mon 09/12/2024

biography

First Person: Marc Burrows on getting to know Sir Terry Pratchett

In a very real sense, Terry Pratchett taught me how to write. I first came across his work when I was 12 years old, in the early 90s.My parents had been given copies of two of the earliest books in his Discworld series, Guards! Guards! and The...

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Fiona Maddocks: Goodbye Russia - Rachmaninoff in Exile review - an affectionate biographical portrait

In 1917, in the face of the Bolshevik revolution closing in on his country estate, Rachmaninoff fled Russia, never to return. He was 44, at his peak as composer, pianist and conductor, but spent the rest of his life in exile in the US and...

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Mad About the Boy review - entertaining cradle-to-grave Noel Coward documentary

Devoted fans may not learn anything that new about Noel Coward from Barnaby Thompson’s documentary Mad About the Boy, but they will doubtless see some new things. And those who know “the Master” only from his early plays, hardy perennials these...

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Loving Highsmith review - documentary focused on the writer's lighter side

Since her death in 1995, Patricia Highsmith has prompted three biographies, screeds of often conflicting psychological analysis and now this documentary from the Swiss-born Eva Vitija. We hear the director say at the outset that by reading her then-...

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Berlusconi, Southwark Playhouse Elephant review - curious new musical satire

One wonders if Ricky Simmonds and Simon Vaughan pondered long over their debut musical’s title. Silvio might invite hubristic comparisons with Evita (another unlikely political leader), but Berlusconi feels a little Hamilton – too soon?...

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The Fabelmans review - Spielberg remembers with wit and wonder

Spielberg sometimes directed The Fabelmans through a film of tears, as he recreated his cinema’s origins. Lightly fictionalising his own family history, it turns an autobiographical key to previous films, while being fundamentally different to...

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10 Questions for Bruce Lindsay, biographer of Ivor Cutler

Ivor Cutler: A Life Outside the Sitting Room by Bruce Lindsay, is the first full-length biography of the Glasgow-born poet, author, performer and songwriter. The book will be published on the centenary of Cutler’s birth, 15 January 2023. Cutler...

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William Boyd: The Romantic review - historical soap opera, anyone?

Writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1814, Francis Jeffrey began his review of Wordsworth’s The Excursion with a provocative denunciation of romanticism: “This will never do,” he complained. “It bears no doubt the stamp of the author’s heart and fancy...

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Alyn Shipton: On Jazz - A Personal Journey - digging jazz deeply and musically

“I suppose you’re going to ask all the usual questions...?” When Keith Jarrett was interviewed by Alyn Shipton for the very first time, the pianist, who could often be tetchy in such situations, clearly had low expectations. Deftly, Shipton asked...

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Laura Beatty: Looking for Theophrastus review - adventures in psychobiography

Laura Beatty is a kind of Shirley Valentine figure in contemporary English literature. A decade and a half ago she published an astonishing debut novel entitled Pollard about female emancipation from the strictures of English life. In that story her...

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Broken Wings, Charing Cross Theatre review - new musical fails to fly

Somewhere in the world right now, one can hear Mister Mister's AOR hit, "Broken Wings" on an MOR radio station, capturing mid-Eighties synth pop perfectly. Few listeners will know that its inspiration is a 1912 autobiographical novel by Lebanese-...

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Belfast review - coming of age amid the terror of the Troubles

For all his achievements as actor and director, Kenneth Branagh isn’t immediately thought of as a screenwriter, despite his multiple Shakespeare adaptations. That may all change with Belfast, because Branagh’s deeply personal account (he’s both...

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