Because I want to make this point in as many places and ways as I can: here is the list of landlord Conservative MPs who voted against making homes habitable under the Homes and Planning Bill. On the list is Nadhim Zahawi, the millionaire Tory MP for Stratford-on-Avon, who during the expenses scandal was revealed…
The finishing line of my DPhil is apparently in sight. I’ve rewritten and deleted this paragraph a lot, obviously, but the gist is that I have to send my Faculty a schedule for completion, and my supervisors got quite excited. There is now a schedule. My mouth is quite dry. Meanwhile, I am obviously researching…
Right. Take a look at these tweets. Watch this space tomorrow morning for news about #RSCWinter13 — The RSC (@TheRSC) January 22, 2013 Some VERY exciting news coming from the RSC tomorrow!!! There will be some smiles on faces, so there will! — dusthouse (@dusthouse) January 22, 2013 and in reply to the above…. @dusthouse…
Read more David Tennant back at the Royal Shakespeare Company?
Snow and Snow by Ted Hughes Snow is sometimes a she, a soft one. Her kiss on your cheek, her finger on your sleeve In early December, on a warm evening, And you turn to meet her, saying “It”s snowing!” But it is not. And nobody”s there. Empty and calm is the air.…
Marcellus: […]Some say that ever, ‘gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow’d and so gracious is…
My review of Jane Thomas’s Shakespeare’s Shrine: The Bard’s Birthplace and the Invention of Stratford-upon-Avon was published in the 18 November issue of the Oxonian Review. You can read it online here. Apart from the legitimate book-reviewing part, there’s a healthy dollop about the time your own correspondent was a guide in the aforementioned Birthplace…
(Jessie White got in touch and asked me to take part in the Happy Birthday, Shakespeare! project, to which I also contributed last year. I was delighted to comply… albeit belatedly.) Happy Birthday, Shakespeare! Shakespeare is now 448, the subject of a World Shakespeare Festival, a Cultural Olympiad, and a multi-billion pound industry spanning theatre,…
On Sunday, I returned to Oxford from the Britgrad 2011 conference, where I was part of the Victorian Theatre Practices panel with the fragrant Jem Bloomfield. Jem was talking about mid- and late-Victorian productions of The Duchess of Malfi, while my paper was entitled ‘”Marriage of Orlando and Rosalind”: Madge Kendal and Victorian Shakespeare”. The…
#hbws: my post on how Shakespeare's affected my life, for http://www.happybirthdayshakespeare.com
I’ve followed the Arts Council England cuts today with deep sadness and anger. Our society – not the Big Society, but the place(s) we really live – is under threat, and in this time of economic attack from our coalition overlords, the arts’ position is especially contested. There are lots of issues here, most of…
