Subject to change at the drop of a hat
Currently reading: Erika Johansen’s The Fate of the Tearling
Just finished reading: Dave Duncan’s The Living God
Most recent re-reading: Dave Duncan’s Man of his Word/Handful of Men octology
Recent reading: Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed, Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End, Patrick Gale’s A Place called Winter, Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl, Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time
Looking forward to reading: Jo Baker’s The Picture Book, Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall, Tove Janson’s The Summer Book, Alan Johnson's autobiography This Boy, Kirsty Logan’s The Gracekeepers, Andrew Miller's Pure, Ross Raisin’s A Natural, SF Said’s Phoenix
Some recent memorable theatre: (Bolton Octagon’s) Tenant of Wildfell Hall, (Glenda Jackson in) King Lear, (Greg Doran’s production of) The Tempest, (Billy Pearce in Bradford Alhambra's) Peter Pan, The Glass Menagerie (Duke of York's)
Looking forward to watching at theatre: Antony and Cleopatra, A Christmas Carol, Cinderella, Coriolanus, Dido Queen of Carthage, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Imperium, Julius Caesar, Salome, Titus Andronicus, Venus and Adonis, Vice Versa
Some recent cinema I appreciated: (NT Live) Angels in America, Christine, DeniaI, Doctor Strange, The Eagle Huntress, Hacksaw Ridge, Hidden Figures, I Daniel Blake, Indignation, Julieta, LA LA Land, Lion, Manchester-by-the-sea, Moana, A Monster Calls, My Cousin Rachel, Rogue One, Silence, Sing, Sully, War for the Planet of the Apes, Wonder Woman
Some recent TV to talk about: 60 Days in Jail, Apple Tree Yard, Black Sails, Britain’s Greatest Bridges, Broken, Class, The Crown, Endeavour, The Flash, First Dates, Game of Thrones, King Charles III, The Handmaid’s Tale, Little Boy Blue, Modus, The Musketeers, The Newsroom, Reported Missing, Sherlock, Thirteen, Trapped, To Walk Invisible
Authors whose work I have consistently enjoyed reading (and re-reading):
Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Anne Brontë, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Angela Carter, John Christopher, Charles Dickens, Dave Duncan, EM Forster, Alan Garner, William Golding, Sally Green, Thomas Hardy, Alice Hoffmann, Kazuo Ishiguro, DH Lawrence, Kerry Madden, Somerset Maugham, Anne McCaffrey, Toni Morrison, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, RL Stevenson, Meera Syal, Colm Tóibín, Anne Tyler, Evelyn Waugh, HG Wells, TH White
Ten theatre productions that stick in my mind:
Adrian Noble’s As You Like It with Juliet Stephenson, Melly Still’s NT Coram Boy, Adrian Noble’s Doctor Faustus with Ben Kingsley, Matthew Warchus’s WYP Fiddler on the Roof, Michael Bogdanov’s ESC Shakespeare’s History Cycle, Michael Boyd’s Shakespeare’s History Cycle, Laurie Sansom’s/Rona Munro's The James Plays, RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby, Matthew Warchus’s WYP The Plough and the Stars, Nicholas Hytner’s RSC The Tempest
Dramatists I would always book tickets for:
Caryl Churchill, Helen Edmondson, John Fletcher, Henrik Ibsen, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Joe Orton, Harold Pinter, Peter Shaffer, William Shakespeare, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams
Poets I re-read (aloud if in a “safe space”):
Maya Angelou, Simon Armitage, WH Auden, William Blake, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Chaucer, John Clare, Gillian Clarke, Coleridge, Emily Dickinson, Donne, Carol Ann Duffy, TS Eliot, Seamus Heaney, George Herbert, Ted Hughes, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Keats, Philip Larkin, Louis Macneice, Milton, Wilfred Owen, Sylvia Plath, Pope, Peter Porter, Isaac Rosenberg, Rossetti, Tennyson, Wordsworth, WB Yeats
Top Ten Films (top of my head currently):
The Big Chill, Blade Runner, Cabaret, The Deer Hunter, The Godfather I&II, Hannah and her Sisters, Ordinary People, The Remains of the Day, Shakespeare In Love, Singin' in the Rain
