Real Life “Wealth I Seek Not, Hope Nor Love…” Remembering Peter the Painter 15 Mar 202119 Apr 2021 “Sadly lost again in a longing for the past” (9) A timely cryptic-crossword clue this week made me realise not only that “nostalgia” is an apt anagram of “lost again”,…
television drama… High Spirits and Low Morale 29 Nov 201829 Oct 2020 This is a story not only about a forgotten story, but about a forgotten tragedy. It is a two-part tale. Bear with me. In the ever-changing sea of crime series,…
film Familiar Thoughts of School and Unfamiliar Schools of Thought 20 Nov 201829 Oct 2020 “Oh, Mr Hemming, what’s happening to the world? What’s this filth that’s… flooding… everything… ” In the late Sixties and early Seventies, it was examination time for the British public…
film The Milkman Also Rings Twice 18 Jul 201729 Oct 2020 “I might kill myself today. No, I’ll go shoplifting instead... then I’ll kill myself. Are you listening to me? Does this cry from the heart meaning nothing to you? I…
television drama Savage Ms-Siah 5 Jun 201729 Oct 2020 “We’ll only ever change things by going on with what we believe.” In the early 2000s, I was researching a planned history of the BBC's Play for Today drama strand…
television drama Impish Hillmans 28 Apr 201729 Oct 2020 “I remember this thing I saw on telly once about a couple that had this old car they didn’t want, and they kept trying to get rid of it. They…
True Crime Love Will Tear Us Apart 31 Mar 201731 Mar 2017 For my book, A Dangerous Place, I spent a lot of time talking to officers from Surrey CID, and through that research also discovered a remarkable website detailing the history…
television drama A Dreadful And Despairing History 7 Mar 201729 Oct 2020 Few, if any, remember a late-night series of half-hour plays under the cumbersome umbrella title Conceptions of Murder, broadcast at various points throughout 1970 in several ITV regions, with no…
television drama Fear The Reaper 28 Feb 201729 Oct 2020 Sometimes you blow the dust off something that leaves you breathless with excitement. Nigel Hinton’s 1979 television play The Reaper has done just that. All I knew of it a…
television drama A Light Touch And A Good Ear 27 Feb 201715 Feb 2022 When I wrote an obituary of the enchanting writer Julia Jones for The Independent, I said that she "quietly and assuredly told bewitching, humane stories of simple lives in crisis,…
Dreams Gathering Dust 