ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
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Digging out the truth
LAWRENCE REVISITED: (L toR) Thomas Edward Lawrence in 1919 and Peter O'Toole as Lawrence in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia
[(L to R) Public domain and IMDb]
Death comes for Liberals, entitled murder, Vatican hit squads, and fraternising with the Blitz killer
New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, and John Luther Adams
GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
I’VE been preparing this play now for the last nine years. Started on an archaeological dig in Jordan in 2013, where I was writer in residence with GARP (Great Arab Revolt Project) co-directed by Neil Faulkner, the play speaks to our time.
Archaeology has its genres too, and this dig, Modern Conflict Archaeology, examined the united tribal Bedouin revolt against the Turks, allied with Germany in WWI, through the complex character of TE Lawrence, mythologised as Lawrence of Arabia.
I had a teenage fascination with Lawrence after seeing the David Lean movie in the 1960s, and Peter O’Toole’s lovely blue eyes soon gave way to reading the real Lawrence and realising what an astounding writer he was.
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