Last weekend our friend Dr Billy Smart circulated by e-mail to a handful of colleagues a touching tale of a second-hand book. Billy was Research Officer for the excellent and just-completed research project The History of Forgotten Television Drama in the more
Among many other excellent activities, my friend and colleague Luke McKernan, who is Lead Curator, News and Moving Image at the British Library, curates the invaluable Picturegoing website. As the site succinctly explains, 'Picturegoing is an ongoing survey reproducing eyewitness more
If you're even a semi-regular reader of this blog you will know that I am fascinated by early television, and especially by television before World War Two. What a delight then to discover online an open access issue of more
The 1960 documentary Primary is something of a tonic in a media world dominated, unaccountably and unacceptably, by the toxic D*n*ld Tr*mp. Here's how the excellent Richard Brody described the film recently for The New Yorker:
The modern documentary wasmore
I was sorry to learn of the death at the weekend of Brian Rix, whose BBC obituary can be found here. His campaigning for Mencap and other charities has been rightly lauded in the press, and there has been a more
I continue to lament that journalistic criticism about television in Britain today remains, with a few honourable exceptions, pretty poor. But if you know where to look, there is much rich writing about the medium's history - and I thought today I more
So for those of you who have even just a passing interest in films about the arts, this is GREAT. The online service BFIPlayer today launches The Arts on Film, a collection of more than a hundred feature more
In just over a fortnight I jet off to Brisbane for a week to take up the Lloyd Davis Memorial Fellowship at the University of Queensland. I’m honoured by the invitation and very much looking forward to visiting a city more
As you may have noticed I am fascinated by the developing forms of 'event cinema'. I even have a go at producing some from time to time, including the recent Almeida Theatre Live: Richard III. Live theatre, operas, concerts and the more
On Wednesday the Guardian reported that the Edinburgh Festival was offering a refund to opera lovers who had purchased tickets for Christophe Honoré’s production of Così fan tutte (above). First seen at Aix-en-Provence earlier this month, the production is apparently a “provocative more