In 1958 Shelagh Delaney sent her first play, A Taste of Honey, to theatre director Joan Littlewood – along with a covering letter that at one point describes her ‘enraptured frustration at the thought of what I’m going to do’. Despite its beguiling self-deprecation, she had already written for the Salford Players and had been … Continue reading Shelagh Delaney: a poem set to jazz
Victorian visions take a sinister turn in the progressive 1970s “She swished the curtain as she spoke in order to see better, and for the peering Lucy the light was suddenly changed so that instead of the dark garden she saw only a reflection of the room behind her and her own face. It had … Continue reading Come Back, Lucy: Pamela Sykes’ forgotten classic
Alison Uttley’s 1938 novel ‘A Traveller in Time’, adapted for TV in 1978 by Diana De Vere Cole and directed by Dorothea Brooking This adaptation brought the setting into the present day: Diana De Vere Cole did a neat job, focusing on Penelope’s emotions as she slips in and out of a Tudor world (cutting … Continue reading A Mind for Magick Pt 3: ‘A Traveller in Time’ on screen
Midwinter reading and children’s classics: four homes that house the veil between the past and the present Four books and four houses: all involve travel into past centuries and immersion in history. They do so from a setting which represents ‘home’, albeit a temporary one: the protagonists are all visitors, but the issue of belonging … Continue reading A Mind for Magick – part 2
Why we look to classics of midwinter literature in the dark months One genre of children’s literature is master of ceremonies at this time of year: those books we turn to in the hope they will throw wintry sunlight and lazy candle-flame on the mind. Christmas is traditionally a time for ghost stories, but these … Continue reading A Mind for Magick
Contexts for chaos, imagination past and present: “Memoirs of a Survivor” (1981) Somewhere in this blog I wrote about trying to capture the things I responded to as a child, the things which grew and developed into the portals of the imagination that have stayed with me, and how they shapeshifted over time, with different … Continue reading Frosty winds made moan
For anyone still moved by other times & places – a ramble on their role in the everyday Regular readers (both of you) will know I’ve tried to explore something which would draw together all the eclectic strands of those things which capture my imagination. They extend into my domestic life: each time I made … Continue reading Motifs in mind: daydreaming and escapist inspiration
The jury is out these days on D H Lawrence, and yet he was as much a part of the Swinging Sixties as Mary Quant or Christine Keeler, and it’s quite entertaining to see them in the same sentence. Rightly so it would seem, as there are those who think the trial over the publication … Continue reading Writers in covers: D H Lawrence
It’s heartening to see John Schlesinger’s 1967 film of Far From the Madding Crowd getting a well-deserved reappraisal, with some fairly glowing reviews for the restored version released in cinemas this Spring: “One of the most entrancing and elemental landscape films ever shot in these isles, thanks in large part to Nicolas Roeg’s peerless cinematography … Continue reading Properly rediscovered: 1967’s Far from the Madding Crowd
In exploring the mindset of a figure clouded by legend, this Swiss-made retelling has a beautiful atmosphere. It uses shore, mountain and forest to depict Mary’s psychological terrain; puppet effigies twitch in firelight with folk-ritual precision, and Elizabeth is a constant presence, never made flesh – she is paint or puppet or a glimpse of … Continue reading Firelit effigies: Thomas Imbach’s ‘Mary Queen of Scots’ (2013)
WHISTLES IN THE WIND 