'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.