These past few months I have spent a good deal of time in Stratford-upon-Avon, where I have been exploring further collaborations with the Royal Shakespeare Company. That's how I know that many of the company's leading lights, including artistic director more
So even if you've already seen this, it is worth another watch - it's a brilliant marketing coup for Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum which re-opens this week after a decade of closure. A detail of the painting which it recreates - Rembrandt's more
I am currently watching more television series drama than I have for a long time. Each new episode of Broadchurch on ITV and of both The Good Wife and Nashville on More4 demands a viewing, and Mad Men S6 is just about more
First day at work for new BBC Director General Lord Hall. His morning e-mail to all staff is here. Advice? Well, nurture the arts, please, and perhaps especially performance on television, but other than that I will leave more
The past week has been particularly rewarding for those of us who follow the writings on film of David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. To start with, The Criterion Collection released the opening (embedded below) of a video essay about more
In the diary next week are two Hamlets. On Monday afternoon I am introducing the 1964 television Hamlet at Elsinore at BFI Southbank, and then on Wednesday I have a ticket to the Royal Shakespeare Company's new more
Just after I had taken the photos above and below of these aged newspaper clippings I tossed them into a recycling sack. They followed hundreds - thousands - of others that had lain in piles in my bedsits and studies more
The Screen Plays season of television adaptations of Jacobean tragedies begins tonight at BFI Southbank. We open with a remarkable 1965 production of Thomas Middleton's play from 1621 Women Beware Women, which I have written about more
Links... is perhaps a little light this weekend, at least in this iteration. I have returned to my college for a gaudy, to which all those who started there between 1974 and 1977 are invited. Such a reunion is held more
I have written before about NT Live - the National Theatre's immensely successful live to cinema broadcasts - including about their showings of Hamlet, Frankenstein and Phedre, as well as general pieces here and more