Jez Butterworth’s play, Jerusalem, has been universally praised by critics, and it recently won  the best actor Olivier award for its lead, Mark Rylance. And justifiably so: it is a stunning and...

I read with sadness of the death of the Hollywood producer, writer and director John Hughes on August 6th. I then spent the weekend indulging my nostalgic streak by viewing his three most important...

On the day of our greatest loss of life in Afghanistan, I was talking to a very senior British Army officer about improvised explosive devices and I asked the question: "In order to reduce the...

To even the balance after the earlier post on this blog comparing Natasha Richardson with Jade Goody, I thought I would write a very brief actor's appreciation of a single, excellent piece of...

Mark Rowlands's book on what it meant to have a wolf as his constant companion is both a striking and a frustratingly limited work of philosophy

Sitting in rainy Seville, researching for a book on bullfighting (see my blog here), I have been out of the loop on the world of theatre and film until the Prospect office sent me a hilarious...

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What happens when it goes wrong? Despite the vast amount of coverage of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, it is remarkable how little of it directs the finger of blame, moral, legal or...

Bullfighting is seen by many as cruel. But it is not merely a gaudy circus spectacle; at its best it is an art form. Can aesthetics justify the suffering of the animal?

[caption id="attachment_2240" align="alignleft" width="211" caption="The Pendulum - A Tragedy of 1900 Vienna"][/caption] Whilst researching for