I wanted to ring my friend Eleanor the other day after a show. Some reaction from the audience had surprised me, and she was always good at interpreting these things in a way that was useful for future shows. It was then I remembered that there would be no Eleanor at the end of the… Continue reading Five lessons I learned from a theatrical great
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In April 2020, the Norfolk artist Jayne Ivimey took to waking every day while it was still dark, gathering up her drawing materials and a thermos, and driving to the nearby Felbrigg Wood where she would watch the dawn rise. She would stay there every day until dusk, and kept up her visits for the… Continue reading The Therapy of Trees
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‘The illusion of biography is that real people are not perishable and that they can be restored,’ writes Roger Lewis in the opening pages of his soon-to-be published biography of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor Erotic Vagrancy. ‘But people are perishable. They come to an end, go out of fashion, require exegesis… The nearer you… Continue reading Richard, Elizabeth, Roger and Jake: lives pinned upon the page
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A couple of weeks ago, Georgie Grier, a comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe, posted a plaintive message on Twitter (or whatever its Musky name is now – Cross, is it?). There had been an audience of one at her show the previous night, she reported sadly, closing with a tearful ‘It’s fine, isn’t it? It’s… Continue reading My one-woman show: what I learned in Edinburgh
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It is odd to be knocked sideways by the death of someone who is 100 years old, and yet Ronnie Blythe’s departure last weekend has come as a shock. The friendship of Ronnie was compared by his friend a fellow-writer Roger Deakin to an old oak – something that always seemed to have been there,… Continue reading Ronnie Blythe: the death of a tribal storyteller
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Just now and then, life throws up a character who turns out to be a sort of Rorschach Test of public taste – someone who, like the famous inkblot, can prompt reactions which reveal deeper psychological truths. Usually these Rorschach characters are obvious – Johnson, Trump, Nadine Dorries – but sometimes there are surprise candidates.… Continue reading We Need to Talk About Meghan. What exactly did she do wrong?
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As the World Cup unfolds, we hear every day about how football spills into the wider world – into politics, into the way people think and feel. It’s a symbol of something, we’re told, or a metaphor for something else. It’s far more significant than 22 men chasing a ball around. Normally I would be… Continue reading The moral harm of Michael Beale
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The working life of a professional writer is not exciting. You write. You read what you have written. You sigh. You try again until, with luck, something passable appears on the page or screen before you. Now and then – again, with luck – you get published. Rows or bust-ups in the little world of… Continue reading ‘Play nicely, children,’ said the Society of Authors …. They didn’t.
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If writers and musicians have a token bird that symbolises what they do, it is not, however much they may like it to be, a nightingale, a skylark or a peacock. It’s a magpie. We are all, while writing, scavenging around for something shiny and brilliant from the past to take back to our own… Continue reading TIP FOR SONGWRITERS – YOU’VE GOT TO PICK A POCKET OR TWO
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The words in this headline were emailed to me a few years back, shortly after the death of Bob Hope. At the time, I was writing a twice-weekly opinion column for the Independent, and I had devoted one of these to the memory of the grinning funny man. It was not a fond eulogy. I… Continue reading ‘YOU, SIR, ARE AN ABSOLUTE SHIT’
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