'An Old Woman's Reflections' by Peig Sayers

22 October 2026

The Blasket Islands are three miles off Ireland's Dingle Peninsula. Until their evacuation just after the Second World War, the lives of the 150 or so Blasket Islanders had remained unchanged for centuries. A rich oral tradition of storytelling, poetry and folktales kept alive the legends and history of the islands. In the 1960s Oxford University Press published seven Blasket Island books, containing memoirs and reminiscences, evoking a way of life which has now vanished. I am grateful to Tom Doyle for giving me a copy of one of those seven books: 'An Old Woman's Reflections: The Life of a Blasket Island Storyteller' by Peig Sayers (first published in 1962). Peig Sayers (1873 - 1958), known as 'the Queen of Gaelic storytellers', was born on the mainland but made her home on the Great Blasket when she married an islandman. The book contains a series of her reminiscences, written down by her son (and translated and edited in 1939). It's a fascinating insight into the Gaelic oral tradition and a revealing historical snapshot of rural island life in this particular remote corner of Ireland during the first three decades of the 20th century. It is clear from Peig's stories that the day-to-day life of the islanders probably hadn't changed much for centuries, but occasionally you can see glimpses of the modern world intruding. A man comes to the village from Mexico and, remarkably, turns out to be a Gaelic speaker. Peig is given a ride in a motor car. News reaches Great Blasket of the 1916 revolution in Dublin. But most of Peig's stories are of disputes, love triangles, fights and boats lost at sea. 'An Old Woman's Reflections' is authentic primary source history, told in the words of someone who was there. These tales don't always have a conventional narrative arc but they tell you so much more about the everyday lives of the people in that place at that time.

'Macbeth' by William Shakespeare

21 October 2026

Over the past few years we've seen four productions by the excellent OVO Theatre Company in Saint Albans, all performed in the open-air Roman theatre of Verulamium. ('The Merry Wives of Windsor', reviewed here in September 2020; 'The Importance of Being Earnest', reviewed here in July 2022; 'Much Ado About Nothing', reviewed here in July 2023; and 'Sense and Sensibility', reviewed here in 2024.) On Tuesday we saw an indoor OVO production for the first time. The Barn is a beautiful 17th-century Grade II listed threshing barn in Verulamium Park in Saint Albans, which has been temporarily converted into an atmospheric 120-seat live performance space by OVO. The doors opened for the first time last week, launching an autumn season of site-specific productions during the 'work-in-progress phase', ahead of the full permanent conversion of The Barn in 2027. We were one of the first audiences to see the inside of this magnificent building. We were there to see a production of 'Macbeth' directed by OVO Theatre founder and artistic director Adam Nichols. This was a powerful, muscular performance, made more impactful by the audience, on three sides of the circular wooden stage, being so close to the action. The actors felt exaggeratedly large in this intimate space, and the violence, guilt, and grief of the play felt more visceral. Ludovig Hughes was great as Macbeth, embodying his physical and mental transformation through the play - but all of the large cast were impressive. The audience seating in the temporary auditorium didn't provide great sightlines and we were unable to see much of the action when characters were sitting or lying on the stage. But it was great to be present at the inauguration of this new theatrical space in St Albans and I'll looking forward to seeing what the full transformation of the building will bring next year.

'Table 17' by Douglas Lyons

18 October 2026

On Saturday we were back at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn to see 'Table 17' - a play by Douglas Lyons that has been a big hit in New York and Los Angeles. It's a great piece of fringe theatre for three actors that requires no set other than a dining table and chairs. Former fiancees Jada and Dallas are meeting for dinner at their favourite restaurant, two years after splitting up. We see them each preparing for their reunion and then, through flashbacks, learn how they originally met, fell in love and the reasons for their split. An announcement at the beginning of Zhailon Levingston's excellent production for Kiln Theatre encourages the audience to engage with the play "like a panto". Despite my reservations, this worked really well, with members of the audience expressing out loud their surprise, shock and anger at each plot revelation, the actors very effectively improvising in response to comments from the audience (always scrupulously in character) and the audience almost becoming another character in the drama. Amy Jane Cook's set makes great use of a revolving horseshoe-shaped banquette to evoke the restaurant and a host of other settings. And the acting is superb: Marisha Wallace as Jada, Jamael Westman as Dallas and Michael Rishawn as everyone else show us characters who are flawed but sympathetic and charming. 'Table 17' is a very clever, hip, smart play which went down a storm in the sold-out theatre.

'Not the End of the World' by Hannah Ritchie

18 October 2026

Most people are now aware of the global climate emergency and the multiple challenges facing our planet, but news headlines repeatedly seem to suggest it is too late, too difficult or too costly to do anything to avoid impending catastrophe. Too much of the goodwill and willingness of the public to help is not converted into action because people feel the situation is hopeless. If that sounds familiar I would encourage you to read Hannah Ritchie's 2024 book 'Not the End of the World'. Subtitled 'How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet', Ritchie's book examines seven major environmental problems facing us and, through careful statistical analysis, demonstrates that for every one of them we're now either at the turning point to a lower impact, or have already passed it. While she is clear that we still face significant challenges - and the planet and its inhabitants are still suffering in many ways as a result of environmental changes - the message of the book is that the solutions are known and we need to focus on those positive actions that will have greatest consequences. Hannah Ritchie is senior researcher in the Programme for Global Development at the University of Oxford and deputy editor of the 'Our World in Data' website. She is charmingly frank about the challenges we face as individuals to do "the right thing" environmentally and provides a no-nonsense approach to which personal actions could actually help to make a significant difference (eg stop eating beef but don't worry about using the occasional plastic straw) - backing this up with the relevant data in each case. She is also good at demolishing the many myths based on misleading news headlines, while admitting to her own occasional mistakes in broadcast interviews. The best way to be really clear about how we can improve the environment is to focus on thorough examination of the data (in books like this) rather than attention-grabbing headlines. 'Not the End of the World' is a fascinating, uplifting read that makes you want to do more to help, and convinces you we can actually make a difference. 

'The Rainbow' by Yasunari Kawabata

13 October 2026

I am very grateful to Geoff Crossick for giving me a copy of another classic Japanese novel, 'The Rainbow' by Yasunari Kawabata, originally published in 1951 and translated into English by Haydn Trowell in 2023. This is a very different book to 'The Woman in the Dunes' by Kōbō Abe (also reviewed here in October 2026). Compared to that 1960s surreal existential novel 'The Rainbow', written a decade earlier, feels like a more conventional narrative. But it's an equally fascinating insight into Japanese history and culture. 'The Rainbow' was written and set in a Japan coming to terms with the aftermath of World War II and has the eerie feeling of a country that is on the cusp between two very different worlds. This is the story of a middle-aged professional man - an architect - who is the father of three daughters by three different mothers. In some ways this is a gentle, ambling tale of the two oldest daughters wanting and not wanting to meet their younger stepsister for the first time. While the novel is straightforwardly realistic, without any elements of magic realism or dreamlike narrative, there is still a strange ennui to the plot. The characters spend a lot of the book visiting villas and palaces built for members of the Japanese nobility who had been stripped of their wealth and privileges after the war. With the public now able to see inside these grand houses for the first time it feels like the Japanese people are tourists walking through their country's history. The novel's plot manages to be both a slow, gentle examination of family relationships in which nothing much seems to be happening, and simultaneously a bizarre series of melodramatic events including infidelity, unplanned pregnancy and suicide. When I first started listening to 'world music' and attending the annual WOMAD Festival, in the early 2000s, I was driven by a frustration with what felt like the increasing banality and predictability of mainstream pop music. I loved discovering music, from around the world, that didn't follow the familiar patterns I was used to and still had the potential to surprise me. I've enjoyed reading Japanese novels for similar reasons, precisely because I find it hard to see where the plot is going. It's also fascinating to learn more about Japanese culture and traditions through fiction. 'The Rainbow' is full of traditional tea ceremonies and the size of rooms in houses is routinely measured by the number of tatami mats that would fit on the floor. ("In the six-mat pavilion, there was a four-and-a-half-mat room used for the tea ceremony ...") 'The Rainbow' is quite a melancholic, reflective story showing a country coming to terms with itself through the microcosm of a single family.

Claire Marsden

13 October 2026

Claire Marsden is a French horn player, currently studying at the Royal Academy of Music. She was Joint Principal Horn of the National Youth Orchestra from 2023 to 2025 and she reached the final 5 brass players in BBC Young Musician 2024. Claire also happens to be a resident of Ampthill in Bedfordshire and last Friday I was at Ampthill Methodist Church to see her perform with the pianist Sam O'Neal as part of the Ampthill Recitals series. It was great to have the chance to see this brilliant young horn player so close to home, and to see her playing a new Woodhead horn, made for her in Ampthill by Luke Woodhead. She played the whole of the 'Horn Concerto No 1' by Richard Strauss and the first movement of Beethoven's 'Horn Sonata' - both of which I have played myself (though not in public!). She also introduced me to pieces for the horn by Eugene Bozza, Paul Dukas and Sigurd Verge - all of which were very enjoyable and technically impressive. Claire spoke well to the audience (and seemed to relax more into her playing after speaking). It was wonderful to see her in concert at this early stage in her career.

'Once Upon a Time in Sokoto' by Inua Ellams

8 October 2026

On Tuesday we were at the Royal Theatre in Northampton to see 'Once Upon A Time In Sokoto' - a new play by Inua Ellams. Directed by Roy Alexander Weise for Fuel in association with Touring Together (a collective that includes Royal & Derngate Northampton), 'Once Upon A Time In Sokoto' explores the pre-colonial history of Nigeria, through 24 scenes set from 1865 to 1903 in the Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa. It's a fascinating, entertaining and moving production using a mixture of storytelling and drama with four actors playing multiple parts - and breaking the fourth wall to involve the audience in their story. This is a family saga spanning three generations as well as a political, economic and military history lesson - very effectively knitting personal stories with macro historical events. Amelia Jane Hankin's set provides an impressive backdrop but this is an intimate narrative that would also work well in an empty classroom. The audience is drawn into the storytelling and the four actors (Adeola Yemitan, Antonia Layiwola, Bayo Gbadamosi and Will Atiomo) are excellent. It's a fast-paced, thoughtful, eye-opening history.

'As You Like It' by William Shakespeare

7 October 2026

The first time I saw 'As You Like It' was on our very first visit to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1992 - a production directed by David Thacker, with Samantha Bond as Rosalind. I can still the remember the moment at the end when she stepped to the front of the stage to say "It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue ...". On Saturday we were back at the (new) RST to see Daniel Evans' brilliant new production of 'As You Like It'. Using an all male cast (which Shakespeare wrote for) strangely makes more sense of the gender-swapping plot (as it did in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men production of 'As You Like It', reviewed here in August 2022). Tony award-winner Jonathan Groff, is very impressive as Rosalind/Gannymede and Fisayo Akinade as Celia gives a wonderful comic performance. Tim Preston's Phoebe almost steals the show (blurting out "Gannymede, do you like my wedding dress - I made it myself!"). And it was lovely to see Gary Wilmot (who we saw in 'Anything Goes' at the Barbican, reviewed here in September 2021) making his RSC debut (playing both the Dukes), and RSC veteran Richard McCabe as a surprisingly playful melancholic Jaques. When the action shifts from the court to the countryside it becomes clear that the Forest of Arden has been relocated to Wales (and why not?) - with Anisha Fields' magnificent set bringing an enormous, and amazingly realistic, Welsh grassy hillside into the centre of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre: the reveal is a stunning moment. And the composer Theo Jamieson introduces a capella male voice choir harmony to Arden with a series of beautiful musical interludes (mostly sung in Welsh by the 'Arden 7'). It's a very enjoyable production - the best RSC show we have seen since Rupert Goold's amazing shipboard production of Hamlet (reviewed here in February 2025).

'The Woman in the Dunes' by Kobo Abe

7 October 2026

My introduction to Japanese literature was via David Mitchell's 2001 novel 'Number9Dream' - his homage to Haruki Murakami. This led me to the novels of Murakami, four of which I have written about here (starting with my favourite 'Kafka on the Shore', reviewed here in October 2006). Murakami's books usually start in a contemporary real-world Japan into which magical realism starts to intrude, leading us into a parallel fantasy world. I'm also a fan of the Japanese-British novelist, Kazuo Ishiguro - who I was lucky to see in conversation with David Mitchell at the Royal Festival Hall in 2016 (reviewed here in February 2016). Several of Ishiguro's novels have a surreal. dreamlike quality that reminds me of Murakami, particularly 'When We Were Orphans' and 'The Unconsoled'. More recently I enjoyed ‘Tokyo Express’ - a Japanese detective novel by Seichō Matsumoto, first published in 1958, and translated by Jesse Kirkwood in 2022 (reviewed here in June 2024) - a gripping tale, beautifully told, with a gentle Japanese politeness. I am very grateful to Geoff Crossick for extending my knowledge of Japanese literature by giving me a copy of the classic Japanese novel 'The Woman in the Dunes' by Kōbō Abe, originally published in 1962, translated into English by E. Dale Saunders in 1964 and adapted into a Cannes Festival Award-winning film by Hiroshi Teshigahara. 'The Woman in the Dunes' is a deeply strange, existential novel. "The man" is a school teacher from Tokyo who visits a coastal fishing village to collect insects. The villagers, whose homes are constantly on the verge of being destroyed by the advancing sand dunes, trap him and force him to help them in the Sisyphean task of shovelling endless amounts of sand. The grim reality of his sandy prison, the physical demands of the labour, his increasingly desperate attempts to escape and the horrible effects of the constantly flowing sand on the human body are told in painstaking detail. The contrast between the bizarre surrealism of the situation and the practical, precise description of it reminded me of Yann Martel's 2001 novel 'Life of Pi'. In its surreal examination of human existence 'The Woman in the Dunes' also made me think of 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett (published in 1952), though the occasional bantering dialogue here is all in the man's head: he has very little conversation with "the woman" with whom he is incarcerated. 'The Woman in the Dunes' is fascinating, peculiar and enthralling but it's also quite an uncomfortable read, particularly in the way the man treats the woman and the introduction of sex into their relationship. The sand-strewn, surreal nightmare is a lens through which to examine questions of human existence and particular issues to do with class. But I think I probably missed other references and analogies and I was grateful for the introduction written by David Mitchell for the 2006 Penguin Classics edition (which you can read at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/oct/07/featuresreviews.guardianreview26). 

'Death is No Sportsman', 'With a Bare Bodkin' and 'Death Walks the Woods' by Cyril Hare

27 September 2026

I'm continuing to work my way through the detective novels of Cyril Hare (previously reviewed here in July and August 2026). I've now read: 'Death is No Sportsman' (published 1938) - an Inspector Mallet novel centred on a fishing syndicate on the River Didder; 'With a Bare Bodkin' (published 1946) - a wartime, office-based mystery, featuring the lawyer Francis Pettigrew, which has an amusing meta-textual element as one of the characters is himself an author of murder mysteries; and 'Death Walks the Woods' (published 1954) - another Francis Pettigrew novel which nicely links together some of the characters and geography of the other books, including 'When the Wind Blows'. All Cyril Hare's novels give a fascinating glimpse into the social history of the period and have a genteel, polite, English approach to brutal crime, but always with an unexpected, clever, plausible denouement.