Latest editorial
CHRIS SEARLE welcomes a new book that makes working class history come alive in a true story of human flesh and aspiration
On a Dark Night With Enough Wind by Lilla Pennant
Evocative accounts of life on the edge in rural Wales
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a contemporary update of a problem play that raises more questions than it answers
New releases from Alice Di Micele, Tim Grimm, and Tereza Catarov
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by the stylistic muddle that arises when you apply a pub theatre sensibility to a towering Greek tragedy
ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher
ALEX HALL is frustrated by a book that ducks a clear definition of terrorism and fails to perceive the role of the state in sponsoring it
LILLA PENNANT’S real-life stories from the remote north Wales villages of Tremeirchion and Sodom — drawn from conversations she had with old residents back in the 1970s and ‘80s — have about them the faint whiff of witchcraft and paganism, allied to a nicely crafted atmosphere of rain and wind on the hillsides and moors thereabouts.
What they don’t have, though, is a great deal of substance. Despite vague allusions to long-held secrets that Pennant might be able to uncover, nothing much is ever revealed, at least in terms of old-time magic or druidic practices.
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PETER MASON is surprised by the bleak outlook foreseen for cricket’s future by the cricketers’ bible
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
