Amanda Cockrell looks at the history of accusations of communism as a political attack, particularly as they affected screenwriters in the US during the ‘Red Scare’ of the 1940s and 50s, and finds echoes today. Repression fears art, she concludes, and as writers it is our job to see that it does. Seventy-five years ago, […]
Magicians and film-makers, masters of illusions
Liz Hyder is enchanted by the magicians and film-makers of the 1890s, whose extraordinary inventions inspired her new novel, The Illusions, set at a time of great technological and social change. A few years ago, I went to the Wellcome Collection’s Smoke and Mirrors exhibition, which explored the psychology of magic. It was a feast […]
Language and the Nazi propaganda machine
Catherine Hokin examines how the Nazi propaganda machine twisted language to hide mass murder, including their Aktion T4 euthanasia programme. Language and how it is used is particularly important to a writer. That might sound very obvious but it is a truism I have come back to again and again while writing fiction based around […]
Review: They Shall Not Grow Old
At first it seems a strange title. “They shall grow not old” is from Laurence Binyon’s epitaph on The Fallen of World War I, but the emphasis in Peter Jackson’s masterly film is firmly on those who survived it: the men who enlisted and went out to France, but lived and came home to tell […]
Review: Outlaw King
Netflix’s latest foray into original drama shines a spotlight on three crucial years (1304-1307) in the life of Robert the Bruce, the king who would eventually win independence for Scotland at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. We first meet Bruce two years before his 1306 coronation as he surrenders to King Edward I at […]
The Best Costume Dramas for Christmas
Katherine Clements picks the best costume drama to watch over the festive season. The Crown (Netflix, from 8th December) When The Crown first aired last year it was much hyped as the most expensive TV series ever made. I doubted whether a show about our current royals would live up to such grand claims. I was […]
Juliet West watches Testament of Youth
Determined, ambitious and highly intelligent, Vera Brittain was a disappointment to her parents. Alarmed by her bookishness and desire to study at Oxford, their tactic was to buy her a grand piano in the hope that this would persuade her to behave like a proper young lady and become, eventually, somebody’s wife. The arrival of […]