The dust is setting around The Byre Theatre after its sudden liquidation last month, and a passionate and dedicated community in St Andrews can, at the very least, congratulate themselves on bringing the battle for its future to national attention. With The Byre about to enter its 80th year, the livelihoods of its tireless workforce Read More
According to philosopher and art commentator Jean-François Lyotard, there is a distinction to be made between art and its cultural reception. The cultural reception of art situates it in time and space, inscribes it within an art-historical narrative, and presents it alongside other features of the world. It seeks to understand art by placing it Read More
Nothing is Heavy, Vicki Jarrett’s debut novel, is a blackly comic and compelling read. Jarrett is better known for her shorter fiction, some of which has been featured on BBC Radio 4. Shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2011, Nothing is Heavy is a confident and exciting work which confirms Jarrett’s skill as a Read More
New Writing Dundee is an annual collection of literature compiled by “Literary Dundee” from works submitted by both published and unpublished authors. The end result is an eclectic mix of poetry, short prose, extracts from novels, and essays. The seventh volume of New Writing Dundee opens and also ends with the engaging “Wendell’s Story”, a Read More
Jacob M Appel won the Dundee International Book Prize in 2012 for The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up. Appel is a bioethicist, essayist and fiction writer. Despite many of his short stories already having been published, Appel found it difficult to find a publisher for his debut novel at home saying, “American publishers appeared to Read More
It’s an odd thing watching a film when you know how it ends. Rather than needing to focus on predicting (or anticipating) the outcome one focuses instead on the journey, picking up details along the way. We know how the subject matter of Lincoln will resolve itself: most viewers will be familiar with the passing Read More
2012 was a big year for Jamaica. Internationally, the island’s impressive athletic performances during London’s Olympic Games prompted a proliferation of green, black and gold flags at numerous events and festivities. As Usain Bolt, unofficial Jamaican national hero (Jamaica has specific official National Heroes) and the world’s fastest man, broke yet another astonishing world record, Read More
Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson centres on a weekend in 1939 when King George VI and the Queen travelled to America (the first trip made by British monarchs to the U.S.) to visit President Franklin D. Roosevelt, residing at his mother’s upstate New York home. Against this background, the developing intimate relationship between Roosevelt Read More
Making a biopic about one of the film world’s most well-known and loved directors must be a daunting task. Director Sacha Gervasi should therefore be praised for taking on the story of Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife Alma’s (Helen Mirren) turbulent relationship during the filming of Psycho (1960). The making of Hitchcock’s most Read More