‘We were swimming in the mind pool of Tom Stoppard!’ – actors salute the great playwright

 

‘We were swimming in the mind pool of Tom Stoppard!’ – actors salute the great playwright

Rufus Sewell, Christine Baranski, Susan Wokoma, Toby Jones and Harriet Walter share their unforgettable encounters with a theatrical giant

Obituaries / Tom Stoppard

Sir Tom Stoppard obituary

One of Britain’s most outstanding playwrights famed for the ‘hypnotised brilliance’ of his prose and dialogue

Michael Coveney

Sunday 30 November 2025

After the first night of his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the National Theatre in London in 1967, Tom Stoppard awoke, like Lord Byron, and found himself famous. This new star in the playwriting firmament was a restless, questing bundle of contradictions. Stoppard wrote great theatre because, primarily, he wrote argumentative and witty dialogue. Writing plays, he said, was the only respectable way of contradicting oneself. His favourite line in modern drama was Christopher Hampton’s in The Philanthropist: “I’m a man of no convictions – at least, I think I am.”

Tom Stoppard / The Art of Theater

Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

The Art of Theater No. 7

Interviewed by Shusha Guppy

ISSUE 109, WINTER 1988

 

At the time of this interview, Stoppard was near the end of rehearsals for his new play, Hapgood, which opened in London in March, 1988. For the duration of the rehearsals Stoppard had rented a furnished apartment in central London in order to avoid commuting, and although he had said, “I would never volunteer to talk about my work and myself more than ninety seconds,” he was extremely generous with his time and attention. Stoppard is tall and exotically handsome, and he speaks with a very slight lisp.

Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses by James Joyce

 

Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses by James Joyce, Long Island,1955 by Eve Arnold.

Where There’s Love, There’s Hate by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo

Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo

Where There’s Love, There’s Hate 

by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo

Back in July, I read a few books to tie in with Richard and Stu’s Spanish Lit Month. All well and good except I ended up with several other books on my shopping list on the back of other bloggers’ reviews. Where There’s Love, There’s Hate was near the top of that list thanks to Grant’s review, and when I spotted it in the new Foyles, I couldn’t resist.

Author author / Ian Fleming / James Bond - a tickt to distant joys XLISTO

AUTHOR AUTHOR

Ian Fleming

James Bond – a ticket to distant joys

'Ian Fleming's novels offer the opportunity to glimpse, even to revel in, how things used to be before progress and equality spoiled all the fun'

Jonathan Freedland
Fri 28 Sep 2012 22.55 BST

Twenty Questions with Sarah Moss

‘I fear that the discourse of identity politics will continue to separate readers and writers’

Writers and thinkers take on twenty questions from the TLS, revealing the books they most admire, nagging regrets and the occasional hidden talent

Jack Vettriano / Unreal Rooms

Jack Vettriano, Mad Dogs

Jack Vettriano

Unreal Rooms

1 JULY 2017, 

EMANUELA BORGATTA DUNNETT

Why are we able to feel nostalgia for a world we have never visited nor known, in front of Jack Vettriano’s paintings? Why do we feel as strangers - yet accomplices - in front of the men and women populating his works? These are key questions to understand the Scottish painter’s success, a painter who has managed to become one of the most followed artist of contemporary painting, all over the world. First, we need to focus our attention on the use of the light: unprecedented in the way he uses to play with the darkness which characterises all his works: faces in half light, thoughtful, facing a crossroad where they are asked to state their position. The bodies are captured at the beginning of an action, the consequences of which are unknown: deceitful gazes, arms meeting in secret relationships. 

Mario Puzo / The Godfather / Quotes

The Godfather 

by Mario Puzo

BIOGRAPHY

Quotes

BOOK I

“Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than government. It is almost the equal of a family. Never forget that. If you had built up a wall of friendships you wouldn’t have to ask me for help.” – Don Vito Corleone

 

Interview

‘It felt dangerous. You got naggy’: Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on power, combovers and Blue Moon

Ahead of their 11th movie together, the actor and director discuss musicals, the legacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman and what being bald and 5ft tall does to your flirting skills

 

Ethan Hawke

Review

Blue Moon review – Ethan Hawke is terrific in Richard Linklater’s bitter Broadway breakup drama 

This article is more than 1 month old

Hawke plays with campy brilliance and criminal combover the lyricist Lorenz Hart as he spirals into vinegary jilted despair after his split from Richard Rodgers

Peter Bradshaw

Thursday 16 October 2025

Breaking up with the more prominent partner in a showbiz double act is a hazardous business. Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in size – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at taller characters, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Françoise Gilot y Pablo Picasso

 

Françoise Gilot y Picasso

Françoise Gilot and Pablo Picasso

Françoise Gilot y Picasso

J. D. Salinger / The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye

The 100 best novels / No 72 / The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger (1951)

To my mother

1

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, an what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all--I'm not saying that--but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. I mean that's all I told D.B. about, and he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood. That isn't too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He's got a lot of dough, now. He didn't use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was "The Secret Goldfish." It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.

Isaac Babel / Justice in Quotes

Isaac Babel

 

Justice in Quotes

By The Odessa Review -

 

July 17, 2017

First I had dealings with Benya Krik, then with Lyubka Shneyveys. Do these words mean anything to you? Do they leave a taste in your mouth? The only thing I dodged on this trail of death was Seryozha Utochkin. Him I didn’t run across — and so I’m still alive. He straddles the city, this Utochkin, like a bronze monument, with his red hair and grey eyes. And all of us have to scurry between his legs.

Derek and Quentin, twins from Indiana who live in the woods: Robin de Puy’s best photograph

 

Derek and Quentin, twins from Indiana who live in the woods: Robin de Puy’s best photograph

This article is more than 6 months old

‘I spotted them in a town called Elkhart, jumped out of the car and ran towards them. If you didn’t know their story, you might think they were runners or cyclists. Then you see the tattoos’

Interview by Chris Broughton

Wed 21 May 2025 14.36 

My first trip photographing Americans was in 2015, when I drove 8,000 miles across the country on a Harley-Davidson. I’d spent too long caught up in assignments and wanted to take some time off from commercial and editorial work to follow my own creative urges. America offered an opportunity to explore a landscape I didn’t know, and was far enough away from my home in the Netherlands to ensure it wouldn’t be easy for me to just go back if things got difficult.

Farmer Annie and her prize-winning sheep: Joanne Coates’ best photograph

 

MY BEST SHOT

Farmer Annie and her prize-winning sheep: Joanne Coates’ best photograph

This article is more than 1 year old

‘Sheep are Annie’s passion. She won an award with this north country cheviot. It’s put on a stand to keep it still’

Interview by Ella Braidwood

Wed 12 Jun 2024 15.20 BST

I moved back home to rural North Yorkshire in 2016, where I met my partner, a farmer. When you spend a lot of time on a farm, you end up helping out. I’m not from a farming background so I joined a Facebook group for women in farming to feel a bit more supported. You can ask about practical things – no question is a stupid one.