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.