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Category: News

Celebrating Pride

In Pride month, Sally Minogue reminds us of a time when writers couldn’t easily be out and proud. A couple of weeks ago I was wandering through the cool paths of the Cimitero Acattolico – the Protestant Cemetery – in Rome, with fellow-blogger and friend Stefania Ciocia as my companion and guide. It was our… Read More

Sumer is icumen in – finally.

 Sally Minogue reflects on evocations of Summer by some Wordsworth authors. ‘Sumer is icumen in –/ Lhude sing! cuccu.’ Not by one of Wordsworth’s authors, but by one of that large and motley crew, Anon., this early 13th century lyric is still widely recognized because it was set to music and is still sung today…. Read More

Great Expectations: reduced imaginations

Sally Minogue and Stephen Carver give a final overview of the BBC One adaptation of Dickens’s novel. The first episode of Steven Knight’s adaptation of Great Expectations was a pleasant surprise to both Stephen Carver and me. Stephen will speak in the later part of this blog; but for both of us, I think, this… Read More

‘Moments before the Great Corruption’ – Great Expectations

‘Moments before the Great Corruption’ – Great Expectations Episode One Review After all the hype, the interviews, and the extended trailer, I must confess I was expecting more from last night’s pilot episode of Steven Knight’s new adaptation of Great Expectations. This is, after all, ‘The Dickens tale as you’ve never seen it before’ according… Read More

Filming Great Expectations: Part 2

PART TWO: ‘As being calc’lated to lead to larks!’ It was inevitable that Great Expectations would eventually find its way to television, which it first did in a heavily truncated version performed live over two episodes of the NBC dramatic showcase series Robert Montgomery Presents in 1954. This was a prestige show for its time,… Read More

Filming Great Expectations: Part 1

Part One: ‘We made everything larger than life…’ This year, the arrival of spring will be accompanied by what promises from the trailer to be a radical reimagining of Dicken’s immortal coming of age story Great Expectations, written by Peaky Blinders creator Stephen Knight. This will be Knight’s second Dickens screenplay, following A Christmas Carol… Read More

Try a Little Tenderness: Lady Chatterley’s Lover

‘Try a Little Tenderness’: as Lady Chatterley’s Lover comes to Netflix, Sally Minogue looks at both novel and adaptation. I always labour at the same thing, to make the sex relation valid and precious, instead of shameful. And this novel is the furthest I’ve gone. To me it is beautiful and tender and frail as… Read More

Wuthering Heights: Emma Rice’s production reviewed

Holding fast with Emma Rice’s Wuthering Heights: Stefania Ciocia embraces the power of Nature and of artistic adventures. I remember the first time I read Wuthering Heights. I remember it for all the wrong reasons. I was still in high-school, and the long summer holidays afforded me ample time to read. With classes over from… Read More

The supernatural fiction of Edith Wharton

Steve Carver discovers the supernatural fiction of Pulitzer Prize-winning author. The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts is the house that Edith Wharton built. She designed it as an elegant retreat from New York society in which she could write and her mentally ill husband, Teddy, could hopefully find some peace. The couple lived within its white… Read More