It was a dark, but not a stormy, night at the Arts Centre last Wednesday, when four mysterious black-clad ladies entered the room. With flickering candles held aloft, they took their places on the stage for an evening of great hair, literary tropes and another chapter in the ongoing battle between Team Rochester and Team…
The Dark Tower: A Constant Reader worries
Last week’s release of the trailer for Stephen King’s The Dark Tower movie just about broke the internet, with fevered and passionate discussion about just how right or wrong the director had got things. Widely recognised as the most important of King’s works, The Dark Tower series is a ridiculously huge tale, with nearly 4300…
Posh songs and mood lighting
Last night I sat in a beautiful room and listened to a fabulously sung tale about serial killers. It was a brilliant night out and Sweeney Todd: demon barber of Fleet Street was every bit as awesome as I'd hoped it would be. My companion, The Opera Newbie, was also very impressed, and thoroughly enjoyed…
A meaty night out at the opera
I have a friend who’s never been to the opera. Never been to a musical. Actually, possibly never even been to a live theatre performance before. How exciting for him, then, that his very first outing to all of the above will be to Sweeney Todd: the demon barber of Fleet Street. He looked a…
Bonjour French Fest!
No doubt like many of you, I grew up learning French at school. For seven years I practiced saying helpful phrases like Ouvre la fenêtre; and Il y a un autobus. I must have enjoyed it, because I then chose to study French at university. As a consequence, decades later, I can fake the BEST…
Warm patrons of literature
It seems that in the early days of our city's European history, it was very much the fashion for visiting luminaries to make a progression through the country, stopping at every town to meet the locals and be wined and dined. Anthony Trollope, who turns 200 this year, was one such celebrity, and passed through New…
“I have read all your books” – A farewell to PTerry
I met Sir PTerry the same year I met my future husband. It was 1985 and I was 18 years old. I have, it seems, spent my entire adult life with him. Which may explain why I am very thankful that I have today off, and am sitting in a darkened room and erratically weeping-while-laughing…
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