Stewart’s memoir is my favourite kind of actors’ autobiography, combining lots of Shakespeare, building from one-liner parts to the title character, then film and TV success, with more theatre all the way through. Add to that an interesting working class Yorkshire childhood, and the fact that he’s a humble and lovely bloke, it was perfect. Read More
Tag: Shakespeare
Five Feat . . . Duos
In my irregular themed look at old posts (previous posts here), this time I’ve picked Duos as the link. Like the musical duos Simon & Garfunkel and Althea & Donna, all the titles in this list feature two names in the title. However, they aren’t all couples, there are friends and colleagues too in this Read More
Herne the Hunter & the Great North Wood
Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert I shall be reviewing this wonderful novel in full for Shiny New Books very soon. But I loved it so much, and it got me thinking so much about it’s themes, locations and references that I needed to write more about it. Let me briefly fill you in on the Read More
20 Books of Summer 21 #3 – A Midsummer’s Novel
Love in Idleness by Amanda Craig This week has seen the summer solstice on the 21st, and Midsummer’s Day on the 24th, so what better time to read a modern take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. ‘Love-in-idleness’ is the name of the flower that Oberon gets Puck to find to squeeze its love potion Read More
Two recent reads – one prose, one poetry
A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale This was our book group read for August, which we discussed earlier this week – and we scored yet another hit! I certainly loved this novel, and although not all in the group quite shared my enthusiasm for it, everyone seemed to enjoy it. Often, when we all Read More
A “perfick” entertainment…
It’s not often that you can successfully combine a phrase and idea from a Shakespeare sonnet – number 18 as it happens. You know the one that begins: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease Read More
Of baby factories, orgy-porgy & Shakespeare – Yes, it’s that dystopia!
This post was republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley This week, having re-visited one dystopian novel I previously read as a teenager (click here), I was able to fit in another of the biggies of the genre in time for our book group discussion Read More
King Lear – the comedy version!
Fool by Christopher Moore It’s a brave man that takes on Shakespeare. It’s an even braver one that takes a tragedy and makes a bawdy comedy of it! Moore has taken a deep breath and re-told King Lear from the Fool’s perspective. Now I’ve seen three different productions of Lear – it’s unrelentingly tragic, nary a chuckle Read More
The Sonnets by Warwick Collins
This is an ambitious novel. The author has taken Shakespeare’s sonnets and created a novel around them, selecting those that fit this narrative – 32 in all, reproduced in full within the text. Although I love Shakespeare’s plays, I’ve never read the sonnets, just knowing a couple of the famous quotes. This novel was a Read More
