Drama
1967 and all that
As you may have spotted, the BBC is marking the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of male homosexuality with an…
Impure thoughts
Spoiler alerts aren’t normally required for reviews of Shakespeare — but perhaps I’d better issue one before saying that in…
That’s entertainment
The big returning show of the week began with servants laying out the silverware at a large country house in…
Class of ’83
No one remembers this now but there really was a period, not so long ago, when the Eighties were universally…
Shakespeare at his freest and most exuberant: The Wars of the Roses reviewed
The RSC’s The Wars of the Roses solves a peculiar literary problem. Shakespeare’s earliest history plays are entitled Henry VI…
The Last Kingdom is BBC2’s solemnly cheesy answer to Game of Thrones
The opening caption for The Last Kingdom (BBC2, Thursday) read ‘Kingdom of Northumbria, North of England, 866 AD’. In fact,…
Socialist Cluedo
What a load of manipulative, hysterical tosh is An Inspector Calls. It wasn’t a work with which I was familiar…
His dark materials
Will Gore talks to the playwright who has brought Jimmy Savile’s crimes to the stage
Teenage kicks
Journalist, novelist, broadcaster and figurehead of British feminism Caitlin Moran, who writes most of the Times and even had her…
State of the arts
The season of cringe-making acceptance speeches at arts awards ceremonies is nearly over, thank heavens. But it hasn’t passed without…
The long goodbye
In January 1958, the British government began working on the significantly titled Operation Hope Not: its plans for what to…
Net effect
Channel 4’s Cyberbully (Thursday), written by Ben Chanan and David Lobatto, turned out to be a brilliantly gripping drama, even…
Parenting
‘Not still War and Peace!’ exclaimed my husband on 1 January during the all-day Tolstoy splurge on Radio 4. In reality…
Voices of the world
‘Don’t take it for granted,’ she warned. ‘It’s one of the few places where you can hear diverse voices, different…
Is a new art form being born on Woman’s Hour?
In a comic-strip cartoon, beads of water apparently radiating outward from the head of one of the characters indicate embarrassment.…
