It’s atypical to write a review of a play after it closes: perhaps such an item bears closer resemblance to an epitaph. However, it’s impossible for me to let a production of Cyrano de Bergerac to pass unnoticed. I admit this is partially due to the fact that I am a Cyrano aficionado: this work [...]

My introduction to the works of Samuel Beckett was botched. It occured in an undergraduate English course, whose purpose was to examine less than common texts, and sadly I had a less than common lecturer. Unfortunately, he was more fixated on talking about Freud’s ideas on children playing with their excreta (and how we’re actually [...]

Another Gulmohar Tree Aamer Hussein. Telegram Books 2009, Paperback, 111 pages, £2.11 Few nations have as an anarchic a reputation as Pakistan. Because of its present political instability, its possession of nuclear weapons, and its proximity to the war in Afghanistan, it is hardly at the top of the list of tourist destinations. Even President [...]

One of mankind’s principal preoccupations is predicting its own demise. The Mayans supposedly put together a calendar that dated the end of the world at some point in 2012. Nostradamus said that the planet would be consumed by nuclear war in 1999. People in London were extremely nervous in 1666, given the year’s numerical relationship [...]

It’s uncommon to associate melancholy with either majesty or beauty, particularly in the English speaking world. It’s a widely-held belief, certainly in America, that lacking overt cheer is evidence of psychological dysfunction. Anyone who thinks otherwise should try the following experiment: find a group of Americans, ingratiate yourself into their midst, and then look purposefully, [...]

A View From The Foothills Ruth Winstone (Editor). Profile Books 2009, Hardcover, 448 pages, £13.48 Perhaps the most depressing aspect of Britain’s Labour government is the amount of conformity it requires of its acolytes. It’s rare that I can watch a government minister or most Labour MPs without shouting at the television, “Say what you [...]

Chicago Farouk Abdel Wahab (Translator). Harper 2008, Hardcover, 342 pages, £16.57 It’s difficult not to sympathise with Margaret Mitchell. After she put down her pen upon completion of “Gone With the Wind”, she must have wondered, “how can I top this?” The same situation faced Harper Lee after she wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird”. If [...]

Blindness Giovanni Pontiero (Translator). Harvest Books 2008, Paperback, 334 pages, £9.58 I happened across the works of Jose Saramago quite by accident; the Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek mentioned him in reference to the novel “Seeing”, in which a democracy ceases to function because the electorate decides to submit nothing but blank ballots. Intrigued, I decided [...]

Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher, once said a metaphor for cinema could be found in a scene from the 1974 film, “The Conversation”: Gene Hackman, playing a paranoid detective, flushes a hotel toilet experimentally and is horrified to see the clean water replaced with blood which overflows the bowl and spills all over the floor. [...]

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade Joseph Wheelan. Avalon Publishing Group 2008, Hardcover, 336 pages, £15.99 Ask anyone of a progressive bent who features in their pantheon of political heroes, most of the answers you’ll get will be fairly modern: usually icons of the Sixties, like Noam Chomsky or Robert Kennedy, get many mentions. Sometimes you’ll get [...]