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We shall recommend novels by Julia Barnes, Johnathon Coe, Lindsay Davis, Natalie Haynes, Ian McEwan, Joseph O’Connor and Preti Taneja amongst others as suggested reading for winter evenings. We [...]

The Royal Shakespeare Company is ensuring that an oft-neglected text gets considerable measure of attention by making it the only Shakespeare play that they will be presenting over the Christmas [...]

On the day of what would have been George Eliot’s 200th birthday (had she lived so long) we shall tackle what is generally agreed to be her finest novel. Shall we be tempted to endorse Noël [...]

Is this the oddest pairing we have ever offered? IN the week in which Welsh National Opera visits Birmingham Hippodrome we shall offer a context for appreciation of the piece they will be [...]

In the first half of the twentieth century, a pioneering band of administrators and civil servants organised a series of schemes to extend public access to the arts. In village halls, [...]

After exploring in recent years, the highways of J.B. Priestley’s immense literary achievement, we shall range amongst the by-ways to commend some of his perhaps undeservedly less well-known [...]

Birmingham is home to arguably the finest collection of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world. The city was also one of the engines of science and industry in nineteenth century. These two sides of [...]

Is this the only play about a cinematographer? We first saw Terry Johnson’s play when it premièred at Hampstead Theatre two years ago. That production (with Robert Lindsay reprising his [...]

Tony Williams taught English in secondary schools from 1969 to 1997 when he took early retirement. From 1999 to 2006 he was Joint General Secretary of The International Dickens Fellowship and a [...]

No sooner are we asked to present a day on Ibsen than Nottingham Playhouse announces a production of an intensely topical play that has its title vigorously wielded without irony on both sides of [...]