P. L. Travers and Walt Disney Farther to my recent thoughts on biopics, over Christmas we recorded Saving Mr Banks and watched it a few nights ago. As most of you probably know (spoiler alert!) this tells the story of Walt Disney’s attempts to get P.L.Travers’s agreement to let him film Mary Poppins despite her … Continue reading Believing Mr Banks: a lesson in how to link fiction and history
In a recent blog post I looked at how cinema’s love for the bio-pic allows for a certain massaging of history. This month I’m thinking of the dangers of dabbling at all in the borders of fact and fiction. First of all, there’s the fracas over Netflix’s next series of The Crown, slated for depicting … Continue reading The Crown and The Lost King: the cost of playing fast and loose with ‘history’
Robert Louis Stevenson & J.M. Barrie, A Friendship in Letters, by Michael Shaw, Sandstone Press, 2020 “Write to me again in my infinite distance” So wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in the year 1893 from his home in Samoa to fellow writer J. M. Barrie who was in, or near, his native town of Kirriemuir in … Continue reading A friendship in messages: with thanks to #RLS and @SandstonePress
Lockdown. Is it over? Almost over? Most would have us think so, but I know it’s nothing like the end, and although I can accept there is something called the ‘new normal’ I have no appetite for it and is it really normal? As someone comments in today’s paper, after all the fanfare of easing … Continue reading Intermission: COVID and the new normal
So what did you do during lockdown? Made sourdough? Learned a language? Maybe after a couple of weeks and having done none of those things (don’t mention the sewing) I was feeling underemployed, because on an impulse I signed up to a project to learn and sing the whole of the Messiah by the end … Continue reading Handel’s Messiah, not just for Christmas! @messiahathome
