Poetry review – A NEWER WILDERNESS: Andrew Keanie finds that Nicola Healey’s slim chapbook has much to say about human wellness and well-being
year 2025
Millet: Life on the Land. Review by Graham Buchan. If you have read the classic book on English rural life, Ronald Blythe’s Akenfield, you will know that such a life, particularly before farming was mechanised, was one of unremitting hardship and poverty, and definitely not to be romanticised. The French painter Jean-François Millet rendered that sort of life in paint.
Paradise Lost. Review by Alan Price. Talking to some of my poetry reading friends on how they feel about Milton they all said he is greatly admired but unloved: especially when tackling his epic (700 lines) poem, Paradise Lost.
Clive. Review by Barbara Lewis. From “The Office” to “W1A,” workplaces have provided a rich vein of television comedy. Now “Clive,” by award-winning stage and screen writer Michael Wynne, proves that working from home is perfect subject-matter for a theatrical one-hander.
Charterhouse Tour. Review by Barbara Lewis. An inspired condition of a National Heritage Lottery Fund grant, agreed around the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, was that the Charterhouse, whose origins date back to the Black Death of the 14th-century, should open its doors to the public.
Death Comes to Pemberley. Review by Barbara Lewis. “Jane Austen wrote six novels, pretty much all about the same sort of thing,” declares the programme note to P.D. James’ artful sequel to possibly the most popular of the six (or seven, if you count the unfinished “Sanditon”).
Zoltan Huszarik box set. Review by Alan Price. The great pleasure of this box set is to discover the remarkable work of a Hungarian director whose films have sadly slipped off the radar.
Poetry review – THE SCREW CITY POEMS: Charles Rammelkamp enjoys dipping into a comprehensive New & Selected from Richard Vargas
WILD BOAR: Alex Josephy is intrigued by an enigmatic and poetic first novel by Hannah Lutz which is deeply concerned about the climate crisis
Testament. Review by Barbara Lewis. Green Opera’s aim is to put sustainability and nature at its core, while redefining opera for a new era in which art and environmental consciousness unite.
New York, New York. Review by Alan Price. The bad bits of New York, New York make you cringe. The good bits have you cheering out loud in praise. It’s flawed, meandering, joyful and downbeat and never quite the sum of all its parts.
The Charterhouse garden tour. Review by Barbara Lewis. Mr Weeding was in 1795 the aptly named first recorded gardener at the Charterhouse – or at least that’s what Emily, one of the current team tells, with a straight face, the mixture of Londoners and tourists she is showing around.
By Barbara Lewis • architecture, history, year 2025 • Tags: architecture, Barbara Lewis, history