Reviews of books, film, theatre and TV
I don’t generally review film and TV here, but I have a problem with Amazon’s Rings of Power: Three Hours of Setup. Three hours in, and I haven’t seen a single Ring of Power. Just four entirely disconnected plot strands going nowhere. Slowly.
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Veteran BBC presenter Michael Mosley invites your to ‘Read’ Just One Thing. This episode of Mosely’s light-weight, feel-good, pop-lifestyle advice show promotes the benefits of reading fiction. …
Birth of the British Novel is back on BBC4’s freeview TV channel.
Author Henry Hitchings explores the lives and works of Britain’s radical and pioneering 18th century novelists who, in just 80 years, established all the literary genres we recognise today. It was a golden age of creativity led by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney and William Godwin, amongst others. Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy are novels that still sparkle with audacity and innovation… …
The History of the Future is a ten-part documentary on BBC4 Extra.
Juliet Gardiner looks at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future, and what these visions say about the pre-occupations of the time.
Or as I like to call it – Where’s My Jetpack? …
The BBC’s Our World thread continues with Crossing Steinbeck’s America.
As America grapples with a deepening recession, white-collar workers lose their homes in increasing numbers. Paul Mason travels the country down the same road as John Steinbeck’s migrants in The Grapes of Wrath. Visiting homeless shelters along the way, he unexpectedly finds a growing number of middle-class people who have ended up on the street. …
“Irving Finkel collects ordinary people’s lives. He hoards their life stories in diary form and has amassed a collection of hundreds of handwritten volumes. But Irving has a problem. What should he do with them? The diaries are crammed onto shelves and piled up in corners of his small office. Irving’s day job is Assistant Keeper in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum.”
The Man Who Saves Life Stories was one of those little gems that Radio 4 produces; the story of a museum curator and British eccentric who fell into collecting diaries and is now trying to house that collection as a ‘people’s history’ thing. …
BBC Radio 4, Front Row Hay Festival debate: “Do we publish too many books?”
Podcast Fri, 29 May 2015, duration 29 mins
From the Hay Literary Festival, BBC Radio 4’s arts show Front Row asks the question “Do we publish too many books?” In a lively panel discussion, Samira Ahmed heads a panel of publishers, journalists and authors: Philip Jones editor of the trade journal The Bookseller, Crystal Mahey-Morgan Digital Sales and Marketing Director at Zed Books, Alexandra Pringle, the group editor in chief of Bloomsbury and Ali Sparks author of 41 books for children. …
Review: Front Row – Do we publish too many books?Read More »