Category Archives: The Arts

Politically related plays, films, TV, radio and entertainment.

Charley Hasted

LGBT+ History Month – reviews and recommendations!

By Charley Hasted | Sun 19th February 2023 - 5:00 pm

As we all know by know February is LGBT+ History Month so here’s some of my favourite LGBT media I think you might be interested in!

Please share your favourites in the comments – Books, TV, Podcasts, Fiction and Non-Fiction. Whether it’s taught you, moved you, made you think, laugh or cry let everyone else know about it!

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Graham Lippiatt

See an Award Winning Movie and Help Ukraine

By Graham Lippiatt | Sun 15th May 2022 - 2:52 pm

The Lloyd George Society and Rights-Liberties-Justice are sponsoring a showing of the film Mr Jones at the National Liberal Club on 20 June. The movie tells the story of Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist and former employee of Lloyd George, who travelled secretly to the USSR to uncover the truth about the Holodomor, the great famine of 1933 under Stalin’s regime in the Ukraine. Jones witnesses appalling conditions, including starving people whose grain has been forcibly taken away for consumption elsewhere, villages whose entire populations have died or just vanished and ‘horrifically, he stumbles across examples of cannibalism. Yet despite his evidence, Jones finds it hard to get the matter taken seriously once back in Britain.

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Mary Reid

A Westminster Story

By Mary Reid | Thu 27th February 2020 - 2:25 pm

Earlier this month we published a post by Sal Fulcher about her play “A Westminster Story”. I was intrigued by this so booked a ticket and went to see it yesterday evening.

The venue was new to me. The Waterloo East Theatre is a delightful 100-seat studio theatre located under one of the arches beneath Waterloo East station. Occasional low rumbles from the trains overhead only added to the atmosphere – especially for this play set in contemporary London – and didn’t overwhelm the actors’ voices at all.

Sal is a scriptwriter and psychotherapist who has written for Hollyoaks and for other films and TV series. This is her first full-length theatre production.

I thoroughly enjoyed the play, which opens as the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are hammering out a coalition deal. This is not 2010 again, but there are echoes, of course, of what happened then.

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Sal Fulcher

A Westminster story – realism versus idealism in coalition and love

By Sal Fulcher | Mon 10th February 2020 - 11:30 am

In 2015, I was developing a play inspired by the Greek tragedy of Antigone. I was captivated by the famous scene where Antigone’s Uncle Creon tries to stop her sacrificing her life by arguing reason, compromise and a realistic view of the world. She, however, does not relent and her idealistic principles lead to her death. I both admired her brave commitment to her unique moral compass and was equally frustrated by her lack of ability to compromise and save her life. This led me to wonder; what would a modern day ‘Antigone’ look like?

A coalition government seemed like the perfect context for this character and the question; when is it right to stand up for our principles at any cost and when is it smarter to compromise? In my view, the Lib Dems were brutally and unfairly punished in 2015. Perhaps their compromises could have been smarter, but does that mean their whole collaborative approach was at fault?

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Paul Walter

The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson

By Paul Walter | Thu 6th February 2020 - 11:00 am

My nearest and dearest booked seats for us at “The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson” at the Nuffield theatre in Southampton this week.

It seems to be your type of thing

– said her nibs.

Well, as usual she was right. It very much was my type of thing.

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Joe Otten

Theatre plug: Tea and Tentacles at Zeta Reticuli

By Joe Otten | Thu 8th March 2018 - 3:10 pm

This April, not to miss, is the world premiere of my play Tea and Tentacles at Zeta Reticuli, an original sexy science fiction comedy thriller. Because, if we’re honest, there is not nearly enough of that sort of thing on the stage.

Set on a starship, 40 light years from earth, a human crew of 6, along with the humanoid avatar of the ship’s mind, and an unduly annoying “morale-boosting” android, are on a mission to establish diplomatic relations with the ungendered swamp-dwelling tentacle aliens of Zeta Reticuli 3. How far are they willing to go to adapt to the aliens’ unusual practises? How will they cope when pushed to the limit by events, romantic rivalry and conflicting agendas? Will there be enough tea and cake to see them through?

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Paul Walter

A belter of a TV programme on the family history of Noel Clarke

By Paul Walter | Sat 9th September 2017 - 10:28 am

Embed from Getty Images

Back in August, I waxed lyrically about the history which is reflected regularly in the BBC programme “Who do you think you are?”. I feel compelled to return to the subject, given the sheer awesomeness of the last episode in the current run of this BBC series.

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Paul Walter

Two sides of Irish history reflected in celebrity family tree

By Paul Walter | Fri 4th August 2017 - 9:52 am


This is about some holiday season viewing which may be of interest to readers – rather than an article trying to make a political point.

“Who do you think you are” covers television presenter Emma Willis’ family history in an episode available on BBC iPlayer for the next 29 days. It is worth a watch.

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Paul Walter

Public funding for the arts should be cut during a recession, right?

By Paul Walter | Fri 21st April 2017 - 5:45 pm

Grant Wood - American Gothic - Google Art Project

Well, er, no. “America after the fall – Painting in the 1930s” is an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts which breathtakingly displays how public funding for the arts during a depression (let alone a recession) can work wonders. As part of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, the Federal Arts Project employed artists to create visual art works, which eventually included over a hundred thousand paintings as well as many sculptures and other works. Artists who benefited included Jackson Pollock. There were other New Deal art projects such as the Public Works of Art project, the Section of Painting and Sculpture and the Treasury Relief Art Project.

All these programmes helped to produce an extraordinary decade for American Art, which is reflected brilliantly in the Royal Academy exhibition, on until June 4th in Piccadilly, London.

What comes over is that the decade established a distinctive American Art world, which was finally free of reference to art elsewhere. There is an extraordinary variety of styles producing a most colourful and impactful exhibition, reflecting the profound changes going on in the USA at the time.

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Paul Walter

Meet the Lords – or at least two Lords and one Baroness….

By Paul Walter | Tue 28th February 2017 - 9:52 am

Manderston House 2005

BBC2 started a new series last night called “Meet the Lords”. In the style of last year’s documentary series about the House of Commons, the film crew wondered around the corridors of the House of Lords, and produced some interesting sights.

In fact, it centred on three peers:

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Paul Walter

The national treasure that is the British Library – all done in the best PAASSIBLE taste

By Paul Walter | Fri 10th February 2017 - 2:30 pm

A few years after broadcasting genius Kenny Everett died, I remember reading that he left his tape collection to the National Sound Archive. This sounded wonderful, but I didn’t envisage having the time to ever sample these tapes and I imagined that it would involve a trip to a chilly warehouse in Sutton Coldfield.

After a little Googling, I found that the National Sound Archive is part of the British Library. Their large building is just next to St Pancras Station in London, coincidentally just a stone’s throw from where Kenny Everett broadcast much of his work at Capital Radio’s studio in Euston Tower. (The British Library also have a place in Wetherby, West Yorkshire). After negotiating their essential processes, on Monday I proudly held my “Reader’s Ticket” and marched along to the Rare Music Books section of the British Library. There I listened for four hours to the most wondrous collection of Kenny Everett recordings.

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Paul Walter

We have a winner of our quiz!

By Paul Walter | Fri 23rd December 2016 - 1:50 pm

Many congratulations to Catherine Crosland, who correctly guessed that the box pictured on the right is used by the BBC to create the sound of money/glasses of drinks being placed on the bar of “The Bull” pub in Ambridge during recordings of The Archers in Birmingham.

Catherine’s prize is the title of “2016 Sound effect guru of the year”.

Well done Catherine!

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Paul Walter

Test your knowledge and ingenuity – quick quiz about a national institution

By Paul Walter | Thu 22nd December 2016 - 10:50 am

As we’re getting relaxed for the holiday season, here’s a quick quiz about a national institution. It’s not politically related but I suspect it’s on a subject dear to many readers’ hearts.

Look at the wooden box on the right. You can see that it’s nondescript, very battered and held together with insulation tape. It’s 35 years old.

It’s used to create the sounds of what could justifiably be called a “national institution”.

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Paul Walter

A good quote from Margaret Thatcher

By Paul Walter | Fri 1st April 2016 - 3:15 pm

BBC 2 are repeating some of Terry Wogan’s programmes at lunch time. They’ve been showing “Terry and Mason’s great food trip”, where our Tel went round Britain with a cabbie. I think it’s the best thing he did. There is no greater spectacle than the great Irishman bantering away and tucking into good old fashioned grub.

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Paul Walter

Lib Dem peer takes part in World War Three

By Paul Walter | Mon 8th February 2016 - 3:50 pm

Kishwer Falkner has taken part in a gripping and chillingly realistic BBC Two TV programme.

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Paul Walter

Is there a chance that the new Top Gear will be very entertaining but not (borderline) offensive?

By Paul Walter | Mon 8th February 2016 - 2:20 pm

The list of past Top Gear controversies is long. There have been allegations of homophobia and criticism of the mockery of Argentines, Mexicans, Germans and Romanians.

I have great respect for Jeremy Clarkson as a motoring and general writer. But he presents a persona to the public which teeters on the brink of controversy and often falls over the edge.

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Paul Walter

David Bowie – some memories

By Paul Walter | Tue 12th January 2016 - 1:30 pm

It’s a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair

So the beginning words of “Life on Mars” emerged from a slightly tinny, small record player in the fourth form common room of my school. A classmate from Plymouth had bought the single. It was about the only record we had between us. We played it almost continuously. We always left it on for the studio phone ringing and the bit of chat at the end.

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Paul Walter

Tim shines in a great format for him

By Paul Walter | Sat 5th December 2015 - 4:15 pm

Tim Farron Russell Howard's Good NewsOne of the joys of being a parent is that you get introduced to all sorts of TV programmes which your children love to watch. If you miss anything, you also get the chance to watch the same programmes again. And again. And again.

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Paul Walter

The Last Post

By Paul Walter | Wed 11th November 2015 - 9:30 pm

As we approach the end of Armistice Day, it is, perhaps, appropriate to remember the tune most associated with military memorials, The Last Post.

The BBC produce some superb radio documentaries. They have surpassed themselves with “The Last Post” presented by Alwyn W Turner. It tells the story of the tune and describes its extraordinarily wide use, often at national and international occasions and including at the funerals of Sir Winston Churchill and IRA man Bobby Sands. He also mentions the American equivalent, “Taps”, which was played at the funeral of John F Kennedy.

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Paul Walter

Suffragette – a moment for shame

By Paul Walter | Sat 24th October 2015 - 10:16 am

The film “Suffragette” is now on general release. It is very much worth watching.

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