During the live Q and A which followed this documentary on Professor Stephen Hawking’s life, director Stephen Finnigan described the titular cosmologist in three words: ‘inspiring, determined and funny.’ Finnigan’s documentary achieves such an insight into the life and mind of the world’s most famous contemporary scientist, giving a view of the man not always Read More
You would never have suspected how much influence that political and religious rebel – Sister Corita Kent – has on young artists today. Sister Corita revolutionised graphic design, combing slogans and poetry that reflected her commitment to social justice. I will admit that Sister Corita’s enthusiasm for colour and language enticed me to return to Read More
David Greig is one of Scotland’s most influential and prolific playwrights (forty plays in the last 20 years). The diversity of his work is extraordinary. He has produced work from Damascus (Edinburgh International Festival 2009) through to Dunsinane (Royal Shakespeare Company 2010) and has adapted several classics including Euripides’ Bacchae starring Alan Cumming (National Theatre Read More
The Great Hip Hop Hoax, directed by Jeanie Finlay, charts the rise and fall of Scottish rappers Billy Boyd and Gavin Bain who created alternate personalities in an audacious bid to get the attention of the record industry and receive the exposure they felt they deserved. The two met on the Dundee skate scene in Read More
Following the critical acclaim for her last two novels, My Year of Meats (1998) and All Over Creation (2003), it is perhaps no surprise that Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being has been received with equal literary approbation. Ozeki’s current offering is a seamless fusion of semi-autobiographical narrative, ecological perspicacity, and philosophical meditation. Read More
There are at least two ways of contextualising Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary. It is the latest in a succession of recent works on Jesus and his times. English translations of the then pope Joseph Ratzinger’s volumes Jesus of Nazareth (2007), Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week (2011), and Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives Read More
Jhumpa Lahiri’s skill lies in immersing her readers within the environments which she crafts. Shortlisted also for the Man Booker Prize 2013, her latest novel, The Lowland, showcases this ability. The book, set in Calcutta, now Kolkata, is about a family who are profoundly affected by the Naxalite movement in India shortly after political independence Read More
NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel, We Need New Names, integrates all the archetypal elements which readers come to expect of a “typical” African novel; poverty, rape, Aids, religious fanaticism, political violence and the struggle for independence. Yet, as a whole, it does not fufill those expectations. Bulawayo tells the story of a devastated nation. This is Read More
Eleanor Catton’s second novel, The Luminaries, opens with the arrival of Scotsman Walter Moody in Hokitika on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island during the gold rush of 1866. A group of twelve men, the eponymous luminaries, are meeting to unravel a complex story involving stolen gold, a vanished man, a dead recluse, Read More