New releases from The Orb, Meredith Monk, and Marconi Union
Visual virtuosity illuminates a Darwin for beginners
Eager: Bradley Foster as Charles Darwin
[Mark Douet]
RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
The Wider Earth
Natural History Museum, London
SHREWSBURY is very proud if its most famous son, Charles Darwin.
A statue of the venerable scientist, replete with magnificent beard, dominates the entrance to the library, a shopping centre has been named in his honour — he'd have been touched, I’m sure — and Quantum Leap, a travesty of municipal sculpture was erected to celebrate the bicentenary of his birth. A lesson, as if one were needed, in the hubris of Tory-dominated local government
So as a native of the town I was quite at home in the opening scenes of David Morton’s play The Wider Earth. In it, Darwin – not the bearded, established naturalist but an eager and bright young graduate in Bradley Foster's characterisation – journeys through the Shropshire countryside in 1831.
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