My Books of the Year

It’s that time of year again. Journalists in every publication are boshing together a Christmas present guide for all of the literati out there. So here’s mine. Please note – these suggestions spring only from the books that I have read myself. This is not an attempt to cast a definitive verdict on the books published this year. I’m lucky to be able to read a huge number of books in my retirement, but I’m sure there are many contenders that I haven’t got round to yet. Some on the list, as the reviews make clear, are there because they are interesting in some way, rather than brilliant. With those caveats, here we go…

The Traitors’ Circle – Jonathan Freedland

My Book of The Year – and it’s not even a novel!

Freedland explores the lives of nine influential people in Nazi Germany who have severe misgivings about Hitler, the war and the whole Nazi project. They are loosely interconnected, their paths criss-crossing throughout the period, and all in some way, try to work against the regime. It’s clearly a dangerous path to choose, as anyone not fully signed up to Nazism is picked off in one way or another. Lack of preferment, prison, concentration camps, disappearances and murder in plain sight are all visited upon anyone who speaks out. It’s brilliantly constructed, with short chapters scrolling through the roster of characters Freedland establishes from the beginning, each one ending in a teaser or cliffhanger. The overall effect is one of a tightly plotted detective novel. An enthralling, thrilling read.

The Land in Winter – Andrew Miller

Listed for the Booker Prize, this is a glorious piece of historical fiction, set during the Big Freeze of 1962/63. Subtle and satisfying, this is an enormously enjoyable novel of relationships. A book for adults, as Woolf famously said of Middlemarch. If Flesh is better than this, It’ll be a great novel. But the Booker judges are nothing if not unreliable in their judgement

Long review here: https://growl.blog/2025/07/09/the-land-in-winter-by-andrew-miller/

Entitled – the rise and fall of the House of York – Andrew Lownie

This book would have been unthinkable even a few years ago, such is the iron grip the Royal family have on the British establishment. But now, open season has been declared on the ghastly Royals. They have presented a juicy target ever since the Queen died, and the tabloids have been plugging away at their pet targets: Harry and Meghan, Camilla, and Andrew and Fergie. The Mail and the Telegraph have been twisting in agonised indecision over this as performative hatred of paedophilia has vied with slavish arse licking of anything Royal. For normal people, it’s the whole corrupt lot of them. For previously arch royal sycophants, it’s worth sacrificing two embarrassing Minor Royals in the belief that the Body of Royalty as a whole might be saved by the judicious amputation of some corrupt and rotting limb.

The book is basically gossip, but it’s enjoyable reading about just how appalling these two were (and are). If it has a fault it’s that it’s just a little dull and not shocking enough. Some of the more shocking revelations Lownie treats us to are:

Andrew routinely leaving his semen stained tissue paper scattered on the floor for staff to collect and dispose of
Reports of forty prostitutes being shipped to his hotel room on some Trade Envoy Jolly over the course of a four day stay.
On being told by a young woman at his table for some dinner that she was a Secretary, Andrew, horrified, replying, “How uninteresting. Is that the best thing you could find to do?”

Nice Guy. Between their divorce and The Epstein scandal, the book is reduced to a litany of descriptions of their serial affairs, financial mismanagement, and corruption. It establishes behind any reasonable doubt that Andrew is dim, privileged, entitled, boorish and utterly boring, while Sarah is a sex machine spendaholic space cadet. Still, worthwhile to have one’s prejudices so well researched and confirmed.

Ripeness – Sarah Moss

What a lovely novel this is, from someone writing at the top of their game. Structurally and stylistically, it’s a treat, with alternating sections telling the stories of the same character, Edith, fifty years apart. The younger Edith tells her own story, in the first person, through the device of a lengthy letter to a child, to be read in the future, explaining the circumstances of the child’s birth and subsequent life. The sections dealing with the older Edith are set in rural Ireland and are told in the third person. Beautiful descriptions of both the countryside around Como and small town/village life in the Republic are subtly blended with Edith’s reflections on first growing up and then getting old. Honestly, this is a must read book. Beautiful and thought provoking. Longer Review here: https://growl.blog/2025/06/05/ripeness-by-sarah-moss/

The Artist – Lucy Steed

Reading this in the depths of winter, this historical novel set in the sundrenched summer of a village in Provence is a therapeutic treat, like a session in a natural light booth for SAD sufferers. A young journalist, Joseph, suffering from the traumas of the first world war, travels to the remote home of celebrated artist, Eduard Tartuffe, to undertake a profile of him for the art journal he works for. He finds the great man sour and difficult, and living alone except for his niece Ettie. As he wins Eduard’s trust and gets closer to Ettie, secrets are revealed. A lovely book.

Crooked Cross – Sally Carson

This year’s long forgotten rediscovery, Crooked Cross was written in 1933 by an English woman Sally Carson based on her experiences on holiday in Bavaria. It tells the story of the slow build up of nazism and the way it overwhelms everyone’s lives, even in the backwaters of a Bavarian village, explaining how, in an incremental way, ordinary tolerant people can be drawn into the most despicable acts.

A timely text in the light of the current wave of racist populism that is sweeping across Europe and America. Oh no, I forgot. We’re not allowed to make any Nazi/Fascist comparisons between today’s political titans and those of the 1930s. Actually, it’s impossible not to, if you have any regard to historical facts. It’s a worthy revival, if only to publicise the parallels between then and now and between them and us, but it shows its age. Despite the subject matter, it lacks real drama and/or tension and didnt quite live up to its reputation.

Our evenings- Alan Hollinghurst

I must confess, I’ve started several of Hollinghurst’s novels, and have never liked, much less finished, one of them. It’s just one of those things – he’s lionised by the literary establishment, but for some reason, he just doesn’t do it for me. This latest got rave reviews and it starts brilliantly. There was a moment when I thought this was going to be the Hollinghurst novel where I finally got it, but unfortunately, by the end I was a little underwhelmed. But reader, I finished it! And that’s a first.

It’s a whole life story novel that follows Dave Win’s progress as a gay, half English, half Burmese actor, navigating public school, the disapproval of his family and the casual racism and homophobia he encounters. The relationship with his mother is beautifully observed, but another relationship, with the bully at school who goes on to achieve high office in a Tory government, promises much, but ultimately fizzles out without delivering. If you don’t share my antipathy towards Hollinghurst, it’s definitely worth a punt

What We Can Know – Ian Mcewan

The latest from McEwan shows his powers are undiminished, after a career at the very top of English fiction. The book is framed as an academic literary investigation, in a Britain clinging on after a series of ecological disasters in 2125, into a celebrated poet and climate change denier from the Britain of 2020. It’s a strange mixture, at times compelling, often fascinating, and at other times annoying.

The good stuff is the unrolling of the climate disaster and the unforeseen impacts that has had (Nigeria is the preeminent power, and America has disintegrated into a ferret sack of competing warlords and clans.) The bad stuff is the suffocating superiority of the middle class literary types, with their casual snobbery, all, seemingly, having affairs with anyone and everyone. I’d like to think McEwan is trying to skewer them and their ghastly attitudes, but I fear that he may actually share many of them. That’s harsh – it’s beautifully written, as ever, and worth a read.

Isla – Jim Pollard.

One of the pleasures of exploring the work of independent writers is that you come across things that deserve much greater exposure. This one’s a gem. Pollard, an ex-teacher and journalist, has specialised in books about men’s health, accumulating an impressive back catalogue, irregularly punctuated by his novels. His latest, Isla, is inspired by the Madeleine McCann case, and explores the aftermath over a lifetime of such a traumatic event. It’s set in Paris and London, and beautifully evokes both cities. There are no easy answers to the questions the novel poses and no obvious ones either. This is a great read.

Longer Review here: https://growl.blog/2025/05/21/isla-by-jim-pollard-a-review/

And you can buy it here: notonlywords.co.uk/isla

Main review here:

Tony interruptor- Nicola Barker

Barker is consistently one of the most interesting of British novelists, who deserves a much higher profile. Her books are often odd, awkward little things, and this one is no exception. It would be a delightful stocking-filler.

Seascraper – Benjamin Wood

An excellent story of a young man who lives with his mother on the grim and exposed coastline of Morecambe Bay. He scrapes a living, continuing the work learned alongside his late father, pillaging the cockle beds in the shallows of the Irish Sea. It’s hard work, alone save for his horse in all weathers. He keeps his sanity by writing and playing songs on a second hand guitar, ( all concealed from his mother) working towards playing the folk night of a local pub. His world is suddenly turned upside down by the appearance of an American film man who descends on the community researching the beach as a location for his next film. It’s a small and perfectly formed gem.

Obviously, the real book of the year is my very own, A Cold Wind Blows. The book is part 2 of a fantasy trilogy, set in Yngerlande, a parallel world to England in 1795. Yngerlande is a place of absolute and perfect equality, but their tolerance and liberalism is put at risk by an attempted counter revolution from the surviving relatives of the Old Mad King from generations before. They want to overturn all of the social advances made and establish a patriarchal, white supremacist regime. Thomas Trelawney, a thirteen year old boy from modern day England, finds himself the possessor of previously unknown powers, when he is summoned to help protect the Realm from the forces of Darkness. Think of it as Harry Potter meets Lyra Silvertongue meets Outlander. “A slice of Fantasy brilliance” said one reviewer. And they were right! You can buy it here: https://shorturl.at/UcRWb

Those that didn’t quite make it…

This could be for a number of reasons: Only just come out, I’ve heard about and intend to read, waiting for it to arrive. That sort of thing. Here they are:

Lots to read in 2026!

More 5 Star Reviews Coming In for A Cold Wind Blows!

It’s always lovely when positive reviews keep coming in for a new book. This one is from Rebecca De Figueiredo from the Online Book Club. There are also some great reviews on Amazon too. You can buy the book and see the reviews here:

https://shorturl.at/Xp55K

Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of “A Cold Wind Blows” by R J Barron.]

Book Cover

5 out of 5 stars

Title: A Cold Wind Blows
Author: R J Barron

How captivating and otherworldly this book is! The reader will soon find out how apt the title is. It was well balanced between reality, shape-shifting, and magic. There were people and places that are actually real, such as King James’ Palace and the River Ouse, included in a deep and mesmerising story. I don’t usually enjoy this sort of genre, preferring more adult drama, but there was something innocent and entertaining about this one. In my experience, books of this genre have a tendency to be all over the place, with far too many characters and words that are difficult to pronounce; some even have a glossary (which child is going to refer to a glossary every five minutes?!). The only word that took a bit of time to get used to was ‘Yngerland’, which is the kingdom in question. The characters were likable, with the usual malevolent dark characters and holier-than-thou good ones. There is also a character who is neither on one side nor the other: the reader will find out.

At just the right length, with an inviting introduction, chunky middle, and mysterious ending, this book takes the reader on a magical adventure. The magic is fairly subtle.

I would have loved some illustrations: pictures of the steedwings, or huge mansions, or a character or two, but perhaps it’s better for the young mind to create its own images.

I found the editing to be perfect and did not notice any typos. The prose was cleverly written in that most older children will be able to read it, and it would be a marvellous book to read out loud. I will award it five out of five stars.

******
A Cold Wind Blows
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon

The Land in Winter – by Andrew Miller

I’ve always believed the hierarchy of fictional respectability is just another manifestation of keeping the oiks in their place. Like the concept of a fine palate when it comes to food, having good literary taste is a device to be able to confidently feel and express your own superiority over the lumpen masses. At the top of this pyramid of worth, sits Literary Fiction, smoking a fat cigar, and flicking the ash at the lower classes s/he straddles: reading group fiction, detective novels, romance, horror, sci fi, through an ever-multiplying collection of genres and subgenres, ending in the sludge of graphic novels and comics.

You just need to give your head a shake to see that literary fiction is just another genre, with its own conventions and expectations. Language is privileged over plot, obscurity is King (or Queen), ideas rub shoulders amiably, sides are resolutely not taken, and difficulty is wholeheartedly embraced. If you can make the reader feel they are missing the point, that they just don’t get it, you’re on your way to the shortlist of some prestigious literary competition or other.

But then, every now and again, a literary novel comes along that stops me in my tracks and gives pause for thought, as previously unshakeable theories begin to teeter and the cracks spread. This one is the latest offering from Andrew Miller, The Land in Winter. He’s carved a niche for himself as a writer of historical fiction, comfortably sitting at the literary end of the spectrum, rather than the Brother Cadfael end. Novels such as Pure, and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free showcase his undoubted talent as far as establishing interesting characters and subtly drawn relationships in an entirely authentic and credible historical setting.

He’s done it again in The Land in Winter, but this time he has chosen an era still within living memory: the early 60s. To be more precise, his novel is located in the winter of 1962/63, a period that has entered the myth of our island story as the hardest winter since the frost fairs of the early 19th century.

This was a time when the whole nation was cut off under Impossibly deep snow drifts for months on end, from December until March/April. I was about six years old at the time and have vivid memories of walking to school through trenches dug in the snow on the pavements that went above my head.

It was a time before the swinging sixties. Pre-Beatles too, at least as far as their impact on broader society. Miller captures the grim, narrow atmosphere perfectly. This was a black and white England, before technicolor, still uncomfortably close to rationing, still in the grip of deference, hypocrisy and snobbery.

The book starts obliquely, in the grand tradition of literary fiction, with one patient at a residential psychiatric hospital, unable to sleep in the middle of the night, discovering the body of another, a patient who has committed suicide. Then they disappear from the novel completely. They do reappear, much later, after four other characters have claimed centre stage for themselves. By the time they do come back, the book has turned into something rich, deep and powerful via Miller’s quiet, subtle prose.

They are two recently married couples, Eric and Irene Parry, and Bill and Rita Simmons living in the middle of the countryside in the west country. Eric is the village doctor, Irene a middle-class Londoner more used to a life of art galleries and literary discussions. Bill Simmons is a farmer, trying to make a go of his recently acquired smallholding with his recently acquired wife. His father is an Eastern European immigrant, vaguely connected to London gangland, who has tried to remove all traces of his origins, while Bill is trying to cut himself off from his family and set out on his own. His wife, Rita, a working-class girl who met Bill when working as an escort in a dodgy bar in Bristol is troubled by the voices she hears, left alone on the farm all day as Bill works all hours to try and make a success of what is likely to be a doomed venture. The two women, bored and lonely, become unlikely friends.

The stresses that Miller has rippling beneath the surface become heightened as the snow falls and an isolated community is even more cut off than before. everyone is confined to their own homes and the stifling conformity and boredom reaches a pitch.

Everything is set up for a drama centred on women being oppressed by conventional men, but one of the novels great strengths is its subtlety. There’s a lot more going on here than that. Each of the four characters is given equal weight – there are no victims, no baddies and goodies here. Miller manages to create sympathy for each of them.

It’s also, for all of its quiet understated subtlety, a book that, by the end, has been full of action. The difference here, though, is that in Miller’s hands, there’s not a whiff of melodrama over twists and turns that wouldn’t be out of place in a soap opera. The plot developments are all the stronger, and more impactful, because he turns the volume down. It’s an object lesson in getting the balance right: plot, character, ideas and language are complementary threads in a pleasing whole, producing a novel that continues to resonate long after the last page is turned. So, yes, there’s life in the old dog yet. Literary fiction can still prove its worth and relevance – just don’t diss the rest while you’re enjoying it.

Review of A Cold Wind Blows

“In an era where young adults face increasingly complex social and political realities, Barron has written a book that offers both an absorbing escape and a compelling message.“

The first reviews are beginning to come in. This one is from Maria Ashford of Bookshelfie

The middle volume of a fantasy trilogy faces a particular challenge: it must advance the story without feeling like mere connective tissue between a promising beginning and a climactic end. This is the case in retired English teacher R.J. Barron’s “A Cold Wind Blows”, the second installment in his Thomas Trelawney series. Though we haven’t read the first book, it feels like Barron largely succeeds in this difficult task, deepening both the mythology of his dual-world book while maintaining the accessible warmth that makes the series appealing to middle-grade readers.

To start off, readers should probably read the first book before this one, though a brief summary is helpfully provided for those who haven’t. The plot picks up when several months have passed since the events of The Watcher and The Friend, and thirteen-year-old Thomas has returned to the mundane challenges of school life in England. Meanwhile, in the parallel realm of Yngerlande, the political tensions that simmer beneath Queen Matilda’s rule are beginning to boil over. Princess Gaia—formerly Clara, a London orphan—undergoes intensive magical training under the guidance of Silas Cummerbund, developing abilities that grow more impressive by the day. As the spy Shrike observes with alarm, “She can move objects from afar without touching them. She can be in two places at once.”

In the same vein of C.S. Lewis, Barron’s greatest strength lies in his ability to ground fantastical elements in the recognizable experiences and emotions of young people. Princess Gaia’s magical education can be read as an extended metaphor for adolescent development—the awkward acquisition of maturity and the growing awareness of one’s place in a larger world. When Silas reassures her after a setback, saying “It’s much better than it was last week and ’twill be twice as good again next week,” we hear the voice of every patient teacher helping a student through difficulty.

The novel’s political dimension adds unexpected sophistication for adults to what might otherwise seem like standard fantasy fare. Queen Matilda’s egalitarian society—where “people of colour, women, people who go where their love takes them” enjoy full citizenship—faces threats from reactionary forces led by Oliver and Jacob, grandsons of the deposed king. Clara articulates the stakes plainly: “They want to turn back the clock.” This isn’t subtle allegory, but it doesn’t need to be. Barron writes with the moral clarity that young readers deserve, presenting complex social issues in terms they can understand and apply to their own world.

The book’s structure alternates between character moments and mounting suspense, and this gentle pacing largely works against dramatic momentum. Some of the most affecting passages involve Grace, Thomas’s sister, who now lives contentedly in Yngerlande but still carries the burden of separation from her family. “Of course, Silas. I am with the best of people here,” she says, “but still, I remember the life I had.” Where the novel occasionally stumbles is in its adherence to familiar fantasy tropes. These elements, while competently handled, may feel predictable to readers well-versed in the genre. Barron’s villains, particularly Oliver and Jacob, remain somewhat one-dimensional, their motivations never deeply explored beyond generic power-hunger and bigotry.

Yet these weaknesses don’t significantly diminish the book’s considerable pleasures, and young adult readers are unlikely to notice anyway. Barron writes with genuine affection for his characters, and their relationships feel relatable and fun to read despite the magical circumstances. The friendship between Grace, Gaia, Della, and Amelia provides moments of real warmth and humour, while the mentor-student dynamic between Silas and Gaia anchors the more fantastical elements. The novel builds to a cliffhanger that effectively sets up the trilogy’s conclusion.

To conclude, “A Cold Wind Blows” is a gripping read that succeeds as both fantasy adventure and coming-of-age story, offering young readers and older children heroes who face their challenges with courage. While it may not surprise experienced fantasy readers, it provides exactly what its intended audience needs. In an era where young adults face increasingly complex social and political realities, Barron has written a book that offers both an absorbing escape and a compelling message.

See if you agree with her. Buy A Cold Wind Blows here: https://t.co/n8wew492re

A Cold Wind Blows – published on Friday May 30th

Book 2 in the Yngerlande Variations trilogy published by Burton Mayers books

The long awaited sequel to “The Watcher and The Friend” by R J Barron is published this Friday by Burton Mayers Books. “A Cold Wind Blows” is the second book in the trilogy, The Yngerlande Variations, set in the parallel world of Yngerlande in 1796. Here is the synopsis of the story so far. Warning! Spoiler Alert! Don’t read the summary if you have not yet read the first book and want to do so.

Tom has been summoned to help Silas and his allies defeat the relatives of the old King, Oliver and Jacob, who want to overthrow Queen Matilda and take the country back to a time when racism and discrimination were ever present. His task is made more complicated by the fact that he discovers that his sister, Grace, is alive and well in Yngerlande and is living there as a reward for her service when she was the Friend of Yngerlande. After many adventures and dangerous scrapes, they succeed, and Queen Matilda maintains her rule of peace, love and equality.

In “The Watcher and The Friend”, the first book in the trilogy, thirteen-year-old Thomas Trelawney is spending Christmas at an old Rectory on the North Yorkshire coast. It is the family’s first holiday since the death of Tom’s sister Grace. Here, Tom discovers a portal to another world and travels through it to Yngerlande, in 1795, with his cousin, Dan. Yngerlande is a parallel world to England, but is a much more diverse, equal society.

He meets Silas Cummerbund, who is The Watcher, the mysterious character who guards the portal between the two worlds. He tells Tom that he is the new Friend, the person whose role is to act as the link between the two worlds. This second book continues the story, as Oliver and Jacob return with another attempt to take back the crown of Yngerlande, only this time they are more dangerous and better prepared.

Silas has spent the summer training Princess Gaia, aka Clara to use her magic powers to their full extent, to be ready for any further threats to Yngerlande, but they are taken by surprise by the boldness of Oliver and Jacob’s new plan. A mysterious new character, Shrike, is introduced. He is by turns charming, dangerous, and duplicitous. Whose side is he really on? Even by the end of the book, that question is not clearly answered. One thing is certain, however. Thomas Trelawney is recalled from England to Yngerlande when everything looks lost. He does not trust Shrike, not least because Grace has fallen in love with him. Does Shrike have feelings for her, or is he just playing a clever game for his own ends?

“A Cold Wind Blows” begins eight months later.

The story takes in the wild North York Moors, Runswick Bay, Mulgrave Hall, the crumbling ruins of Hard Crag Towers, with its menagerie of bats, steedwings and owls, and the ancient city of York. It’s full of adventure, peppered with cross dressing, betrayal, vengeance, disguise and murder, with a liberal sprinkling of romance, friendship and love.

This is a must-read YA adventure, that is aimed at everyone from 9 to 90 who loves Fantasy novels. It’s available from the following links:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=a+cold+wind+blows+r+j+barron&crid=H08N4ZNJ851M&sprefix=a+cold+wind+blows+r+j+barron%2Caps%2C176&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-cold-wind-blows/r-j-barron/9781917224116

https://www.brownsbfs.co.uk/Product/Barron-R-J/A-Cold-Wind-Blows/9781917224116

To buy Book 1, The Watcher and The Friend, use these links. Please note: the Amazon link gives you a free preview, but shows the old cover

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-watcher-and-the-friend/r-j-barron/9781838345921

Traitor’s Legacy by S J Parris

An ARC review for NetGalley

A new SJ Parris novel is always an event to celebrate, particularly for someone like me, with an incurable weakness for historical crime. I’ve read and loved all of Parris’ Giordano Bruno novels, set mainly in Elizabethan England, with the occasional foray into Europe. Parris has established Bruno as an attractive and sympathetic hero. An ex catholic monk, philosopher, and possible heretic, he ticks all the boxes: Good looking, intelligent, brave and a respecter of strong women.

So it was with some trepidation that I began her latest novel, when I found out that Parris had ditched Bruno for a new protagonist, Lady Sophia de Wolfe. It’s a bold move, when the Bruno novels have been so successful.

By and large, it works, with some caveats. The depiction of Elizabethan London is convincing. The plot is handled with Parris’ usual aplomb, requiring the merest hint of goodwill on the part of the reader (usually in connection with De Wolfe’s protection of her child – there’s no way this would pass with so little comment, but I’m just splitting hairs here) There’s a delightful rendering of the transportation of The Theatre in Shoreditch to The Globe, Bankside in the opening chapter and a knowing, touching scene focusing on a conversation between Shakespeare and the protagonist, about love and the loss of a child, towards the end. De Wolfe, a character who has already appeared in several of the Bruno novels, partly as a love interest, finds herself recently widowed (and therefore available for all kinds of adventures). By the end, her daring romps across London convince Robert Cecil to reemploy her as a spy working for Elizabeth’s government, thus setting us up for a new series. Good. I for one look forward to seeing her in more. But please, Stephanie, don’t completely abandon Bruno. There’s life in the old dog yet.

If a new series of De Wolf adventures emerges, I would just make these pleas to S J Parris, as a huge fan.

Do something about Anthony Munday, a playwright attached to the same company as De Wolf’s son Toby, and a second division rival to Shakespeare. He’s potentially an excellent character but his devoted lapdog impersonation in this novel began to grate after a while. GIven De Wolfe’s lack of romantic interest in him, this relationship promises more irritation than interest.
Please abandon the use of the present tense. I know it’s what younger audiences are meant to like and it’s what Creative writing tutors and Boutique consultancies tell writers to adopt for more “Immediacy”, but really that’s nonsense. (See Jonathan Coe on this in his latest, “The Proof of My Innocence.”). To me it feels affected and inauthentic. You didn’t need it in the Bruno novels and you don’t need it here.

But they are just nitpicks in the grand scheme of things. What a potential reader needs to know is this: S J Parris/Stephanie Merritt has come up with another winner. Fans of historical crime should settle in and enjoy the ride.

Romance is not Dead

The new album by Fontaines DC is alive and kicking

More than five years worth of water has disappeared under the bridge since Dublin’s finest, Fontaines DC, released their debut album, Dogrel. There have been two more since then – A Hero’s Death and Skinty Fia, but neither of them generated the same excitement as their first, with its originality and verve.

They arrived heralded as nouveau punk and although those comparisons are always inevitably flawed and misleading, there was something in that characterisation. That album was many things but, like the original punks, one thing it was not, was polite. There was an authenticity and a couldn’t-care-less attack to it. This is us, it seemed to declare, and we don’t care what you say about it. This was my review of it at the time:

My Childhood was small, but I’m gonna be Big

But now comes their fourth studio album, Romance, and it’s a game changer. Old heads with old hands now and they have produced something of rare beauty that triumphantly confirms what that first album promised: They’re gonna be Big. The start of the album generates fear of disappointment, with the title track, Romance. Moody, doomy synth washes with dark, dark lyrics:

Into the darkness again,

In with the pigs in the pen

Don’t worry! It’s a deliberately misleading start. It’s not doom and gloom that await you in this album, it’s joy and beauty. This is not a band trying to curry favour with its potential new audience, playing it safe. It would have been so easy to start the album with Favourite for some uplifting poppy melody, but that is a trap they sidestep, preferring instead to make demands on their fan base. And they are demands that are worth responding to. After three listens, the subtle pleasures of vocals, lyrics and atmospheric layers lodge themselves in your brain, and you’ll wonder why you doubted them in the first place.

The album goes from strength to strength. The single, Starburst, is the perfect antidote to the slow gloom of Romance. First, strange mellotron is studded by liquid arpeggio piano notes that ooze a grave, poignant portent. Then the uptempo beat and word heavy, almost rapping rhythmic vocals – this will be the standout track on first listen. But that won’t last, as the subtle pleasures of all the other tracks begin to elbow you for attention.

The melodies are gorgeous, the lyrics subtle and clever, the vocals sweet, particularly the unexpected harmonies that punctuate many of the songs. It’s a repeat of the Black Keys scenario, back in 2011. After releasing three well respected hard electric blues rock albums, that clocked up mega critical approval but few sales, the Black Keys suddenly discovered how to write classic pop songs with killer hooks and choruses and came up with El Camino. Still quintessentially Black Keys, with their DNA pulsing through it, it was a compulsively fabulous commercial record. So it is with Fontaines and this album. It retains its Dublin accent, but uses it to tell better stories that will pull in a bigger audience. They look a little different as well. But then, don’t we all….

Fontaines now…

Fontaines then…

The two standout tracks for me at the moment have that unmistakable classic quality of great songs: they sound like they’ve been discovered, excavated in an archaeological dig rather than having been newly created. It’s as if they’ve always been here. Have a listen, first to the sublime “Bug”.

Then the closing song of the album, “Favourite”. In a pre-streaming age, this would have been the opener to pull the audience in, on vinyl or CD. Lovely shiny guitar riff and cleverly worked chorus, this is classic pop.

Do yourself a favour and follow these instructions.

Play the two tracks linked here.
Buy the record, or download it.
Try and get a ticket to see them live.

You know it makes sense

The Return of Telling Stories

Regular readers of this blog will know that, if nothing else, it is eclectic, covering the highways and byways, the nooks and crannies of human interest. Fiction, Politics, Football, Writing, Theatre, Film, Music, original short stories – all human life is here. So you will forgive me, I’m sure, if this latest blog is unashamedly devoted to self-promotion. After a hiatus of a couple of years, my podcast Telling Stories has returned. When the kids move back out, the old recording studio moves back in. I’ve used it to contribute to Librivox, which in essence is an audio book version of The Gutenberg project. Anyone who passes the technical recording test can volunteer to read books that are out of copyright, and there is a vast library of free audio books, produced by said volunteers.

If you like listening to audiobooks, give this a go. It’s barely publicised, and the quality of the readers is varied, but with a bit of trial and error, you’ll be able to find something to your taste, that doesn’t offend your rigorous standards of fiction, technical specs and reading voice. It’s a really worthy project and deserves more support. Check it out at Librivox

Another project even more worthy of support is my Podcast. I’ve resumed the momentous task of turning my YA book, The Watcher and The Friend into an audio book, via regular recordings on my podcast, Telling Stories. I’m trying to post a weekly chapter. Have a look at the ones I’ve done since the new studio arrived. The links are here. Try it and pass it on if you like it. Or even if you don’t.

Make Sure you listen to the episodes in the right order! If you havent started yet, follow the links to the beginning and click follow on the Spotify Podcast page

https://open.spotify.com/embed/show/5rzqeF7AI29UTktP9T62sG?utm_source=generator

Chapter 6

A Cold Wind Blows – Book 2 of The Yngerlande Variations

Finally, some exciting news. The sequel to the book is scheduled to be published later this year. It’s called A Cold Wind Blows, and I’m very pleased to be able to give you a sneak preview of the new cover – designed by me and produced by the very talented Youness Elh. More on this later!

The Golden Age of Cinema? Guess what? It’s right now.

Something weird is happening to films. It’s crept up slowly, revealing itself bit by bit, until now there’s so much evidence that it’s irrefutable. We are living through the Golden Age of Cinema, after the Wasteland of Pandemic Lockdowns and their aftermath. What’s driving this? Lockdown. Streaming. The unstoppable proliferation of narrative outlets and the demand for stories that will satisfy the gamut of tastes and preferences. The thirst for longer narratives with space to develop character, relationships, themes. The usual stuff.

It seemed, when we were in the middle of it, that Lockdowns were going to destroy cinema, as everyone got used to staying in and subscribing to a range of streaming services. The content was good and it was cheap. But by the end, we were all thirsty for the experience of going out again. In the same way that Zoom, at first a lifeline, became an annoyance, when it became obvious that the experience it provided was thin gruel compared to the Michelin-starred flavour of talking to real people in the same room, with eye contact, nuance and body language. You know, like properly being alive.

At first, it was hard, going to the cinema again. An act of faith, even. We went to see countless films in cinemas, to find that there were only six or seven other people dotted around the auditorium. It was only a matter of time, we agreed, that there would be a wave of closures to match the decimation of retail units in High Streets across the country. But, somehow they clung on.

And then, probably about a year or so ago, I began to notice something else, when watching the trailers. For at least ten years before Lockdowns, sitting through the trailers was usually a deeply depressing experience. I had become innured to the naked cynicism of the adverts. Corporations were desperately, unsubtly trying to sell me stuff. Millions of pounds of production costs, undercut by appallingly, clankingly obvious scripts, overlaid with equally grim music tracks. The combination of visuals (admittedly, often very beautifully shot visuals), terrible scripts, and obvious music overlays characterised all cinema adverts. Having to sit through them, always left me feeling vaguely unclean before getting ready to watch a film, usually with some kind of moral message.

During this period, it was difficult to distinguish between the ads and the trailers for films that were coming our way. They too, were just an extension of this appeal to the basest instincts of Homo Sapiens: Marvel adaptations, Fantasy CGI fests, endless, mindless, explosions, car chases (or spacecraft chases, Dinosaur chases, orc chases etc) It was like watching human evolution going backwards and I did despair of the celebration of stupidity it all seemed to represent. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a place for escapist/adventure/action type films. But a) do them well, and present a story with a plot that makes sense and respects your audience and b) make them as part of a wider, more diverse offering.

So the first time it happened, it was a bit of a shock. After the film, on the walk from the cinema to the car, the conversation was less about the film, and more about the trailers. Puzzled expressions and lines like, “There’s some really interesting looking films coming up”, were delivered hesitantly, as if it was just a scam to get us back, but really we would find that nothing had changed.

But it has. Every month there are great films and , on leaving the cinema, I think, “That’s the best film I’ve seen this year.” Over and Over again. I may be wearing rose tinted spectacles, but I can’t remember this happening before. They are long (sometimes too long), have stories, have interesting characters and believable relationships, are beautifully filmed in interesting locations, have significant human dilemmas to be resolved. I don’t know how long this is going to go on for. I’m just determined to enjoy it while it lasts. Because when it all blows over, and we are forced to trawl through mediocre shit on Netflix, recreating that Friday night visit to Blockbuster, where everything in the shop, could be pulped without adversely impacting the stock of human happiness, we’ll be forced to reminisce sadly about the time when going to the movies was great.

And what have been the films that have inspired this analysis? Well, since you asked so nicely, in no particular order…

Oppenheimer

Barbie

Saltburn

Poor Things

Zone of Interest

Killers of the Flower Moon

All of us Strangers

Anatomy of a Fall

Past Lives

The Holdovers

I can just about narrow this down to a top five:

5. Saltburn

Saltburn

I’m amazed that this film divides opinion. It’s a funny, stylish Brideshead pisstake that turns the usual working-class-oik-adopted-by-the-bastard-Upper-Classes-at-Oxbridge-before- being-humiliated trope on its head. People who don’t like this are the same as those who didn’t get Don’t Look Up a couple of years ago – sadly very wrong.

4. Killers of The Flower Moon

Lots of moaning from the older cinema-goer ( my very own tribe) about toilet breaks needed because of its excessive length. Not for me. It flew by and I loved it. Fascinating, unknown (to me) story from American Twentieth Century history, with fabulous performances from De Niro, Gladstone (who really should have changed her name to De Gladstone) and the ever underappreciated Leonardo De Caprio. And if bladder control is increasingly a problem for you, there’s a range of remarkably effective, discreet products you can now buy. Next to the Maltesers in the cinema shop.

3. Poor Things

Wow! What a treat this film is. Visually stunning, steam punky Glasgow vibe, moving through Europe to Paris and back. Amazing performances from Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo, who is hilarious all the way through and who should have won an Oscar, if that particular travesty of an award ceremony had anything to do with quality rather than promotion and virtue signalling. Is it a feminist epic? What a dim question – of course it is. How to learn to become a woman in a patriarchal society is a great premise and it’s delivered in an un-hectoring way. The scenes in the Parisian brothel are notable for the collection of highly unprepossessing men who make up their client list. In any other year, this would have been the best film of the year by a mile.

This brings us to the top two, and we move into a completely different league of experience. In Joint First Place are:

Zone Of Interest

This is an amazing film. The Second World War and the holocaust are strange subjects. In one sense, how can you go wrong? They naturally carry their own drama, their own horror so they’re a gift as subjects for people who are making stories. The downside, of course, is the fact that they’ve been done to death. How could you possibly find anything new or compelling to say, when confronted by the ultimate, still barely believable, example of the worst of humanity? But Zone of Interest pulls it off.

It’s a great premise. The mundane domestic arrangements of the Auschwitz commander whose family home abuts the death camp are an obvious way of exploring how absolute evil becomes commonplace. Generations of GCSE English students will also be familiar with the poem Vultures by Chinua Achebe on the same theme:

Thus the Commandant at Belsen
Camp going home for
the day with fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils will stop
at the wayside sweet-shop
and pick up a chocolate
for his tender offspring
waiting at home for Daddy’s
return…

Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.

Vultures. Chinua Achebe

Everything positive that has been said about this film is true. The soundscape is extraordinary and a compelling reason to watch it on the big screen. There are some wonderful scenes: the commandant hurriedly getting his kids out of the nearby river, running through idyllic woodland next door, when he realises that the water is carrying some horrific evidence from the camp next door. This is followed by frantic scrubbing of the kids in the bath. The commandant’s wife casually sorting through booty left behind after prisoners had been exterminated: fur coats, gold teeth, jewellery. The negative night scenes, of a young girl from the village visiting the outside work areas hiding food for the inmates, are both beautiful and haunting. It’s a film that will never leave you, once seen.

All of Us Strangers

This is the film that sums up, for me, the new approach of adult serious films, for adult serious people. Please note: Adult and Serious does not mean Boring. Far from it. The four central performances are luminous: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Clare Foy and Jamie Bell are all brilliant. It’s so good, you want a new category of Oscar: the ensemble acting award. People talk to each other. They struggle with their feelings, they show what it is to be alive as an individual in an alienating society. There’s a hint of lockdown isolation, but that is suggested rather than laid on with a trowel. It’s enlivened by some, beautiful, subtle magic realism, in the form of the Scott character going back to visit his childhood home as part of his research for a new film he’s working on and finding his parents, unaged, still living there. It uses this device to explore memories of childhood and regrets for all of the things that were not said. Tears are shed in the audience. Beautiful.

No Acting Experience Needed

My week of faking it as an Actor on the professional stage

After having taught An Inspector Calls as a GCSE set text for more years than I care to remember, the chance of appearing in a professional production of it was too good an opportunity to turn down. And not just any production. This was the legendary Steven Daldry production, which had improbably revived an old creaking classic when it first burst onto the scene at The National Theatre in 1992. The play had been steadily falling out favour as an exam text, despite its many qualities. In stock cupboards of English Departments all over the country, dog eared copies of the play were left gathering dust. The main problem was that it is, essentially, a very wordy play. Not much happens. It takes place largely in one room, where various people tell their story under interrogation from the mysterious police man, Inspector Goole. It’s the ultimate example of tell not show. The drama of Eva Smith’s tragic suicide is conveyed at a distance via the relentless question and answer technique of Goole. This is usually resolved in TV and Film versions by setting up a series of flashbacks, with an actress playing the role Eva Smith, despite the fact that the play makes it clear that the stories the characters tell concern several young vulnerable women, not one.

The Daldry production takes a radically different approach, honouring the text, and using, instead of flashbacks, scenery to ramp up the drama, and to underline the contemporary relevance. The ingenious collapsing house becomes a powerful metaphor for the collapse, not only of the cosy successful upper middle class world of the Birlings, but also of a society whose structures are rigged against the poor and the dispossessed.

Having ossified into a wordy exam text, at a stroke Daldry transformed it back into a drama that thrillingly presents issues of fairness, poverty, and class divisions in a vital and engaging way for audiences, not readers. For English teachers it has another compelling quality. It’s virtually the only time in a philistine curriculum, when fifteen year olds learn about politics: parties, ideology, structures of government. As a result, they also learn that boring old politics, despite what they are encouraged to think, produces significant material effects on everybody’s life. Your vote does make a difference.

Its relevance today is unmistakeable, when we have a government that is shockingly cruel, both by design and by outcome, to some carefully selected scapegoats. It’s impossible to sit through the Inspector’s last speech in the play without immediately thinking of our current shambolic set of charlatans who still cling to power. If they cling on for a further term, don’t be surprised to see it removed from exam specs. And in the Gradgrind world of the Tories, if it’s not examined, it may as well not exist.

So when I was sent a copy of the Facebook page of The Churchill theatre in Bromley, just round the corner from where I live, with a notice asking for “Community Volunteers” to take part in their forthcoming production of the play, I was intrigued. Reading it more closely, there was one detail that was the clincher: No Acting Experience needed. That was a selection criteria that I definitely met. Apart from a much talked about role as Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, in a school staff/student Christmas show, my last performance had been as a tree in my primary school nativity play. It was a role I reprised for several years for Hackney Red Star and then Acacia Dynamo, on the Marshes and Clapham Common, as a willing but limited Sunday League centre forward.

I emailed Charlotte Peters, the Company Director, and then promptly forgot all about it. And then, a couple of weeks later, the invite to take part was received. This provoked a strange mixture of regret, excitement and fear, all of which were in evidence when, as instructed, I made my way to the Stage Door of the Churchill Theatre in Bromley.

It’s a little embarrassing to report that that instruction seemed impossibly glamorous to me, a stranger to the world of theatre. The Stage Door! And even if the Stage Door at The Churchill is hidden in a nest of scaffolding and decay, it was still a thrill. The fact that we (the Community Company) were due to be taken through our part at about 3 pm on Tuesday afternoon and the first performance proper was at 7.30pm the same day, stoked all three emotions afresh.

The Community Volunteers (left): Thomas, Rosie, Giselle, Peter, Colin, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Asti and Hugh

There were eight of us in the Community Volunteer group, and our role was principally to gather on stage in a cloud of dry ice to sit in judgement on The Birlings as The Inspector reached the climax of his investigation. This was done by taking our positions on stage, then, on cue, taking a threatening half step forward.

For all of our time on stage we were to be stony faced, staring into the middle distance. Then, we were to turn and walk off ahead of the Inspectors exit in the famous scene where the ingenious Birling House literally collapses on stage in a cacophony of fireworks, bangs and flashing lights. We stare at this spectacle over our shoulder, before leaving the stage.

The whole thing took about fifteen minutes. Sounds pretty simple, right? Wrong! In that fifteen minutes of hard-faced staring, one is left in stark isolation under the lights, in front of an audience, contemplating all manner of things to do with the workings of the human body. An itch on one’s nose. Cramp in one’s left leg. Cramp in one’s right leg. The first, frightening tickle of the beginning of an explosive cough. A tiny belch. A runny nose. Hold that fart in. The palpitations of the heart and laboured breathing that in your fevered, overworked imagination, are clearly the start of cardiac arrest. Actors have died on stage, haven’t they? And then one’s thoughts are overloaded with the practicalities of managing a heart attack on stage, such that you miss the cue to begin your exit turn.

The walk back to the dressing room after successfully getting away with it on stage is a heady cocktail of euphoria and relief. We gathered together downstairs for a 15 minute wait before going back on stage for our curtain call. For three or four of us, there was an additional scene where they investigated the ruined house, but clearly, the criteria for selection for this onerous task was to be young and pretty. (and less than 6 feet 4 inches tall so you could comfortably navigate your way around a crowded space). That left me, a reject along with 3 other losers, to assemble on one side of the stage to take the applause. Sounds pretty simple, but we had to maintain our stony judgemental faces, when every human instinct is to smile in recognition of the audience’s acclaim. Impassive silence is not as easy as Buster Keaton makes it seem!

Well, we spent an awful lot of time together. The role involves an enormous amount of hanging around in the dressing room, so it was very important that we all got on. It would have been disappointing if we had just retreated into the world of social media on our phones for hours at a time. We did do a lot of that as well, but there was a lot of chat and a lot of laughs.

Mobile Phones and the Art of Conversation, above

We did this for 8 performances over 5 days. It was a strangely exhausting week, notwithstanding the fact that, really, we did very little. If it was acting at all, it was definitely the Robert Mitchum version of acting – walk on and point your suit at the audience. But it was a fascinating, thrilling experience, and I finished the week with a huge sense of respect for the skill, teamwork and professionalism that underpins putting on a quality production such as this. That judgement is reserved for the professionals we worked with, but what of the other Community volunteers?

The other people were fascinating. The 8 divided into various groups. First the Young Ones – Rosie and Thomas, who were Front of house staff at the theatre, relishing getting back stage and on stage. Rosie did a great impersonation of an air stewardess in her costume and organised several attempts to get us to do a Tik Tok dance routine. Thomas took great pleasure in mimicking the main players in the cast and took particular delight in honing his Scottish accent to perfection. He was also responsible for most of the photographs.

Then came the AmDram squad, led by the extraordinary Hugh, aged 81, who reckoned he had done about 1500 performances as a Community Volunteer, and who was also a veteran of amdram productions going back years, to the silent movie days. (OK, not quite) Peter and Colin were also heavily involved in amateur productions, with Peter a leading light of the Bromley Little Theatre (Licensee, actor and set builder).

Then we had Giselle, a professionally trained ballet dancer and teacher, whose day job was as CEO of Darcey Bussell’s dance fitness brand, DDMIX. She had boundless energy and would often fit in classes or other work commitments even in days when we had two performances. Finally, there was Asti, who, in between stories about the ABBA hologram gig she attended during the run, brought her laptop into the dressing room, to keep on top of her, remote, day job. In discussion, it quickly became clear that there were no shows or plays of note in London’s Glittering West End that she hadn’t been to.

The Community Volunteers ( minus Asti who was partying with Abba that night) above, right.

In comparison to the others, as far as the theatre world was concerned, I wasn’t even a rank amateur, I was nowhere. I concluded that the only reason I got the gig was because I was retired and available, I lived a 5 minute bus ride away, and I knew the play inside out, having taught it for thirty years or more. To their credit, the others tolerated me and my pretensions to write a novel set in a provincial theatre, (Coming, but not soon, “Exit Stage Left”) and responded patiently to all of my rather obvious questions that were from the box labelled “background research”.

The chat ranged far and wide over topics that included:

Lower league football teams – Middlesbrough, Plymouth, QPR. Also Crystal Palace – yes, I know, they’re not lower league yet, but they soon will be. (sorry Colin, but simetimes you have to be cruel to be kind)
TikTok and what it’s like to have 500,000 followers
Superhero Comic Conventions
The history and origins of the Little Theatre movement
Agatha Christie and rescuing her reputation as a Playwright
The importance of having an expensive lightsabre
Jim Davidson and the importance of not being rude and offensive
Where to get the best Hot Cross Buns
Modern theatre audiences drunkenly abusing theatre staff
The Police Force and institutional Misogyny and Racism
Stage Fright
Where to get hold of cheap theatre tickets
Telly: Gold, Succession, Happy Valley, White Lotus
The relative merits of Greggs, Pret and the local Greasy Spoon
A guided tour of great performances we have given. (I was very quiet during these particular conversations, which happened approximately every five minutes. There’s nothing that actors, particularly amateurs, I suspect, like better than talking about their greatest performances of all time. Colin even brought his script for his latest play, so that he could learn his lines. What a trouper!

Back to the Professionals

We were looked after for the week by Philip Stewart, who took us through the choreography of our scene, and checked in on us throughout each day to make sure we were alright. His main role was as the understudy for Mr Birling. Luckily, we got to see him perform the role in one matinee towards the end of the run. Like everyone else, he was excellent in the role: authoritative and convincing as a self-made, blinkered Capitalist. Birling is someone who has pulled himself up by his bootstraps to make something of himself and can’t see why all those who bleat about poverty can’t do the same. It’s hard to overstate how difficult being an understudy must be. They have to know the part inside out, and have the confidence to step in at a moment’s notice without it showing. Phil epitomised this – he appeared to have been doing the role for the whole of the run. The Company Stage Manager, Brad Fitt, was also very welcoming and helpful, making sure we got loads of photos of our experience.

Because we were onstage for only one scene, we got to know it inside out, and it was fascinating to see how the actors, individually and as an ensemble, varied it from night to night. We witnessed the Inspector’s interrogation of Eric, the young wayward son of Mr Birling, leading to the collapse of the family’s smug, pompous self confidence in a terrible physical confrontation between Eric and his mother, before his father smashes the whiskey tantalus, hits Eric and throws him to the ground. Eric was played by George Rowlands, a young actor in one of his first roles. We were privileged to watch him do this scene so close up. He changed it slightly every performance, but each one was as intense as the last. He’s got a big future, I think.

I’m sure all of the other actors were brilliant as well, it’s just that we didn’t see as much of them. We didn’t see the Gerald Croft character on stage at all, because of the structure of the play. Sorry, Simon!

I must confess that one of my concerns before the first day was how we would fit in with the professionals. I had a very stereotypical view of how that was going to go, assuming that we wouldn’t even register a flicker on the actors’ radar. After all, they had been together since August, and they see a new group of volunteers from the community every week. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if they had regally blanked us all. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were all extremely friendly and welcoming, and did everything they could to put us at our ease.

We (the community volunteers) were all struck by how much the audience communicate with the actors on stage, and how much they play a part, differently, in every performance. For the Am Dram crew, this was nothing new, but for the rest of us, it added a whole new dimension to the experience. I imagine we’re all familiar with the concept of a “Good House” or a “Good audience”, but to experience the reality of that was something else. During the matinees, and the evening performances to a lesser extent, in the first few days of the run, school parties, full of GCSE students and their hard pressed teachers, dominated.

For the kids, particularly in the matinees, this was as much an escape from the drudgery at school as it was a theatrical experience. And it was an experience they were determined to enjoy. They whooped! They cheered! They groaned! They showed their approval or disapproval of each character as they all told their stories.

As an ex English teacher with many such trips under my belt, this brought back many memories, some of them uncomfortable. Before we used to take a school group to the theatre, we would spend a lesson briefing them on theatre audience etiquette, emphasising that a trip to the theatre was not the same as going to the cinema, with its noisy, continual eating, and discussing the film (at best) or their social life (at worst). It wouldn’t have been fair to put them in an unfamiliar situation and expect them, instinctively to know how to behave. Even with the briefing, group hysteria and peer pressure would often take over, and we were left fielding disapproving looks and comments from all of the card carrying members of the Young People Today Are Awful Brigade. There were a few of them in attendance at The Churchill, several of them haranguing the box office staff for a refund because they were surrounded by kids. How terrible for them.

So, there were times when I winced at inappropriate laughter, chat, or whooping. But then, as the run went into Friday and Saturday, when the serious local theatre buffs attend, I began to long for some evidence of the audience’s engagement with the play. At moments of high drama, moments when the student-dominated audiences would gasp or groan or cheer, from the respectable burghers of Bromley, there was nothing. And on stage, even as a high class bollard, that was strangely deflating. For the principal actors, it must have felt like being ignored – chatting to someone at a party when you notice they are more interested in looking over your shoulder for someone more interesting. Not that that’s ever happened to me, you understand.

I was struck by the gruelling nature of life on the road for a jobbing actor. For the principal characters in particular, doing two performances a day must be physically very demanding. They’ve been doing this run since September, criss crossing the country, changing locations every week. Living in digs away from one’s family, only getting back for a break for a day every now and again – this is not an easy life. Nor a glamorous one.

Backstage, celebrating our glittering success (above right)

As a tiny example, at the end of the last performance on Saturday evening, the thing I was really looking forward to about the return to normal life was the opportunity to eat something vaguely green in colour. A salad leaf. A broccoli stem. A green bean. Even a frozen pea would have been welcome. An unvarying diet of sugar/grease sludge, snatched between performances in a high street chain is not good for you, particularly when combined with a visit to the pub every night. I had expected the actors and crew to conform to the stereotype of the wild thespian troubadors, out on the lash every night in a carnival of excess, but in fact, they were disappointingly sober and professional. Probably why they were all so good at their jobs, on reflection. Or perhaps they just went, sneakily, to a different pub, away from the Hoi Palloi. Hmm.

I was also fascinated by the innards of a professional theatre. Going through the stage door, and making one’s way down the stairs into the bowels of the theatre was real thrill. There was a warren of dressing rooms and ancillary rooms: rehearsal spaces, the wardrobe and laundry area, kitchen, the Company Stage Manager’s office, the Green room. I thought of all the great names that might have occupied the same rooms over the years. And Jim Davidson.

The wings and back stage were another mysterious area, full of shadowy experts silently going about their business to knit the production together. I was particularly struck by the member of the Company (don’t know if it was the DSM or ASM) following each performance on a monitor, in front of a Star Trek dashboard of knobs and controls, issuing instructions to the crew: “Open the house, please”.She was also the person who summoned us from the dressing room to the wings to be ready for our cue.

The strange world of “Back Stage” (above)

Overall, it was a wonderful, memorable experience, one I’ll never forget. It was the sort of thing that retirement, as a second playtime, was designed for. If only I’d followed up that performance as a tree in the Primary Nativity play, all those years ago, things could have been very different.

Tag: English Teaching