memoir
Deborah Orr: Motherwell review - memoir, but so much moreSaturday, 18 January 2020
Published in the year following Orr’s death at the age of 57, Motherwell is an analysis of the author’s childhood in Motherwell, on the outskirts of Glasgow, and her first steps into adulthood. However, while this book is ostensibly about Deborah... Read more... |
Joanna Cannon: Breaking and Mending review - can you feel too much?Sunday, 06 October 2019
Joanna Cannon was a wild card. She left school at 15 with one O-level and after various jobs, including working as a barmaid, she was given a place at medical school. The admissions professor accepted a wild card a year, someone whose path had been... Read more... |
Vic Marks: Original Spin review - trouble in TauntonSunday, 21 July 2019
In cricket, timing is everything. Played a fraction early and that silky cover drive finds a batsman out to lunch as the ball cannons into his stumps. Too late and it dribbles uselessly to mid-off.Ex-cricketer turned journalist Vic Marks has made it... Read more... |
David Hepworth: A Fabulous Creation review - how vinyl soothed our souls and defined our beingSunday, 17 March 2019
Record Store Day is now a fixture on the calendar, a key element in “the vinyl revival”, and this year – 13 April – it’s possible to buy a special Rega Planar Plus 1 Turntable, one of a limited edition of 500 costing £299. A novelty to many – but... Read more... |
Michael Peppiatt: The Existential Englishman review - we'll always have ParisSunday, 27 January 2019
In this memoir, subtitled “Paris Among the Artists”, Michael Peppiatt presents his 1960s self as an absorbed, irritatingly immature and energetically heterosexual young man let loose in Paris to find himself (or not). The young art historian,... Read more... |
Dramatic Exchanges review - a brilliant slice of theatre historySunday, 11 November 2018
Dramatic Exchanges is a dazzling array of correspondence, stretching over more than a century, between National Theatre people. It’s a chronologically arranged anthology that acts as a history of the institution, from its appearance as an idea... Read more... |
Michael Caine: Blowing the Bloody Doors Off review - an actor's handbook, annotated by experienceSunday, 28 October 2018
What a charmer! An irresistible combination of diffidence and confidence, Michael Caine is so much more than Alfie, and this surprising book, his second after a delightful autobiography, is multi-layered, filled with tips for acting, on stage and... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: The Years, review - time’s flowSunday, 05 August 2018
“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The students are mostly girls between fifteen and sixteen and... Read more... |
Fun Home, Young Vic review - a simply sublime musical memoirThursday, 28 June 2018
It seems only too fitting that David Lan’s luminous reign at the Young Vic should draw to a close with this bold, creatively thrilling international import. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s Tony-winning musical, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2013,... Read more... |
Sarah Langford: In Your Defence review - messy livesSunday, 24 June 2018
When Sarah Langford goes to work, she puts on warpaint and wig and acts. But she is not an actor. She defends those who might or might not be guilty of the crimes with with they’ve been charged, or she acts on behalf of those bringing prosecutions... Read more... |
My Name is Lucy Barton, Bridge Theatre review - Laura Linney is luminous in a flawless productionThursday, 07 June 2018
In Harold Pinter’s memory play Old Times, one of the women declares, “There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.” Elizabeth Strout’s heroine in My Name Is Lucy Barton is in the reverse position. When it comes to... Read more... |
Clancy Sigal: The London Lover review - a merry prankster's very long weekendSunday, 20 May 2018
To readers of newspapers and magazines, the name Clancy Sigal will be very familiar, probably as a film reviewer. Addicted to writing, and to his old Smith Corona #3 portable typewriter, “Hemingway’s preferred machine”, he was a version of the man... Read more... |
