April 21, 2022 This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music, edited by Sinéad Gleeson and Kim Gordon Review by Liz Dexter This is a collection of writing by women about music, mainly about women in music, put together by visual artist,…
April 5, 2022 Truly Madly by Stephen Galloway Reviewed by Harriet ‘Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and the Romance of the Century’ is the subtitle of this joint biography by Stephen Galloway. The…
December 9, 2021 Hey Hi Hello: Five decades of Pop Culture from Britain’s Broadcasting DJ Pioneer by Annie Nightingale Review by Liz Dexter Nightingale was the first female DJ on Radio One, having been a journalist and live TV presenter before then and…
October 26, 2021 Raising Laughter: How the Sitcom Kept Britain Smiling in the ‘70s by Robert Sellers Review by Annabel I watched an awful lot of telly in the 1970s, my formative teenage years. It was thus inevitable that between the…
September 23, 2021 Star Turns by Tim Walker Review by Annabel Tim Walker’s name may ring a bell, particularly with broadsheet readers. During his career as a journalist, he has written for…
September 2, 2021 Dead Famous by Greg Jenner Review by Basil Ransome-Davies Andy Warhol (if it was he, who disowned the soft impeachment) was kidding when he said that in the future…
August 17, 2021 Clothes… and other things that matter by Alexandra Shulman Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth The last item of clothing that I bought was a pair of pink dungarees from M&S children’s department nearly two…
July 13, 2021 Beeswing: Fairport, Folk Rock and Finding My Voice 1967-75 by Richard Thompson Review by Annabel There are still people who doubtless haven’t heard of Richard Thompson. To those of us in the know though, he is…
July 9, 2021 Nomadland: From Book to Screen By Diana Cheng It first started with journalist Jessica Bruder camping in a tent then later in a van for three winters in the…
July 6, 2021 Hamilton and Me: An Actor’s Journal by Giles Terera Reviewed by Harriet How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore And a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spotIn the Caribbean…
June 29, 2021 A Stinging Delight by David Storey Reviewed by Harriet Back in 2004 I had the great pleasure of meeting David Storey – rugby player, painter, novelist, poet, playwright and filmmaker…
March 4, 2021 She Come By It Natural by Sarah Smarsh Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies Forty years ago I spent some time on the motel strip at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to do some hiking…
December 3, 2020 It’s the End of the World by Adam Roberts Reviewed by Annabel I learned a new word this year. ‘Eschatology’ is defined as ‘the part of theology concerned with death, judgement, and the…
October 20, 2020 The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes, edited by Gyles Brandreth Reviewed by Harriet This, obviously, is a book for those who like a good theatrical anecdote. I certainly do, and have been privy to…
February 13, 2020 Veronica by Veronica Lake Reviewed by Harriet I wonder how many people today have even heard of Veronica Lake. There was a time, though a relatively brief one,…
October 29, 2019 Home Work by Julie Andrews with Emma Walton Hamilton Review by Annabel Julie Andrews’s first volume of memoir, Home, told us of her childhood, growing up during the war, and…
April 30, 2019 The Kindness of Strangers by Salka Viertel Reviewed by Lizzy Siddal There are times when an autobiography by someone you’ve never heard of just slots into your current reading stream. Such…
January 17, 2019 Dramatic Exchanges, selected & edited by Daniel Rosenthal Reviewed by Harriet When we think of London’s National Theatre, most of us will envisage the great concrete complex on the South Bank of…
November 13, 2018 ‘Broadsword Calling Danny Boy’: On Where Eagles Dare by Geoff Dyer Reviewed by Annabel Being a child of the ’60s and ’70s, I grew up with thrillers. We read loads of them: my father still…
October 18, 2018 Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography by Eric Idle Reviewed by Annabel Eric Idle is perhaps the most elusive of the Pythons. He’s the one who wrote on his own, the one whose…
October 11, 2018 Performing Hamlet by Jonathan Croall Reviewed by Harriet Back in 2015 I wrote a review for Shiny of Jonathan Croall’s Performing King Lear, a wonderfully well-researched survey of performances…
September 13, 2018 Apprenticeship by Peter Gill Reviewed by Harriet Born in Cardiff in 1939, Peter Gill is a distinguished theatre director and playwright. But he started his career as an…
July 26, 2018 Room to Dream by Kristine McKenna and David Lynch Reviewed by Harriet David Lynch’s films are certainly not for everybody. Almost all of them are strange, dark, and increasingly hard to pin down…
January 23, 2018 Unaccompanied Minor by Alexander Newley Review by Annabel The children of celebrity couples inevitably have a hard time growing up, especially when their parents split. You need only think…
July 21, 2017 Excessively Diverted: Austen Books into Movies By Diana Cheng To wrap up a week of Jane Austen celebration, here’s an annotated list of adaptations of her works on both the…
