Archive for: July, 2010

Uncategorized July 26, 2010

POPERY, PUPPETRY, PASHTUNS AND PICASSO

In response to your charming comments about Bean, I open with a picture of her relaxing between diplomatic missions: ************ I can see the Pope chain-smoking now. Are you old enough to remember? I am, though I never actually saw the play, way back in 1968. It was called Hadrian VII and had been adapted …

Uncategorized July 18, 2010

DOG DAYS AND TALES FROM THE BRITISH RAJ

Ambassador Bean Through Bean, our family terrier, I have informally met one of the district’s more colourful and intriguing characters, somebody I have passed in the street many times over the years I have lived here and whom I have wondered about in vain. He’s betrayed never a flicker when I’ve looked into his eyes. …

Uncategorized July 12, 2010

ENGLISH LORDS AND RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARIES

Last Sunday I attended the Midsomer Murders farewell garden party for John Nettles near Great Missenden. It was like a bumper edition of the show – lots of smart and pretty straw hats, though no suspicious looks. John gave a short speech in which he acknowledged his OBE, but said it stood for ‘Other Buggers’ …

Uncategorized July 4, 2010

BILL NAUGHTON – A CENTENARY BLOG

Bill Naughton (1910-1992) Photo by Ida Kar 12 June marked the centenary of the birth of playwright Bill Naughton. It was he that in 1963 provided me with my first West End part, the younger brother in All in Good Time, which transferred from Bernard Miles’s Mermaid Theatre to the Phoenix. I had to convince …

Uncategorized July 2, 2010

REEL LIFE: KRAPP’S LAST TAPE

Nothing I have written, or can write now, seems adequate or even necessary by way of introduction to the intense, sparse poetry of this little masterpiece. It was an RSC production that played Stratford’s Other Place and the Pit at the Barbican and was included in the New York (BAM) and Washington season. Subsequently it …