Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

14 December 2022

The Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas Cracker concert has become a much-loved annual fixture in the calendar which always feels to me like the start of Christmas. I can remember when it still felt daring for members of the orchestra to don santa hats and reindeer antlers for the second half of the concert. These days the whole event feels like a massive fancy dress party - for the orchestra and the audience. This year we were playing Dan Welcher’s narrated piece ‘Haleakala: How Maui Snared The Sun’ - a Polynesian folk tale that tells the story of how Maui captured the sun and caused the summer and winter seasons - so the orchestra’s dress code was Christmas jumpers or Hawaiian shirts. As I don’t own either of these I started searching online and found a wonderfully garish Hawaiian shirt, decorated with tiny French horns. I shared this with my fellow horn players who loved the idea of us all wearing matching shirts. Sadly we then spotted that these shirts would be coming from the United States and wouldn’t be delivered until after the concert. By this time we were all hooked on the idea and determined to make it happen. Rather brilliantly, Callie Scully bought some cheap, fairly plain Hawaian shirts from Asda and printed a series of transfers of French horns which she painstakingly ironed onto the shirts for all six of us. Some of the horns ended up being blue or pink because the transfers quickly used all her yellow printer ink, but we liked the somewhat psychedelic mixture of colours. Callie brought the shirts to our penultimate rehearsal but didn’t bring them into the hall, as we didn’t want the rest of the orchestra to see them until the concert. So at the end of the rehearsal we went out to Callie’s car in the car park where she handed out the shirts - covered by bin bags to keep them secret - and, at Josh’s suggestion we all then split in different directions! This excellent example of ingenuity and everyday creativity was a great success and the horn shirts attracted much praise at the concert. ‘Haleakala’ is a really effective piece of storytelling, excellently narrated for us by John Griff, with the orchestra creating some fascinating filmic audio effects. And I got to start the whole piece by blowing a conch shell which created a beautiful resonant note. Our recent Christmas Cracker concerts have featured lots of film music, alongside the usual festive tunes. This year was a bit different with the programme including an eclectic mix of classical pieces. Our Artistic Director, John Gibbons, had come up with the idea of conjuring up a Christmas stocking, stuffed with oranges (Prokofiev’s suite from ‘The Love for Three Oranges’) and a toy train (‘Pacific 231’ by Arthur Honegger) - though I think he may have run out of ideas at that point. Nevertheless it was a lovely concert at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton: it was wonderful to have a large audience and the welcome return of mulled wine and mince pies for the first time since the pandemic.

'The Ink Black Heart' by Robert Galbraith

9 December 2022

I have been enjoying ‘The Ink Black Heart’ - the sixth Cormoran Strike detective novel by J K Rowling (writing as Robert Galbraith) - which I am reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Robert Glenister. Like the Harry Potter series, the Strike novels seem to be getting longer and longer: the audio version of ‘The Ink Black Heart’ lasts nearly 33 hours. This feels too long - it would definitely have benefited from an edit - but it is an enjoyable and intriguing crime thriller. This time Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott enter the world of online gaming, YouTube and Twitter. Some of the chatroom conversations are a bit tedious to listen to as an audio book, with every @ and # pedantically read out, and the extensive cast of suspects is multiplied by their online pseudonyms. But it’s an engaging puzzle. I think I now actually look forward to spotting J K Rowling’s odd misunderstandings of budget hotels (see my review here of the previous Strike novel, ‘Troubled Blood’, in January 2021). The descriptive writing is often a bit clunky, and some of the online terminology also feels slightly suspect: does anyone refer to their “Instagram page”? But the best tribute I can pay to ‘The Ink Black Heart’ is that I have 3 hours left to listen to but I decided not to rush through it at high speed in order to write this review!

'Stay with Me' by Lorraine Ellison

2 December 2022

Once again I am indebted to Jess Gillam’s podcast ‘This Classical Life’ for drawing my attention to an artist I hadn’t come across before. Lorraine Ellison was an American soul singer and songwriter who died in 1983 at the age of 51. I have been listening to her 1969 album ‘Stay with Me’. The title-track is her best known recording but was only made at a last-minute booking, following a studio cancellation by Frank Sinatra, for whom a 46-piece orchestra had already been hired. The song is only three and half minutes long but feels like an epic - incredibly theatrical with a soaring chorus that punches you in the face. Lorraine Ellison’s voice is powerful and pure, bringing her experience of singing in gospel groups to R&B. ‘You Don’t Know Nothing About Love’ shows off her brilliant high register and she deserves comparison with Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick. Listen for yourself at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pDBuPK0_DU

'Klara and the Sun' by Kazuo Ishiguro

25 November 2022

I’ve long been an admirer of the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. A few years ago I was lucky to see him at the Royal Festival Hall, in conversation with another of my favourite novelists, David Mitchell (reviewed here in February 2016). As well as Kazuo Ishiguro’s wonderful 1989 Booker Prize winning novel ‘The Remains of the Day’, I also really enjoyed 'When We Were Orphans' and even the impenetrably surreal dreamworld of 'The Unconsoled'. I have just finished his latest book, ‘Klara and the Sun’. Set in the near future, this is the tale of an artificial intelligence android, developed to serve as a child’s companion or Artificial Friend (AF). The story is told in the first person by the AF, Klara, a naive narrator whose voice reminded me of the child narrators of ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ by Joanna Cannon (reviewed here in January 2022) and Mark Haddon’s 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time'. This technique allows the reader gradually to piece together how this future world differs from the present day. There’s an ominous feeling throughout, as you quickly realise that Klara’s optimistic vision of the world is likely to be unravelled once she has experienced more of it. ‘Klara and the Sun’ reminded me most of the dark future reality of Ishiguro’s 2005 novel 'Never Let Me Go' (reviewed here in September 2006) but I don’t think it worked as effectively, not achieving the same level of emotional connection with the characters and their plight.

'The Banshees of Inisherin' by Martin McDonagh

18 November 2022

Last Friday we were at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see 'The Banshees of Inisherin', the new film written and directed by Martin McDonagh. If you are familiar with McDonagh's previous plays and films, including 'The Lieutenant of Inishmore', 'Hangmen' (reviewed here in March 2016), 'In Bruges',  'The Guard' and 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri', you will have an idea of what to expect. 'The Banshees of Inisherin' is a very black comedy - incredibly funny but with some brutal violence. Set on a small island, off the coast of Ireland, the film reunites the stars of 'In Bruges', Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, together with a terrific performance from Kerry Condon (who was in 'Three Billboards'). Farrell and Gleeson play two friends who spend every afternoon together in the village pub, until one day Colm (Gleeson) decides, for no obvious reason, that he no longer likes Pádraic (Farrell) and doesn't want to speak to him ever again. Pádraic's attempts to understand and reverse this change of heart lead to a series of increasingly violent confrontations between the two former best friends. (Warning: animals never fare well in Martin McDonagh stories.) The film is beautifully shot, laugh-out-loud funny, shocking and moving. I enjoyed it as an absurdist black comic tale. But when I belatedly (on the journey home from the cinema) spotted an underlying allegory (which I won't give away here) I began to wonder whether this is Martin McDonagh's masterpiece. Much as I felt about the enigmatic film 'Caché' by Michael Haneke (reviewed here in May 2006) I now want to see 'The Banshees of Inisherin' again immediately to test my theories on what it's really about.

‘De Todas las Flores’ by Natalia Lafourcade

11 November 2022

Natalia Lafourcade is a Mexican singer/songwriter who, over the past 20 years, has become one of the most successful singers in Latin America - having won 2 Grammy Awards and 13 Latin Grammy’s. I’ve been listening to her new album ‘De Todas las Flores’ - a collection of original songs that draw on Mexican traditional music but also incorporate gentle dreamy pop music and jazz. There’s a laid-back Brazilian bossa nova feel to several tracks. The album was recorded entirely on analogue tape and unrehearsed. The acoustic instrumentation, slick arrangements and quiet vocals suggest a group playing late at night in the corner of a classy bar. Here’s a sample of the album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpwSV1QBd8M

‘To Be Taught if Fortunate’ by Becky Chambers

3 November 2022

Becky Chambers writes gentle, charming science fiction novels that imagine a multi-species universe where everyone is mostly kind and polite to each other. Through showing how beings with completely different metabolisms and methods of communication can manage to understand each other and get along, she makes us think about issues of diversity and inclusion closer to home. I would recommend her Wayfarer series of novels (starting with ‘The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet’), each of which is a completely different type of story in a completely different setting, subtly linked to the rest of the series by one or two common characters. I’ve just finished reading ‘To Be Taught if Fortunate’ - her lovely bite-sized stand-alone novella which focuses on the human crew of a spaceship on an exploratory mission which takes them many light-years, and therefore many decades, from Earth. Becky Chambers doesn’t write conventional SciFi battles, mystery or horror: she is more interested in science than fiction, thinking plausibly about how life might arise and develop on different worlds. She creates likeable characters and places them in challenging situations where they need to work together to survive.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

25 October 2022

Last Saturday I played in the first Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert of the orchestra's 2022-23 season - a wonderfully varied programme which attracted a packed audience to St Matthew's Church in Northampton. The concert opened with 'An American in Paris' by George Gershwin, which NSO last played in 2010 (reviewed here in April 2010). Hearing the piece again also brought back happy memories of Christopher Wheeldon's brilliant stage adaptation (of the Vincente Minnelli film) in London in 2017 (reviewed here in April 2017). It was a bright, cheerful performance with a great trumpet solo by Terry Mayo and a perfect lugubrious tuba solo towards the end by Nick Tollervey.  We followed this popular work with another perennial favourite, Sergei Rachmaninoff's 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini', with the Ukrainian pianist Dinara Klinton. Dinara previously played with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in 2017 when she dazzled in the ‘Piano Concerto for the Left Hand’ by Maurice Ravel - a performance that no-one who was at the concert will ever forget (reviewed here in November 2017). Famous for the slow, lush, romantic 18th variation, the 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini' is a challenging piece to pull together, full of fast variations with flurries of piano notes punctuated by precisely placed orchestral stabs. So it was worrying when we discovered, during our final rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, that our pianist's train had been delayed and she might not arrive in time to run through the piece with the orchestra. We started to play it through without the piano solo and, while we were playing (and unseen by conductor John Gibbons) Dinara Klinton ran up the central aisle of the church, threw herself onto the piano stool and instantly joined in the music, just in time to launch into a cadenza - without having removed her backpack from her shoulders. She gave a stunning performance in the concert, taking much of the piece at a dramatically fast pace and lovingly playing with the tempo (and our expectations) in the slow passages. It was a privilege to be accompanying her. We finished the concert with 'Symphony No 9' by Ralph Vaughan Williams - celebrating the composer's 150th anniversary this month with his final symphony. It's a serious, dramatic work, not very well known and not the easiest piece to understand, but it really grew on me as I got to know it over the past couple of months. And it was interesting how much better it seemed to work in performance than rehearsal - perhaps needing the additional concentration and pin-drop silences that you only get in a live concert. Among many fantastic solos, the stand out moments for me were Dan Newitt's gorgeous flugel horn solo in the second movement, the violin solo by orchestra leader Emily Groom and the distinctive saxophone passages, excellently played by Eva Jennings and Vicki Reamsbottopm. It was a great concert which felt like our most complete performance for some time.

'Towards the End of the Morning' by Michael Frayn

20 October 2022

Michael Frayn's 1967 novel 'Towards the End of the Morning' depicts a bygone era of Fleet Street newspaper offices - young men in suits spending their days staring out of the window, the slow manual compilation of nature notes and crossword clues, a mysterious unseen Editor, long liquid lunches and the dream of escaping the dead-end of print journalism through appearances on radio, or even television. It's a gentle, poignant satire punctuated by some brilliant set-piece farce scenes. The whimsical tone reminded me of Jerome K Jerome's 'Three Men in a Boat', daydreaming through slow, endless days and never taking itself too seriously. 'Towards the End of the Morning' is a slight novel but Michael Frayn manages to draw sympathetic, likeable characters who may be flawed, and ultimately doomed, but feel like friends.

‘John Gabriel Borkman’ by Henrik Ibsen

20 October 2022

On Saturday we were at the Bridge Theatre in London to see Henrik Ibsen’s 1896 play ‘John Gabriel Borkman’ in a new version by Lucinda Coxon, from a literal translation by Charlotte Barslund. This story of a disgraced former banker, imprisoned for speculating with his investors' money, feels all too topical. It’s a play with three leads - the titular banker, his wife and her sister - and Nicholas Hytner’s production boasts three star performances, from Simon Russell Beale, Claire Higgins and Lia Williams. Simon Russell Beale’s Borkman bears a striking resemblance (both physically and behaviourally) to a recent UK Prime Minister, and ends up looking like a blatant audition for King Lear. (Regular readers may remember I am patiently waiting for Simon Russell Beale to play Lear - see my review of his Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ here in November 2016.) I particularly liked the comic exchanges between Borkman and Vilhelm Foldal (Michael Simkins) which were wittily scripted and delivered in perfect dead-pan. But I felt Lia Williams stole the show with her performance as Ella. I had a feeling we had seen her on stage before and I now see I reviewed her super Rosalind in ‘As You Like It’ here in November 2005. I really enjoyed ‘John Gabriel Borkman’, more so for not having seen it before and discovering the unravelling plot for the first time.

‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ by William Shakespeare

14 October 2022

On Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the RSC production of ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ directed by Blanche McIntyre. I had only seen ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ once before - in a Royal Exchange Theatre production at Upper Campfield Market in Manchester in 1996. It is sometimes described as one of the ‘problem plays’, with an uncomfortable plot that is essentially: girl falls in love with boy - boy rejects girl - girl persuades king to force boy to marry her against his will - boy runs away - girl stalks boy across Europe, tricks him into sleeping with her by pretending to be the girl he actually loves and thereby forces him to return to her. It is also one of those Shakespeare plays that feels like he is trying out ideas that he will use to greater effect elsewhere. The imprisonment, blindfolding and humiliation of Parolles, for example, has a clear connection with the treatment of Malvolio in ‘Twelfth Night’. Blanche McIntyre gives the play a contemporary setting, with social media feeds projected across the back of the stage - which does prove useful in clarifying some of the main off-stage plot developments. The acting was impressive and entertaining, with a great central performance by Rosie Sheehy as Helena. But it’s not a great play.

BBC Young Musician 2022

14 October 2022

One of the lesser-noticed impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic was how it broke my proud record of having reviewed here every one of the biennial BBC Young Musician competitions since 2006. The 2020 competition was interrupted by lockdown, with the Concerto Final eventually going ahead in May 2021. I did manage to watch it - and percussionist Fang Zhang was a worthy winner - but it took place while we were away on holiday and I wasn’t able to post my review. I am delighted to say that normal service has been resumed in 2022, and even more delighted to say that the television coverage of this year’s BBC Young Musician was the best I can remember. Wonderfully the BBC bowed to the inevitable and asked Jess Gillam (a finalist in 2016) to present the coverage, as a double-hander with the equally impressive Alexis Ffrench. And remarkably (and I like to think this must be in part a result of my moaning here since 2008) they have finally reinstated a final that features five full concertos - rather than cruelly depriving two of the five category winners from their moment on stage accompanied by an orchestra, as has happened since 2010. It was brilliant to watch the live broadcast, on Sunday evening, of five full back-to-back concertos - a thrilling, incredibly varied and fantastically moving concert. I was very smug at having correctly predicted all five finalists from watching their category finals (which moved me to tears several times). But I must admit I was completely wrong-footed by the decision to award the overall title of BBC Young Musician 2022 to the percussionist Jordan Ashman. He was brilliant, and gave a very impressive performance of the spectacular Percussion Concerto  by Jennifer Higdon, but I really thought the choice was going to be between two of the other finalists. Nevertheless the whole competition was really enjoyable and very fully and respectfully presented. Finally BBC Young Musician is once again as good as it used to be!

You can read all my previous posts about BBC Young Musician at: http://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/search/label/BBCYoungMusician

‘Jack Absolute Flies Again’ by Richard Bean and Oliver Chris

7 October 2022

Just over ten years ago the National Theatre had a big hit with ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ - Richard Bean’s loose adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s play ‘The Servant of Two Masters’ (reviewed here in October 2011) which was a great star vehicle for James Corden. Now Richard Bean and Oliver Chris (who was in the original cast of ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’) have taken a similar approach to Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s classic restoration comedy ‘The Rivals’ to create ‘Jack Absolute Flies Again’. This sets the action in 1940 in the grounds of an English stately home which has been commandeered to host an RAF squadron. The National Theatre production, directed by Emily Burns (which we saw this week at The Odeon in Milton Keynes as an NT Live filmed broadcast) boasts a beautiful set by Mark Thompson. ‘Jack Absolute Flies Again’ is cartoonishly broad comedy - extremely silly but enjoyably likeable. From the start there is plenty breaking of the fourth wall (with characters pointing out “that didn’t happen in the original!”). Caroline Quentin’s Mrs Malaprop stretches her malapropisms to the limit and beyond, before playing with our expectations. The cast are all having a ball - and there is a great 1940s dance sequence. But Richard Bean and Oliver Chris also manage to inject a little serious wartime poignancy into the pantomime.

‘Apples Never Fall’ by Liane Moriarty

30 September 2022

I’m new to the Australian novelist Liane Moriarty (the author of ‘Big Little Lies’ and ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’, both now adapted for TV) and have really enjoyed reading her 2021 novel ‘Apples Never Fall’. This is a family story, very much in the same territory as the novels of Anne Tyler, where the subtle interactions between siblings and parents tell so much while saying so little. But ‘Apples Never Fall’ also cleverly weaves in a genuinely gripping mystery plot which Liane Moriarty resolves very satisfyingly, with painstaking attention to detail: every little incident comes to have some significance as the truth is revealed. The relationships between the four tennis-playing Delaney children and their professional tennis coach parents reminded me a little of Jesse Armstrong’s brilliant black comedy-drama TV series ‘Succession’. This is a dysfunctional family full of regret and recrimination but whose members still love each other deeply. I’m looking forward to reading more Liane Moriarty novels soon.

‘Venomous Lumpsucker’ by Ned Beauman

30 September 2022

Regular readers may remember that I'm a big fan of the young British novelist Ned Beauman. I loved his last book ‘Madness is Better Than Defeat’ (reviewed here in October 2017) which was clever, surprising, baffling, hilarious, and completely bonkers. Ned Beauman’s new novel ‘Venomous Lumpsucker’ (which I’ve just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by John Hastings) is set in the near future and takes on themes of climate change and species extinction. I had forgotten how much I love the absurd, almost poetic nature of the names he invents for characters and, in this book particularly, the Latin names of obscure species, the constant repetition of which (especially when you are listening to the audio book) have a hypnotic quality. In ‘Venomous Lumpsucker’ Beauman takes us to future versions of several Northern European countries which are recognisable but quirkily different from present day. This slightly adjusted parallel world reminded me of the bizarre alternative-reality visions of the UK in the novels of Jasper Fforde (see for example 'Early Riser', reviewed here in October 2018). But Ned Beauman, while often very funny, is more interested in ideas than gags. And his ideas are fascinating as he explores where climate change and current policies might logically take the world. ‘Venomous Lumpsucker’ is a picaresque journey around the Baltic and the cast of eccentric characters that our two protagonists meet along the way made me think of Douglas Adams’ ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’. But I didn’t enjoy this book as much as Ned Beauman’s previous novels. ‘Venomous Lumpsucker’ has too many lengthy interludes to explain its ideas, at the expense of plot, and lacked the comic set-pieces of his earlier books.  If you haven't experienced Ned Beauman yet I would still suggest you start with 'The Teleportation Accident' (reviewed here in July 2013).

'Watch Her Fall' by Erin Kelly

23 September 2022

I hadn’t heard of the thriller writer Erin Kelly before we saw her at the Ampthill Literary Festival earlier this year (reviewed here in April 2022) talking about the process of writing her latest book ‘Watch Her Fall’ during lockdown. I read ‘Watch Her Fall’ on holiday last week and I would strongly recommend it. It’s a psychological thriller about a dancer, which uses ‘Swan Lake’ as its inspiration and structure. The book is very cleverly plotted: it is really hard to see where it is going and Erin Kelly very effectively pulls the rug out from under you on several occasions with some stunning twists. A good twist needs to be both unexpected and believable and it is a sign of the writer’s skill that I now want to read the whole book again to spot the little clues I should have seen the first time around.

Norway

23 September 2022

We enjoyed our holiday in the Norwegian fjords on the P&O cruise ship Iona last week but we were fairly unlucky with the weather, with lots of heavy rain coinciding with our time ashore. It was still good to revisit Stavanger, Olden, Alesund and Bergen but my photos are less spectacular than those from our previous trips to Norway. Iona is the biggest cruise ship we have been on (5,200 passengers) and is in its first season. It’s a beautiful new ship and we really enjoyed the food and the entertainment: it just would have been nice to have a little sunshine!

'Much Ado About Nothing' by William Shakespeare

9 September 2022

It was very strange to be taking our seats to watch a Shakespeare comedy just as we heard the news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. We were at the Curzon Cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see the NT Live broadcast of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ from the National Theatre in London. National Theatre Artistic Director Rufus Norris appeared on screen, wearing a black tie, to announce that the show would go ahead, following a minute’s silence and the playing of the national anthem. It felt like a hand-brake turn to then launch into Simon Godwin’s screwball comedy production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, set in an Art Deco hotel in 1930s Italy. Simon Godwin is one of my favourite theatre directors (see, for example, my review of his National Theatre production of George Bernard Shaw's 'Man and Superman' in May 2015). His ‘Much Ado’ started as very broad comedy, with Katherine Parkinson’s Beatrice and John Heffernan’s Benedick milking every line for laughs. But as the play turned darker the pathos was all the more affecting for its contrast with the earlier pantomime clowning and both the leads were very moving as well as funny. This ensemble performance also included impressive and very believable performances from Eben Figueiredo as Claudio, David Judge as Don John and Phoebe Horn as Margaret. And David Flynn’s blend of dimness, slapstick and a hint of being slightly more knowing than he first appeared made his Dogberry more genuinely funny than usual.
 

Edinburgh Festivals 2022

2 September 2022

It was great to be back at the Edinburgh Festivals last week, for the first time since 2018. It did feel a little less busy than our last pre-pandemic festival, and the streets were strewn with rubbish because of strike action affecting bin collection. Nevertheless, in most aspects it did seem like things were getting back towards normal. We managed to see 27 shows during our week in Edinburgh - almost all of a surprisingly high standard. We saw two brilliant orchestral concerts at the Usher Hall as part of the Edinburgh International Festival: the Czech Philharmonic, conducted by Semyon Bychkov, gave a stunning performance of Mahler’s ‘Symphony No 7’; and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, were incredibly engaging and entertaining in Florence Price’s ‘Symphony No 1’. This symphony, premiered in 1932, was the first work by a Black woman composer to be performed by a major US orchestra and it’s a lovely piece which deserves to be more widely performed. At the Edinburgh International Book Festival we saw the actor Alan Cumming talking about his recent memoir ‘Baggage’. Our pick of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival included fringe veteran comedian Simmon Munnery - on particularly good form this year - and our belated discovery of the wonderfully funny and likeable musical duo Jonny & The Baptists (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdR8e08ng9M). We enjoyed two excellent quintessential fringe one-person biographical plays: Alison Skilbeck’s ‘Mrs Roosevelt Flies to London’ and Tayo Aluko’s ‘Call Mr. Robeson’. Seeing the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh production of ‘The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart’ by David Greig and Wils Wilson in the amazing setting of the University of Edinburgh Playfair Library felt like proper ‘event theatre’ and was great fun. Emily Bruni was brilliant in Matt Wilkinson’s one-woman play ‘Psychodrama’ at the Traverse Theatre. And we rounded off our week in Edinburgh with another outstanding solo performance - Samuel Barnett in ‘Feeling Afraid as If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’, written by Marcelo Dos Santos and directed by Matthew Xia, at the Roundabout at Summerhall. As always Edinburgh in August felt like a cultural top-up which should keep us going for the next year.

'The Hanging Tree' by Ben Aaronovitch

17 August 2022

It was 2018 when I discovered Ben Aaronovitch’s series of novels about London police officer Peter Grant who is seconded to the Metropolitan Police’s secret division of wizards dealing with magic and supernatural crimes. ‘Rivers of London’ (reviewed here in June 2018) was a very entertaining blend of real-world policing and fantasy that was clever, thrilling and very funny. Since then I’ve been gradually working my way through the other books in the series and I’ve just finished the sixth novel ‘The Hanging Tree’, which I read as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Kobna Holdrook-Smith. I think this was the best yet - beginning to bring together the historical backstory of magical practitioners that Peter Grant has been trying to understand, and taking Peter and his wizard boss, Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale, ever closer to their arch-enemy – The Faceless Man. It’s a peculiar combination of crime fiction and fantasy, rooted in a very real contemporary London but forever slipping into the magical demi-monde - and never taking itself too seriously.