Category: Film, TV & Radio

For Starters

There are two great American novels narrated through the eyes of children – both girls, as it happens. One is To Kill a Mockingbird and the other? Here’s how it starts.

Barry Lyndon

Cast your mind back a few years – to 1844, when Thackeray’s The Luck of Barry Lyndon came out. I may have started it years ago but I’m pretty sure that I got bogged down and didn’t finish reading it. Stanley Kubrick read it all and his 1975 film eclipses the book to such an… Continue reading Barry Lyndon

First Night of the Proms

The Proms kicked off last night with an unscheduled piece – La Marseillaise. The Prommers were of course already standing but the rest of the packed Albert Hall rose to their feet for this mark of respect to France. 

Le Corbeau

Alan Furst writes atmospheric espionage novels, usually set in WW II. His first successful book was Night Soldiers, published in 1988. It is excellent but it left him with a problem, one he shares with Simon Raven, whose Brother Cain was published in 1959.

Love and Friendship

Going to the cinema is more of a winter activity but recently it has been so wet in London that I went to see Love and Friendship, a film written and directed by Whit Stillman. 

Tally Ho!

Let’s take a break but not a Kit-Kat; let’s go to the movies. Here are a few of my favourite films: The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The African Queen (1951),  The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), The Night of the Iguana (1964) and The Dead (1987).

Local Hero

This is a photograph of Sergeant-Major Champion in full dress uniform. James Champion was born and died in Hammersmith and he came to my notice when I saw his headstone in Margravine Cemetery. It was put up last month although he died in 1904 and the Cemetery closed for new burials in 1951.

Caroline

Once upon a time, on a dark and stormy night in the North Sea – so long ago there were no wind farms or oil rigs – a funny looking boat bobbed around.

And Now The Shipping Forecast

Peter Jefferson read the Shipping Forecast on the BBC for more than forty years so it’s likely that he has lulled you to sleep a few times.

Peaky Bloomers

Peaky Blinders is a BBC crime drama series set in Birmingham immediately after World War I. It must be good – it’s on its third series. I’ve not seen it (maybe a good box set for the winter) but Dr Henry Sanford has.