini and Dvorak's 'Slavonic Dance No 8'. We also played the last three movements of Beethoven's 'Symphony No 6 (Pastoral)'. This was the symphony we were rehearsing in March 2020 for a concert that was sadly cancelled because of the COVID lockdown. Having played the Pastoral Symphony recently with Milton Keynes Sinfonia (reviewed here in March 2025), it was great to have a chance to get a few more notes right in the famous horn solos. As we have done for the past few years, we used our Friends' Concert as the opportunity to showcase some of the best local young musicians by featuring Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust soloists competition winners. This year's concert included the first movement from Handel's 'Harp Concerto' ('Concerto No. 6 in B-flat major', originally for harpsichord or organ), beautifully played by Elizabeth. She also treated us to an amazing encore: 'Harpicide at Midnight' by Pearl Chertok. I really enjoyed getting to grips with the Vaughan Williams 'Tuba Concerto', which we last played in 2008 (reviewed here in June 2008). It's a lovely piece, worthy of being heard more often, excellently performed for us by Charlie. Overall it was a lovely miniature concert with some very controlled, precise playing throughout the orchestra, expertly directed by our conductor John Gibbons.

Danny Baker

16 July 2025

On Saturday we were at the Grove Theatre in Dunstable to see Danny Baker. We are long-time fans of the music journalist/comedy writer/broadcaster, and never miss 'The Treehouse' - his twice weekly podcast with Louise Pepper. Saturday was the last night of his latest national tour of reminiscences and storytelling. We had seen him live twice before (reviewed here in May 2018 and March 2023) so we knew what to expect, and he never disappoints. Despite repeatedly reassuring the audience that this show would be a tight two hours, he maintained his continuous fast-paced monologue for more than three hours (with one interval break), in which he hardly stood still, walking rapidly backwards and forwards across the stage. His stories are well rehearsed (and we were familiar with some, though there was plenty of new material) but it is still incredible how he constructs and performs these mammoth shows, without any notes, without drinking anything and with barely a pause in his delivery. And his stories are incredible, hilarious and beautifully told. Through a 50-year career Danny Baker has met just about everyone. In this show he recalled time spent with Kenneth Williams, Lionel Blair, Robert Plant, Leonardo de Caprio, David Moyes, Frankie Howard, Barry Cryer, Hughie Green, Mel Brooks and many more. But somehow these tales never seem like boasting and are all charmingly self-deprecating. 

Wimbledon 2025

16 July 2025

On our last few visits to The Championships at Wimbledon we have been on Court 1, where we have seen some great tennis. But when you are sitting near the top of the stands you feel a long way from the action and it can be distractingly noisy. So this year we were excited to have tickets for the much smaller Court 2. We did have a much better view but last Wednesday was one of the hottest days of the year and there was nowhere to shelter on this open court. Nevertheless we enjoyed seven hours of tennis, seeing three very entertaining doubles matches. We saw the men's doubles quarter final in which the reigning champions, British player Henry Patten and his Finnish partner Harri Heliovaara, were beaten in three tight sets by the all British pair Lloyd Glasspool and Julian Cash - who went on to become the first British duo to win the Wimbledon Men's Doubles title for 89 years. We then saw a very close ladies' doubles quarter final in which Su-Wei Hsieh (Taiwan) and Jelena Ostapenko (Latvia) beat the Romanian/Russian pairing of Sorana Cirstea and Anna Kalinskaya. Finally we saw an invitation ladies' doubles between Johanna Konta/Kiki Bertens and Agnieszka Radwanska/Magdalena Rybarikova - which was very much played for laughs.  

'The List of Suspicious Things' by Jennie Godfrey

16 July 2025

Jennie Godfrey's debut novel 'The List of Suspicious Things' draws on her own childhood in West Yorkshire in the 1970s. It has a lot of similarities to ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ (reviewed here in January 2022) by Joanna Cannon (who is thanked by Godfrey in the acknowledgements). Both books are mostly narrated in the first person by a young girl who sets out, with her best friend, to solve a mystery that neither of them really understands. In 'The List of Suspicious Things' the naive protagonist, Miv, is slightly older than Grace (in ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’) and the mystery she is obsessed by is the real-world horrific killings by the Yorkshire Ripper. Jennie Godfrey makes Miv a very likeable, entertaining and amusing central presence, and creates a lovely core cast of warm, sympathetic characters. The light comic tone sometimes feels awkward alongside the extremely dark happenings. And the novel suffers a little from first-book-syndrome, trying to pack in too many themes and shocking events. But it's a very engaging story which really conjures up the period and the challenges of childhood interrupted by tragedy. 

'The Constant Wife' by Laura Wade, based on the play by W Somerset Maugham

30 June 2025

Like many of the audience at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon last Saturday, we had bought tickets for the new RSC production of ‘The Constant Wife’ in order to see the Royal Shakespeare Company debut of the TV actor Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, Vigil). So we were initially disappointed, as we entered the theatre, to see a sign saying “Due to the indisposition of Rose Leslie, the role of Constance will be played by Jessica Nesling”. But, in the tradition of many Broadway musicals, this proved to be a great opportunity for the understudy to shine. Jess Nesling seemed to fit the part of Constance like an elegant long evening glove. Laura Wade’s new version of ‘The Constant Wife’, based on the 1926 play by W Somerset Maugham, is a very clever, understated, feminist exploration of the difference economic freedom made to the lives of women in the early twentieth century. On the surface it is an old-fashioned drawing-room play, and Laura Wade preserves most of the format and plot of the original, with only a couple of subtle changes. But the themes feel much more contemporary, and a little knowing meta-textual breaking of the fourth wall keeps it from feeling like a museum-piece without damaging the integrity of the play. Tamara Harvey’s production has a great set by Anna Fleischle which manages to be both realistic and slightly exaggerated. There is original music composed for the show by Jamie Cullum and the period costumes, by Anna Fleischle and Cat Fuller, are beautiful. The cast were all strong but Jess Nesling, who was in almost every scene, fitted the calm, careful, determined ingenuity of Constance perfectly - the actor, like her character, doing things her way. 

'The Ballad of Wallis Island'

25 June 2025

On Tuesday I was at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see 'The Ballad of Wallis Island' - a beautiful melancholy comedy written by and starring Tom Basden and Tim Key, directed by James Griffiths. Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan play an estranged folk duo, persuaded to reunite for a one-off performance on a remote Welsh island by a wealthy benefactor. Tim Key's Charles uncomfortably fills every silence with inane running commentary and puns - but it is clear that every one of his awkward words has been carefully crafted by the poet Tim Key. This feels a more mature, thoughtful drama than I have seen before from either Basden or Key, though it is still very funny and has a couple of great slapstick moments. These characters get past their initial cartoonish mannerisms (irritatingly nerdy and self-importantly broody) to become properly sympathetic. The original songs (written by Tom Basden) are serious and beautiful - and excellently sung by Basden and Carey Mulligan. When the end titles started, everyone in the cinema sat in silence listening to the final song right to the end of the credits before anyone moved. And Sian Clifford almost steals the show as the cheerful, helpful but hopeless shopkeeper. It's a gentle, lovely, moving film. 

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

18 June 2025

Last Saturday's Northampton Symphony Orchestra 'Film Night' concert, conducted by John Gibbons, at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton was an incredibly enjoyable evening - a great introduction for those members of our packed audience who told us it was their first experience of going to a live orchestral concert. 

We started the concert with one of the most famous musical moments in film history, from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' - the opening fanfare of 'Also sprach Zarathustra' by Richard Strauss.  When Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws' came out in 1975 I was too young to go to see it but I distinctly remember walking to school past the Scala cinema in Withington which, instead of the useful small identikit lettering to announce the film showing that week, was displaying the word JAWS in six-foot high lettering, dripping with blood! 'Jaws', which is often credited with inventing the modern Hollywood blockbuster, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Its success owes much to John Williams and "the scariest two notes in musical history ... a theme that catches you by the ears and drags you by the ankles", according to a recent article in The Washington Post. Our performance of John Williams's 'Suite from Jaws' featured brilliant trumpet solos from Dan Newitt. Our performance was also notable for the sinister appearance of shark fins on the heads of the first violin players.

We finished the first half of the concert with the 'Symphony No 2' by Howard Hanson, which was used for the closing credits of the film 'Alien' (without the composer's permission) and was later cited by John Williams as the model for his music for 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'. Hanson is not very well known these days but was an important and influential 20th century American composer. His second symphony ('The Romantic') is a gorgeous schmaltzy piece which suggests Hanson might have been the missing link between Aaron Copland and John Williams. It features some beautiful solo horn counter-melodies which I really enjoyed playing, and our trumpet section sounded magnificent.

The second half of the concert included Ennio Morricone's 'L'Ultima Diligenza di Red Rock' from Quentin Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight' - featuring gorgeous growling contra-bassoon solos by Frank Jordan - followed by Malcolm Arnold's music for Ralph Thomas's 1961 British film 'No Love for Johnnie' (reconstructed and orchestrated by Philip Lane) - with beautiful oboe solos by Sarah Mourant. 

For many the highpoint of the concert was the music from Hayao Miyazaki's 2004 Studio Ghibli animated film 'Howl's Moving Castle' in the Symphonic Variation "Merry-go-round" by Joe Hisaishi - particularly the solo piano theme, beautifully played by Georgina Neil.

The concert concluded with three pieces from John Williams' music for the 'Star Wars' series - from three different films: 'The Asteroid Field' (from 'The Empire Strikes Back'), 'Across the Stars (from 'Attack of the Clones') and 'The Throne Room and End Title' from the original 'Star Wars'. This provided a thrilling end to a great concert with the whole brass section in excellent form, and it was fantastic to have all seven regular NSO horn players playing the famous 'Star Wars' theme.   

Adriatic Cruise

12 June 2025

I think our cruise around the Adriatic on the Cunard ship Queen Victoria was one of our best holidays. We visited ten different places and really enjoyed them all. Before joining the ship we had a couple of nights in Rome, visiting the the Colosseum and the Forum, and walking from Campo de'Fiori to the Spanish Steps by way of the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain and much more. Our first port of call on the cruise was Argostoli on Cephalonia in Greece where we saw ceratta ceratta sea turtles swimming in the lagoon, followed by a visit to Corfu. Next stop was Kotor in Montenegro, known as the southernmost fjord in Europe (though it is actually a ria - a submerged river canyon) which did look like Norway juxtaposed with a pretty medieval walled town very similar to Dubrovnik in Croatia, which was our next stop. We had previously visited Dubrovnik several times during our lovely holiday in Slano, Croatia, in 2017, so this time we headed straight to the Old Town Port to catch the ferry to Lokrum Island- a beautiful forested nature reserve, surrounded by deep blue sea. Trieste, Italy, is a pretty city which boasts the largest sea-facing square in Europe (Piazza Unità d'Italia). Zadar in Croatia is situated on a peninsula, with water on three sides, and reminded us of Cadiz and Valletta. Split in Croatia has a unique old town - a domino divided into two squares: the ruins of the the Roman retirement palace for the Emperor Diocletian (who was originally from Dalmatia) which is built on a strict grid system; and the later medieval old town which is a maze of irregular diagonal passageways. When we stopped in Valletta, Malta, (where we had been on our previous cruise in March) we took the opportunity to visit Mdina - a beautifully preserved medieval walled hill town that reminded us of the hill towns in Tuscany we visited last year. Our last port was Sorrento, Italy, built on the side of a steep gorge, high above the sea, from where we looked down on our cruise ship, and over to Mount Vesuvius. It was a lovely cruise with fascinating destinations and perfect weather.

You can see a small selection of my photos from the cruise here. 

'The Bean Trees' by Barbara Kingsolver

11 June 2025

Having enjoyed 'Demon Copperhead' (reviewed here in March 2024), I have now read Barbara Kingsolver's 1988 novel 'The Bean Trees'. While 'Demon Copperhead' is clearly a retelling of 'David Copperfield', this much earlier novel demonstrates Barbara Kingsolver has always written Dickensian stories - with an extended cast of quirky, loveable characters. Her focus is on the realities of working class America - people struggling to find somewhere to live and something to eat whilst still managing to show kindness to strangers. The background story of an underground railway supporting asylum seekers from Guatemala feels sadly contemporary. Barbara Kingsolver writes brilliantly in the voices and dialects of ordinary people, and every page seems to contain poetic, quotable phrases. 

'Commonwealth' by Ann Patchett

11 June 2025

I am continuing to work my way through the novels of Ann Patchett and really enjoyed her 2016 book 'Commonwealth'. Like 'Run' (reviewed here in June 2024), 'Tom Lake' (reviewed here in October 2024) and 'The Dutch House' (reviewed here in January 2025), 'Commonwealth' is a cleverly constructed family saga, which jumps forward and backwards in time to build the story of a blended family of six siblings and step-siblings who spend their childhood summers together in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It's a beautifully written examination of the complexities of what happens within families, and whose stories they are to tell. From the first page you feel you are in safe hands with Ann Patchett. 

'The Uninvited Guests' by Sadie Jones

11 June 2025

'The Uninvited Guests' is an enthralling and entertaining novel by Sadie Jones. Set in a formerly grand country house in 1912, it starts as a gently quirky comedy of manners as the family and their servants prepare the house for a birthday party. But the book quickly becomes more complicated and interesting with the arrival of unexpected guests. The story switches between puzzling, comic, sinister, surreal and farcical. It reminded me of elements of Edward Albee's 'A Delicate Balance', Arnold Ridley's 'The Ghost Train' and J B Priestly's 'An Inspector Calls', with a hint of P G Wodehouse. A gripping and enjoyable read. 

'Mr Wilder and Me' by Jonathan Coe

22 May 2025

Having enjoyed Jonathan Coe’s latest novel 'The Proof of My Innocence' (reviewed here in December 2024) I realised there was a gap in my Jonathan Coe collection. I had somehow missed his 2020 book ‘Mr Wilder and Me’, which I have now read as an unabridged audio book (narrated by Kristin Atherton). In a break from Coe’s novels set against the backdrop of recent British politics, this gentle elegiac story recounts a teenager in 1976 meeting the legendary veteran film director Billy Wilder. As he approaches the end of his career Wilder - famous for his classic comedies - is trying to make a more serious, personal movie that is not really working. Coe takes the opportunity not just to indulge his own cinephile enthusiasms but also to reflect on the experience of those who lived through the horrors of the Second World War and the difficult relationship Jewish filmmakers who left Europe for Hollywood then had with their home continent. But it is tempting to see Coe himself in this novel - famous for his satirical comedies and now trying to write a more serious, personal book which doesn’t entirely work. Nevertheless I love Jonathan Coe’s distinctive voice and carefully constructed narrative and it was good to fill this omission in my knowledge of his works.

'The Brightening Air' by Conor McPherson

14 May 2025

On Saturday we were at the Old Vic theatre in London to see ‘The Brightening Air’ - a new play written and directed by Conor McPherson, author of ‘The Weir’. Set in a remote farmhouse in County Sligo in 1981, ‘The Brightening Air’ is a dark comic tale of family relationships, focussing on three grown-up siblings and the inheritance of their family home. The influence of Chekov is plain from the start and the Irish setting reminded me of the production of 'Vanya', adapted by Simon Stephens starring Andrew Scott, that we saw last year (reviewed here in February 2024). ‘The Brightening Air’ - which takes its title from a poem by W.B. Yeats - also clearly belongs in the tradition of Irish drama from J.M. Synge to Martin McDonagh (with some particular similarities to Synge’s ‘The Well of The Saints’). The Old Vic production has a great cast, including Chris O’Dowd and Brian Gleeson as the warring brothers and Rosie Sheehy (who we last saw as Puck in the RSC production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, reviewed here in March 2024) stealing the show as their autistic sister Billie. There are some wonderful comic lines and brilliant set-piece scenes. It was very enjoyable and I might have been missing something about the allusions to Irish folklore and magic but I wasn’t sure it all added up to a completely coherent plot. 

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

7 May 2025

Last Saturday's Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert featured Prokofiev's 'Symphony No 7', which I first played in 1988 as a member of the Manchester Youth Orchestra. Despite having not played the symphony in the intervening years I was amazed, when we started rehearsing it in March 2025, how well I remembered it. There was a rigour to the youth orchestra approach that means I can still remember subdividing the beats to determine the precise lengths of particular notes. Prokofiev's final symphony feels like a companion piece to his first. 'Symphony No 1 (The Classical Symphony)' was completed in 1917 in the style of Haydn and Mozart, and 'Symphony No. 7' (completed in 1952, having been commissioned by the Children’s Division of State Radio and described as a ‘Children’s Symphony’) has a similar clean simplicity. Prokofiev writes beautiful, catchy tunes and the seventh symphony has plenty, with its obvious joyfulness and passion sitting alongside darker poignant moments. He is also a clever orchestrator and, while our NSO performance included many brilliant solos from across the orchestra, this is a symphony in which the stars are the tuba (Nick Tollervey), the piano (Georgina Neil) and the harp (Chris Clarke), all of whom were outstanding. 

Shortly after I joined the NSO in 2000, at one Wednesday rehearsal I was amazed to walk into the room to see Rachel Chapman, who I had played with in the Manchester Youth Orchestra. I didn't know that she had recently moved to Milton Keynes and she didn't realise I was living in Bedfordshire. We were delighted to be reunited and have played together in NSO for nearly 25 years. Saturday was Rachel's final NSO concert as she is moving to the Lake District, and it was lovely to finish our years of playing together with a piece we had both played in the youth orchestra so many years ago. At the end of the symphony, when conductor John Gibbons, asked the trumpets to take a bow, Terry and Stephen deliberately remained seated to allow Rachel to take the applause alone. She has been a really important long serving member of the brass section and was a brilliant Chair of the orchestra. She will be much missed but we hope to see her again as an occasional guest player.

We started Saturday's concert with the'Overture' by the female Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz. Written in 1943 in German‑occupied Warsaw this is an understandably serious piece of music, with an insistent rhythmic underpinning that suggests a determined resistance, and hints of a brighter future on the horizon. It was a timely reminder of the dark days of the war, in the week when we are marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

The first half of our concert also featured Dvorak's 'Violin Concerto' which I didn't know before we started rehearsing it. Dvorak's 'Cello Concerto' (which we last played with NSO in November 2018) is a gorgeous piece, incredibly popular and often performed, and I was looking forward to something similar. Initially I was quite disappointed: the Violin Concerto just doesn't sound like Dvorak as we know him from his symphonies or the Cello Concerto. But when I began to see the similarities between this concerto and Beethoven or Brahms - and started to think of Dvorak building on these composers as Prokofiev did on Haydn and Mozart - the concerto really grew on me. It also helped to have an amazing soloist to show us the excitement in the piece. Sharon Zhou gave a thrilling performance which always sounded like she was playing with a smile.

At a time of so much angst, horror and uncertainty in the world, John Gibbons was determined we should end our concert on an upbeat note. 'Overture: Brighton Beach' by the contemporary British composer Paul Lewis is a ridiculously jolly seaside postcard that evokes the south coast resort in all its guises. In the middle section the wind, brass and percussion form a military band playing ‘Sussex by the Sea' on the pier. This leaves the string players unusually under occupied and it was lovely to see many of them enjoying their day on the beach with knotted hankies on heads, reading newspapers and wearing water wings. It was lots of fun and the piece was clearly a big hit with our audience in Christchurch, Northampton.

'Back to the Future: The Musical' by Bob Gale, Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard

1 May 2025

I was 17 years old when ‘Back to the Future’ came out in 1985 and it has always been one of my favourite films. Robert Zemeckis’ comic time-travel caper, starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, may not be the most sophisticated piece of fim-making but the ridiculous plot is neatly crafted and the period detail and music make it great fun. On Saturday we were at the Adelphi Theatre in London’s West End to see ‘Back To The Future: The Musical’. The stage version of the movie features a book by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, adapted from their original screenplay, and new music and lyrics by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard alongside elements of Silvestri’s film score and other songs used in the film. It’s a lovely recreation of the film, complete with the DeLorean car. Caden Brauch and Cory English are great as Marty McFly and Doc Brown, but Orlando Gibbs nearly steals the show as George McFly - a brilliant physical performance, recreating George’s shy gawkiness from the film but with more dancing. The romantic denouement at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance was genuinely moving, feeling almost Shakespearean. And the special effects at the show’s climax with the DeLorean racing towards 88 mph were stunning - a thrilling theatrical moment. I know a large proportion of my appreciation of the show was down to nostalgia but I loved it.

'Sister Midnight' by Karan Kandhari

23 April 2025

On Saturday we were at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see ‘Sister Midnight’ - the debut feature film by British-Indian film-maker Karan Kandhari. This Hindi-language film, set in India, is beautiful, intriguing, funny, gruesome, confusing and incredibly weird! I think I enjoyed it, but it’s hard to be sure: I certainly haven’t stopped thinking about it. The film shows the early stages of married life in Mumbai following an arranged marriage between a couple from a village, who had only briefly met as children. (As they struggle to get on as husband and wife, Uma complains “You used to be so sensitive!” to which Gopal replies “I was eight!”) Kandhari presents a series of short, mostly wordless, beautifully constructed tableau scenes that demonstrate Uma’s hopeless, helpless days left alone in their one-room shack on a busy road while Gopal is at work. Bollywood star Radhika Apte is brilliant as Uma, conveying a rich palate of emotions largely through her eyes. There isn’t much of a narrative arc, but part-way through the film takes an odd turn towards black-comic horror. It’s hard to know what is supposed to be real and what might be Uma’s hallucinations, and it’s hard to see where the film is going. But Radhika Apte is a captivating actor and ‘Sister Midnight’ is an oddly enjoyable but very strange experience.

'Celestial Navigation' by Anne Tyler

17 April 2025

I am continuing to explore the early works of Anne Tyler, one of the great contemporary American novelists. Having read her 1980 novel ‘Morgan’s Passing’ (reviewed here in February 2022) I have now discovered ‘Celestial Navigation’ - Anne Tyler’s 5th novel, originally published in 1974. ‘Celestial Navigation’ has a quintessential Anne Tyler setting, focussing on domestic family life in Baltimore, but like ‘Morgan’s Passing’ it feels more experimental than her later, more famous, novels. It has a likeable eccentric main character, an interesting narrative structure and spans many years. Each chapter feels like a jump-cut as we leap forward in time and switch to the perspective of a different character, leaving the reader to fill in the jigsaw puzzle of what has happened since the previous chapter. Anne Tyler creates a cast of quirky oddballs living together in a house of lodgers, all of whom are amusing, exasperating and deeply sympathetic. It’s a light comic novel with real pathos and jeopardy - ultimately quite a sad story, but beautifully written and very engaging.

'A Tidy Ending' by Joanna Cannon

11 April 2025

The novelist Joanna Cannon seems to have a particular interest in the naive narrator. In ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ (reviewed here in January 2022) many of the novel’s chapters are narrated in the first person by 10-year-old Grace, and in 'Three Things About Elsie' (reviewed here in November 2023) the first person narrator is Florence, a woman in her 80s with failing memory, living in a retirement home. Joanna Cannon’s 2022 novel ‘A Tidy Ending’ similarly keeps the reader guessing about how much its protagonist really understands what is going on around her. It’s no mean feat to write a twisty thriller about a serial killer in the same gently quirky ‘cosy crime’ style as her previous novels without making it distasteful. ‘A Tidy Ending’ is intriguing, puzzling, creepy and cleverly plotted. 

Cruise from Malta

10 April 2025

We had a very enjoyable Mediterranean cruise last week on the P&O ship Azura, visiting Valletta in Malta, Athens in Greece and Heraklion and Chania in Crete. We particularly enjoyed our first visit to Valletta - a beautiful old town set on a plateau on a narrow peninsula with water on three sides. It's very pretty with some very grand buildings, all in a distinctive sand coloured stone, built in a grid system. In Athens we visited the Temple of Olympian Zeus next to Hadrian's Gate. This temple was larger than the Parthenon but only 15 of its 100 columns are still standing. There are good views from the site across to the Acropolis. We also visited the National Archaeological Museum which has an extensive collection of artifacts from ancient Greece, many dating from 3,000 years BC. From Heraklion we went to the Palace of Knossos - a fascinating archaeological site with some of the buildings reconstructed (in cement) by Sir Arthur Evans when he excavated the site in 1900. These reconstructions are gradually being replaced but they do give an idea of the scale of some of the buildings. Chania is a pretty town with a picturesque harbour but we didn't see it at its best, having arrived during a torrential thunderstorm. We had a lovely, relaxing cruise with good food, company and dancing.

Milton Keynes Sinfonia concert

26 March 2025

In March 2020 I stepped in at the last moment to deputise for one of the horn players in Milton Keynes Sinfonia who was ill, giving me the unexpected pleasure of playing Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No 5’ at the Chrysalis Theatre in Milton Keynes in one of the last live concerts before we entered lockdown. Last Saturday I was in a similar position, as a late replacement for an ill horn player, returning to the Chrysalis Theatre to play Beethoven's ‘Symphony No. 6’ (The Pastoral) with Milton Keynes Sinfonia. I've known the clarinetist Christine Kelk for many years, and I was aware that she had been chair of the Milton Keynes Sinfonia for a long time, but I was amazed to discover that she's now celebrating 50 years with the orchestra. Saturday's concert was a tribute with a programme, chosen entirely by Christine, which featured two of her favourite pieces of all time. Alongside the Beethoven Pastoral Symphony, the concert included Mozart's ‘Clarinet Concerto’ with the brilliant young clarinet player Poppy Beddow. We started with Rossini's famous overture ‘The Thieving Magpie’, but it was the Beethoven I enjoyed the most, in a strong performance crafted by conductor David Knight, with great clarinet playing by Tim Mackley. It was clearly a very popular programme with the packed audience: a really enjoyable concert.

'Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen' conceived and curated by Samantha Manton

20 March 2025

Two Temple Place is a beautifully eccentric neo Tudor/Gothic building on the Victoria Embankment in London. Commissioned by and built for William Waldorf Astor in the 1890s, Two Temple Place is now owned by The Bulldog Trust and hosts a year-round programme of community and cultural activity. Its wood panelled rooms and stained glass windows make it a slightly incongruous setting for the current exhibition 'Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen'. This fascinating collection of works by artists from working-class backgrounds, conceived and curated by Samantha Manton, explores the overlooked richness and diversity of working-class life and creative expression from the 1950s to the present day. As I started to walk around the exhibition the tone of celebration of the joy, fun and passions of ordinary everyday life reminded me both of the Pitmen Painters of Ashington (celebrated in Lee Hall’s play ‘The Pitmen Painters’, reviewed here in October 2009 and November 2019) and of Hetain Patel's ‘Come As You Really Are’ exhibition in Croydon (reviewed here in September 2024). So it was wonderful then to come across pieces by some of the Pitmen Painters and by Hetain Patel, later in the exhibition. It was good to see the very recognisable paintings of Beryl Cook, but it is the many images of ordinary, often unnamed, people that dominate Lives Less Ordinary. The majority of the exhibition consists of photographs - beautiful, stark depictions of everyday life from the 1950s, 80s and 90s. Most focus on the people and their interests and enthusiasms, rather than on the difficulties of their lives. And the other recurring theme that jumped out was the places depicted - including Middlesbrough, Stoke on Trent, Liverpool, Northumberland, Glasgow, Handsworth, Rochdale, Bolton etc. I was struck by a quote from the painter George Shaw, whose practice revolves around the Tile Hill Estate in the Midlands: “If you can't find yourself in your own backyard you're not going to find yourself in the Serengeti, are you? So for me, it was taking those cliches of epiphany and the sublime and putting them in a place where great thoughts aren't rumoured to happen.” It was also great to see a display about the Desi Pubs project developed by the Creative People and Places consortium Creative Black Country which I featured in my 2016 report ‘The role of voluntary arts activity and everyday participation in Creative People and Places’. The exhibition's aim is "recognising the extraordinary in the ordinary". It's on until 20 April and is free. More details here.
 

‘What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory’ by Brian Eno and Bette A.

14 March 2025

I had seen some of the publicity about ‘What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory’, the new book by Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse, but it was when a friend at one of our partner organisations emailed me to say “it is essentially a manifesto for everyday creativity … I am buying a dozen copies and passing them around everyone involved!” that I thought I must get around to reading it. It is a short, beautifully produced book, with witty illustrations by Bette Adriaanse, and its message is both simple and incredibly thought provoking. Much of Eno and Adriaanse’s theory seems to focus on everyday creativity (though they don’t use that term). They suggest ‘art’ means “all kinds of things where somebody does more than is absolutely necessary for the sake of the feeling they get by doing it” and that “making art seems to be a universal human activity”. I also liked their comparisons with science: they say “Science makes models of things so we can understand how they work. Art makes models of things so we can understand how we work.” and “Just as we need science to tell us how the changing world is, we need art to help find out how we feel about it.” ‘What Art Does’ is a cleverly simple answer to a seemingly impossible question.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

4 March 2025

To prepare for each of our Northampton Symphony Orchestra concerts I usually practise at home by playing along with recordings. Often, while I am trying to get grips with a piece I haven't played before, I find that the available recordings are all too fast to keep up with. Even when I have learned my part it can be difficult to match the pace of a professional orchestra. But usually NSO conductor John Gibbons finds a speed that allows us to give a good account of the composer's intentions, without pushing the orchestra beyond its limits. In our concert at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton last Saturday, however, I think our piano soloist Anthony Hewitt actually played much of Ravel's 'Piano Concerto in G major' faster than any of the recordings I had been using. It was an incredibly exciting performance which the orchestra just about managed to keep up with. The concerto is an amazing piece, which NSO last played in 2008 with Lucy Parham (reviewed here in November 2008). It’s fiendishly difficult, with complex rhythms and bluesy melodies that sound very like Gershwin. The slow movement is a beautiful gentle waltz, which opens with almost three minutes of unaccompanied solo piano and then features a gorgeous extended cor anglais solo, exquisitely played in our performance by Harriet Brown.

All three works in Saturday's concert, while very different in style, were linked by elements of dance and syncopated rhythms. 'The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra' by John Adams is a companion piece to his 1986 opera 'Nixon in China'. Playing John Adams' minimalist style is a very particular challenge for an orchestra, requiring incredible concentration and counting not to lose your place in the repetitive patterns of notes. It came together really well in the performance which I think was the best the orchestra had played the piece.

We concluded the concert with Rachmaninoff's brilliant late orchestral work 'Symphonic Dances'. Everyone I have spoken to who knows the 'Symphonic Dances' seems to love the piece. I hadn't played it before but it has been really enjoyable getting to know it over the past eight weeks. Rachmaninoff incorporates echoes of the music of Stravinsky, Tchaikowsky and Copland as well as referencing many of his own other works. The lush romantic harmonies I associate with the Rachmaninoff symphonies and piano concertos are present, but here marshalled into a driving rhythmic framework. And his melodies are achingly beautiful, particularly the second movement's wistful Viennese waltz and the breathtaking alto saxophone solo in the first movement, beautifully played by Graham Tear. The finale, with its jigsaw puzzle of syncopated cross-rhythms built to a stunning climax which was a fitting end to a thrilling concert.

'Killing Thatcher' by Rory Carroll

28 February 2025

Robin: I’ve just finished reading ‘Killing Thatcher’, Rory Carroll’s fascinating account of the 1984 Brighton bombing of the Conservative Party Conference. This meticulously researched book examines the paths that led to Brighton for both the IRA bomber Patrick Magee and the Prime Minister. He works hard to explain the motivations both for the bombing and for Margaret Thatcher’s approach to Northern Ireland - including a brilliant six-page summary of the origins of The Troubles. The chapter recounting in detail the early hours of 12 October 1984 at the Grand Hotel in Brighton is horrific and gripping. And the tale of the subsequent manhunt is like a thrilling police procedural novel. Rory Carroll also ponders the consequences of the sliding doors moment that came so close to killing a British Prime Minister and how this would have significantly changed history in Britain and Ireland and across the world.

Spiers & Boden

25 February 2025

When we saw the brilliant folk big band Bellowhead at the Riverside Theatre in Aylesbury last November (reviewed here in November 2024) I described it as "possibly the best gig I have ever been to". So it was great to get the chance this week to see Bellowhead founders Spiers & Boden again at The Stables in Wavendon. I last saw John Spiers (melodeon) and Jon Boden (fiddle) playing as a duo at The Stables in 2022 (reviewed here in July 2022) when they were promoting their 2021 album 'Fallow Ground'. This week's performance felt very much a reprise of that tour, still mainly featuring the songs and tunes from 'Fallow Ground'. But you can't really complain about traditional folk musicians not doing new material and it was another brilliant concert. Spiers & Boden are great ambassadors for English folk music, entertainingly explaining what an orphan Morris-dance tune is, why the same tune gains completely different titles as it is passed on from one community to another, and why a lengthy narrative ballad from the 13th century survives with only a fraction of its original verses. They are also outstanding musicians and it is always a pleasure to see them live.

'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

25 February 2025

I still have fond memories of the period when Rupert Goold was the Artistic Director of the Royal and Derngate theatres in Northampton (now more than 20 years ago). His productions were always inventive and ambitious and it has been fascinating to watch his career since, including a spectacularly over the top staging of 'The Merchant of Venice' in the newly refurbished Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2011 (reviewed here in June 2011). Now, as he prepares to take over as Artistic Director of the Old Vic in London next year, Rupert Goold has returned to Stratford to direct a stunning new RSC production of 'Hamlet' which we saw last Saturday. He has chosen to set the play entirely on a ship, creating an even more claustrophobic feel to Elsinore with the cast trapped together by the ocean. Es Devlin's magnificent set turns the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage into the deck of a ship, with the bow pointing directly out into the stalls, surrounded by large tanks of water, and Akhila Krishnan's video design showing the ship's wake at the rear of the set. Luke Thallon is a brilliant, restless, twitchy Hamlet, giving the famous speeches a realistic feel as he appears to be thinking out loud. He is supported by a strong cast including Jared Harris as Claudius, Nancy Carroll as Gertrude, Elliot Levey as Polonius and Anton Lesser as the Ghost and the Player King. But they all risk being upstaged by the set. As the drama becomes more intense the ship starts to move, with the whole vast stage tilting. The final scene, with the swordfight between Hamlet and Laertes taking place as the steeply angled deck starts to plunge into the waves, is genuinely thrilling - an amazing theatrical experience. 

'A Real Pain' by Jesse Eisenberg

18 February 2025

On Friday we were at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see ‘A Real Pain’. Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, ‘A Real Pain’ follows two Jewish cousins from New York (played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) on a trip to Poland to visit places associated with their late grandmother. It’s a beautiful, subtle, moving film: the cousins’ odd-couple relationship is funny but the humour is gentle. The film explores the believable complexities of grief and pain - and the impossibility of judging hierarchies of pain. The visit to a former concentration camp is incredibly powerful, more so for its use of silence. ‘A Real Pain’ is a thoughtful film that doesn’t outstay its welcome and wonderfully resists the temptation to try to solve the challenges it presents. 

'Table for Two' by Amor Towles

14 February 2025

When we watched the 2024 Hay Festival interview with the American author Amor Towles a few weeks ago (reviewed here in February 2025) he gave a fascinating analysis of the craft of writing short stories and the different approach this requires compared to writing a novel. Amor Towles is the author of two of my favourite novels of recent years - 'A Gentleman in Moscow' (reviewed here in September 2021) and 'The Lincoln Highway' (reviewed here in February 2022) but I realised I hadn’t got around to reading his 2024 collection of short stories ‘Table for Two’. So I immediately embarked on ‘Table for Two’ (as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini and J. Smith Cameron). It’s a series of very entertaining short stories, mostly set in New York in the late 1990s, followed by a longer novella. The stories have the feel of old-fashioned fables and Towles writes with wit, precision and gentility. Having not read a collection of short stories for many years I found it interesting that, not only do they demand a different technique from the writer, short stories also require a different approach from the reader. In these carefully crafted miniature narratives every word counts and you need to pay close attention from the start. Each story closes with a revealing twist or a satisfying denouement but it’s sometimes hard to anticipate the length and scope of the tale and I found myself concentrating to avoid being taken by surprise by a sudden ending. The stories in ‘Table for Two’ are not connected but it was very enjoyable to rediscover a character from Amor Towles’ first novel ‘Rules of Civility’ whose story picks up directly from her departure from the novel.

Hay Anytime

7 February 2025

We have been regular attenders of the Edinburgh International Book Festival since 1995, usually taking in a few sessions each August while we are in Edinburgh for the Fringe. But we tend to find that the majority of the authors featured in the festival programme are unfamiliar to us. Although we've never been to the Hay Festival, we are enthusiastic users of its extensive online archive which is so big it seems to include all our favourite writers. We first discovered the Hay Player during lockdown when we watched the recording of Natalie Haynes' bravura summary of the whole of the Trojan War in just over an hour, 'Troy Story' (reviewed here in July 2020). Hay Anytime contains thousands of audio and film recordings from the past 20 years of the Hay Festival and costs £20 for an annual subscription. We've recently watched talks and interviews from the past couple of Hay Festivals about some of our favourite recent books - including Jasper Fforde talking about 'Red Side Story' (reviewed here in April 2024), Mick Herron reflecting on his 'Slough House' series of comic spy novels (reviewed here between November 2023 and June 2024) and William Dalrymple discussing 'The Anarchy' (reviewed here in June 2023). And in his May 2024 Hay Festival interview, the American author Amor Towles (author of 'A Gentleman in Moscow', reviewed here in September 2021 and 'The Lincoln Highway', reviewed here in February 2022) gives one of the clearest, most interesting explanations of the process of writing fiction that I've heard. There are so many gems in the Hay Anytime archive you are sure to find something for you. Highly recommended.

Battersea Power Station

31 January 2025

On Saturday we made a first visit to the recently restored Battersea Power Station in London. This iconic Art Deco building designed by J. Theo Halliday and Giles Gilbert Scott has been beautifully refurbished to create a complex of shops, restaurants and a cinema on the banks of the Thames. Compared to the Bankside Power Station that became the Tate Modern Gallery with its huge turbine hall, Battersea is on a different scale with its dual turbine halls and immense chimneys. It feels like a secular version of a Norman Cathedral - but bigger! We were there to see The Light Festival 2025 - a free interactive art trail of eight light installations by artists inside the Power Station and in the area outside it. We also took the journey up Lift 109, a large circular elevator that rises through one of the Power Station's giant chimneys to emerge above the top of the chimney (like 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator') with 360 degree views across the Thames and most of London. It was a bright sunny day and the views from 109 metres above the river were spectacular. But it's the building itself that's the star, a redbrick Art Deco behemoth dwarfing everything around it. Well worth a visit.

'Starlings' by Dekel

23 January 2025

I'm really enjoying 'Starlings' - a lovely album from the singer songwriter Dekel which spans a variety of styles including folk, swing and klezmer. The songs are light, gentle and uplifting, accompanied by acoustic instruments including guitar, accordion, 'cello and clarinet. It's a thoughtful, joyful collection which reminded me (because of its Eastern European/Balkan influences) of the albums by Beirut (reviewed here in November 2006 and October 2007) and the Warsaw Village Band (reviewed here in September 2008). You can listen to Starlings here.

'Here One Moment' by Liane Moriarty

16 January 2025

Over the last couple of years I have enjoyed discovering the novels of the Australian author, Liane Moriarty, including 'Apples May Fall' (reviewed here in September 2022), 'The Husband's Secret' (reviewed here in September 2023) and 'The Hypnotist's Love Story'. Her latest novel, 'Here One Moment', published in August of last year, is an easy and enjoyable read with interesting structure and a surprisingly life-affirming perspective on mortality. 'Here One Moment' brings together a diverse group of characters on a flight from Tasmania to Sydney. When a woman on the flight announces when and how each of the other passengers is going to die this shocking news is the catalyst for a series of short stories, each focusing on the individual reactions of the characters to their impending deaths. This feels like the start of a supernatural ghost story, but Liane Moriarty cleverly shifts the focus to the human experience, offering a charming and surprisingly optimistic take on a serious subject.

'Dr Strangelove' adapted by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley

15 January 2025

Stanley Kubrick's classic bleak cold war satire 'Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' came out in 1963, eighteen months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. It painted a chillingly believable scenario in which the carefully poised balance of the nuclear deterrent could be tipped into mutually assured destruction by the actions of one unhinged individual. On Saturday we were at the Noel Coward Theatre in London's West End to see the new stage adaptation of 'Dr Strangelove' by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley. The film is famous for Peter Sellers' portrayal of multiple characters and the stage version features Steve Coogan playing four parts (the three played by Sellers but also Major Kong - memorably played by Slim Pickens in the film). It was fun to see the film recreated on stage and there were some great comic performances from the (almost  entirely male) cast, but as a two hour play it really needed a bit more plot. Steve Coogan is very funny in all four roles and it was great to see him on stage but apart from the enjoyable game of watching how he is going to manage to switch from one character to another in the same scene the show felt a bit slight. I did however enjoy the recreation of the famous scenes from the film through Hildegard Bechtler's magnificent set, particularly the US President's War Room with its 'big board'.

'The Dutch House' by Ann Patchett

8 January 2025

It's a very enjoyable feeling settling into a novel by Ann Patchett: you're never quite sure where she is going to take you,, but you know from the start that you're in safe hands. Having enjoyed four of her books over the past couple of years (including, most recently 'Tom Lake', reviewed here in October 2024) I have just finished reading her 2019 novel 'The Dutch House'. This is a clever family saga about a childhood in a beautiful but intimidating house, interrupted by the arrival of a new stepmother. It's beautifully written and carefully constructed through a first person narration that flits backwards and forwards in time to gradually fill in the family story.

'Twelfth Night' by William Shakespeare

6 January 2025

On Friday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see 'Twelfth Night'. It was a very enjoyable show, directed by Prasanna Puwanaraja, featuring Samuel West as Malvolio. The set, by James Cotterill, included a huge pipe organ, the pipes standing in for the box tree. Gwyneth Keyworth was a determined and purposeful Viola, Freema Agyeman a strong Olivia and Demetri Goritsas as an American accented Sir Andrew Aguecheek demonstrated comically balletic movement worthy of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Michael Grady-Hall's Feste was a clown with the voice of an angel and his Wind and the Rain concluded the play with a delicate poignancy.

'Oedipus' by Robert Icke (after Sophocles)

6 January 2025

Last Monday we were at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West end to see the excellent new version of 'Oedipus' written and directed by Robert Icke (after Sophocles). Mark Strong and Lesley Manville were outstanding as Oedipus and Jocasta and the modern setting - the family awaiting the result of an election that would put Oedipus in power - worked very effectively. His promise to quell rumours that he hadn't been born in the country by publishing his birth certificate (echoing the Obama birther controversy) was a clever way to make this the moment that his mother had to tell him the truth about his origins.