JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
Stranger than fiction
MARIA DUARTE sees Judi Dench delivers an outstanding performance as a Soviet spy in an improbable story based on fact
Re-releases from Iain Matthews, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and The Charlie Daniels Band
JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
The bard joins the Carnival Against Fascism, which summer fun sends him down Memory Lane
FIONA O’CONNOR is bowled over by a stunning Welsh language drama
MARIA DUARTE and MICHAL BONCZA review Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day, Familiar Touch, Nino, and Toy Story 5
MATTHEW HAWKINS explores the initiatives proposed by HEALING ARTS SCOTLAND
Red Joan
Directed by Trevor Nunn
THIS old-fashioned spy thriller is inspired by the life of former agent Melita Norwood, who spent years spying for the Soviet Union in Britain undetected.
Based on Jennie Rooney’s novel Red Joan, it opens in the year 2000 with frail-looking octogenarian Joan Stanley (a magnificent Judi Dench) being arrested at her suburban home by MI5 and charged with 27 breaches of the Official Secrets Act.
On being hauled into an interrogation room, she starts to recall in a series of flashbacks how she went from Cambridge undergraduate in 1938 to scientist to Russian spy.
Similar stories
LEO BOIX, ANGUS REID and MARIA DUARTE review Night Stage, Two Women, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, and Fuze
JOHN GREEN has doubts about the efficacy of the Freedom of Information Act, once trumpeted by Tony Blair
As we mark the anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, JOHN WIGHT reflects on the enormity of the US decision to drop the atom bombs
For 80 years, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings have pleaded “never again,” for anyone. But are we listening, asks Linda Pentz Gunter