John Gielgud
The demonising of homosexuals in post-war Britain
The tabloids in particular stirred up fear and distrust with lurid stories of orgies, prostitution, drug-taking, political corruption, sinister concealment and susceptibility to blackmail
O what a lovely Waugh!
Sumptuous, glorious, luminous, lavish: Granada’s 40-year-old adaptation of Brideshead Revisited remains the sine qua non of mini-series, says Mark McGinness
Glenda Jackson might have made a magnificent Hamlet
The role of Hamlet is, Max Beerbohm famously wrote, ‘a hoop through which every eminent actor must, sooner or later,…
All the men and women merely players
How many books are there about Shakespeare? A study published in the 1970s claimed a figure of 11,000, and today…
Diary
I feel an intense antipathy for Vladimir Putin. No one on the international scene has aroused in me such dislike…
Letters
Why girls do better Sir: Isabel Hardman notes that girls now outperform boys at every level in education (‘The descent…
Last man standing
Like Mel Brooks’s character the Two Thousand-Year-Old Man, Peter Lewis has met everyone of consequence. Though he doesn’t mention being…
