Bedford Sinfonia concert

27 January 2026

On Saturday I was at All Saints Church, Queens Park, Bedford to play in the Bedford Sinfonia concert, conducted by Ian Smith. It's more than 10 years since I last played with the orchestra (accompanying a Bedford Choral Society concert, reviewed here in November 2015). Saturday's concert was a programme of pieces by female composers. We started with Ethel Smyth's Overture 'The Wreckers' - which was, for a long time, the only orchestral piece by a female composer in the repertoire of many orchestras. I enjoyed discovering the 'Gaelic Symphony' by Amy Beach (whose piano concerto we played with Northampton Symphony Orchestra a couple of years ago, reviewed here in July 2024). The second half of the concert featured the 'Overture' by Fanny Mendelssohn, followed by 'Symphony No 1' by Florence Price - the first work by a Black woman composer to be performed by a major US orchestra. I had seen a performance of the symphony by the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival (reviewed here in September 2022) and it was great to get the chance to play it. I hadn't played any of the four pieces in Saturday's concert before. It was an interesting and entertaining programme - though quite a long, tiring concert to play. 

'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

26 January 2026

On Thursday evening we were at the Odeon in Milton Keynes to see the NTLive screening of Hamlet, recorded at the Lyttelton Theatre in London. This National Theatre production, directed by Robert Hastie, stars Hiran Abeysekera as a fast-talking ,mischievous Hamlet who spends much of the performance breaking the fourth wall. It's an entertaining and compelling performance. The production emphasises the humour of the play with Geoffrey Streatfeild's Polonius less a bungling old fool than a court jester performing to the king (complete with ukulele) and Francesca Mills' performance as Ophelia straying close to clowning at times, which makes her descent into madness a bit of a handbrake turn. But Alistair Petrie as Claudius and Ayesha Dharker as Gertrude provide a serious center to the story, both making their characters realistic, believable, and surprisingly sympathetic. And Tessa Wong is moving as a caring and emotional Horatio. The last Hamlet we saw was Rupert Goold's incredible production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford last year, setting the whole play on the deck of a ship (reviewed here in February 2025). This new production was always going to struggle to match that wow moment. But while in Stratford Luke Thallon was a brilliant, restless, twitchy Hamlet, it's Es Devlin's magnificent set that I remember, whereas this Hamlet definitely belongs to Hiran Abeysekera. 

'Coven' by Rebecca Brewer and Daisy Chute

20 January 2026

On Saturday we made a first visit to the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn, North London, to see 'Coven' - a new musical about the Pendle witch trials written by Rebecca Brewer and Daisy Chute, directed by Miranda Cromwell. The story is built on the possibility that Jenet Device, who was accused of witchcraft by an 11 year old boy in 1633, could have been the same Jenet Device whose evidence as a child witness against her own family in the Pendle trial of 1612 set the precedent for the use of child testimony in witch trials. 'Coven' is a powerful show, performed by an all female cast (with the musicians also forming part of the on stage ensemble). Given the 17th century Lancashire setting I had assumed the music would have a folk feel but the show features an eclectic range of styles from traditional folk to rock, pop, rap and gospel. There is some very impressive singing throughout - with Gabrielle Brooks as Jenet and Lauryn Redding as Rose the standout performances. Jasmine Swan's inventive set suggests Pendle Hill in the background and has a few surprises in store. The show addresses a dark subject and is angering, moving and powerful but also finds humour in a desperate situation and uses some satirical scenes to good effect. The finale packed a strong, emotional punch and had the sold-out (mostly female) audience spontaneously on its feet. 

'Suspicion' by Seicho Matsumoto, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

14 January 2026

Having enjoyed 'Tokyo Express', Seicho Matsumoto's intriguing Hitchcockian mystery novel set in 1950s Japan (reviewed here in June 2024), I came across another book by Matsumoto, 'Suspicion' (also recently translated by Jesse Kirkwood). This is more a novella than a novel - a short tale told through the eyes of a journalist who talks to the lawyers defending a woman with gang connections who is suspected of murdering her husband. Loosely based on an actual crime from 1974, 'Suspicion' was first published in Japanese in 1982. It's a slight story but is still a satisfying puzzle, beautifully written in that same lovely polite style (feeling more 1950s than 1980). 

'The Fifth Step' by David Ireland

8 January 2026

On Wednesday we were at the Rufus Centre in Flitwick to see a NTLive filmed screening of 'The Fifth Step' by David Ireland from the Soho Place Theatre in London. This two-hander, performed in the round in a production directed by Finn den Hertog, stars Martin Freeman and Jack Lowden as fellow members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Through a series of conversations we see their relationship develop while their personal journeys speed in opposite directions. 'The Fifth Step' is a dark comedy, its very funny script drawing us into some serious and disturbing topics. It's also an odd couple comedy, with the two characters' age, class, experience and background very alien from each other. There is no-one better than Martin Freeman at mugging in astonishment as his face reveals his dawning understanding of what has just been said. And Jack Lowden gives an incredibly physical performance, constantly twitching and pacing with nervous energy. It's a very cleverly written play that takes you to dark places without taking itself too seriously. 

'The Hallmarked Man' by Robert Galbraith

8 January 2026

It was only when I started the latest Cormoran Strike detective novel, 'The Hallmarked Man' by J K Rowling (writing as Robert Galbraith), that I realised I had completely missed the previous book in the series, 'The Running Grave'. I don't think it mattered too much. Strike and his business partner Robin Ellacott are still spending a tedious amount of time on routine surveillance, while stumbling on an impossibly complicated murder plot and maintaining their will-they-won't-they mutual attraction. Like its predecessors, 'The Hallmarked Man' (which I've just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Robert Glenister) is ridiculously long (31 hours of audio) and desperately in need of a good editor. The main story of an unknown man murdered in a silver vault is actually five separate stories, as each of the five potential victims reveal their own elaborate narratives. The unraveling of the puzzle is engaging and entertaining but it could definitely have benefited from some pruning. And it was fun to continue my game of spotting the glaringly incorrect minor details in J K Rowling's very deliberately real-world contemporary London - this time including a character who spends all day riding a tube train round and round the Circle Line, despite the Circle Line not having run continuously in a circle since 2009.
 

'The Forsyte Saga' by John Galsworthy, dramatised by Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan

 8 January 2026

Between Christmas and New Year we were at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company production of John Galsworthy's 'The Forsyte Saga', dramatised in two parts by Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan. I was vaguely aware of 'The Forsyte Saga', mainly from hearing a BBC Radio 4 dramatisation some years ago. That adaptation was the work of McJenna and Coghlan who later decided to use it as the basis for a new stage version which premiered in 2024 at the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park and has now transferred to the RSC. To strip Galsworthy's nine novels (written across the first three decades of the twentieth century) into two plays, they sensibly decided to focus on two of the main narratives. Part 1 starts in 1886 and tells the story of Irene Forsyte and her troubled relationship with her husband Soames. Part 2 jumps to the 1920s to focus on Fleur Forsyte. Both plays are narrated (from 1926) by Fleur, who is trying to piece together the reasons for the great schism within the Forsyte family. The plays, directed by Josh Roche, use a very bare stage to allow for multiple rapid scenes, with some characters jumping instantly from one setting to another. A strong cast do a great job of bringing the family and the period to life, with Fiona Hampton as Irene, Flora Spencer-Longhurst as Fleur and Joseph Millson as Soames standing out. And the period costumes by Anna Yates are gorgeous.

'Famous Last Words' by Gillian McAllister

8 January 2026

I'm a fan of the incredibly clever, twisty, tense family thrillers written by Gillian McAllister, and I really enjoyed her latest novel, 'Famous Last Words'. Like many of her books, this plot throws an unsuspecting person suddenly into a violent, scary world of crime. Camilla is about to restart work after maternity leave, dropping her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time, only to discover as she reaches the office that her husband is the perpetrator of an armed siege and is holding three people hostage at gunpoint - which is not something she had seen coming. The piecing together of this unbelievable and shocking situation and how it came about takes the reader on Gillian McAllister's usual journey from unfathomable implausibility to ingenious resolution. It's another pacy, scary, gripping contemporary thriller, which grabbed my attention and made me charge through the novel. 

'What Alice Forgot' by Liane Moriarty

7 January 2026

Having read Liane Moriarty's most recent novel 'Here One Moment' (reviewed here in January 2025) it was interesting to discover a much earlier book, 2009's 'What Alice Forgot', and to see that Liane Moriarty's entertaining style of suburban Australian domestic family life was already established then. The premise of 'What Alice Forgot' is that a head injury causes Alice to lose the last 10 years of her memory - waking to discover she is not 29 years old and expecting her first baby but 39 with three children. Her perfect recall of everything up to 10 years ago but nothing since does feel a bit contrived but allows for an enjoyable form of time travel. Encountering her own mother, transformed from how she remembers her, is like an alternative timeline scene from 'Back to the Future'. Liane Moriarty always reminds me of Anne Tyler but this feels like her most Tylerish novel. She constructs a great cast of slightly eccentric family and friends and it's fun for the reader to put the missing years back together with Alice. It's a funny, moving thought-experiment book.

'Playground' by Richard Powers

7 January 2026

I'm grateful to Gareth Coles for recommending Richard Powers' remarkable 2024 novel 'Playground'. This is an interesting and unusual tale about the oceans, climate change and artificial intelligence. Initially the separate narratives - tracing the lives of students in an American university in the 1990s, a young girl's journey to become a diver and oceanographer, starting in the 1940s, and the contemporary story of the inhabitants of a small island in French Polynesia - feel like intriguing short stories without revealing the bigger picture. But gradually the links between these separate stories become clearer and this complex structure becomes quite compelling, moving from feeling worthy but not gripping to a fascinating jigsaw puzzle. But the book shifts to another level with a huge unexpected metatextual twist which suddenly makes sense of everything you've read so far. The scenes on the island with its cast of eccentric inhabitants - a population of 82 about to vote on the future of their home - reminded me of the novels of Louis de Bernières. And the parallel historic backstory to the oceanographer and her dives reminded me of the famous aviator in 'Great Circle' by Maggie Shipstead (reviewed here in July 2022). The writing is beautiful. and the ecological themes are important and clearly articulated. But it was the ingenious narrative structure of the book that finally gripped me. 

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

17 December 2025

The Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Christmas Cracker’ concert - a Sunday-afternoon, family-friendly performance - always features a narrated piece. This year we told two stories to our packed audience at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton. In the first half of the concert our compere William Thallon narrated 'Paddington Bear's First Concert' – in which Herbert Chappell creates an extensive theme and variations from his signature tune for the old BBC TV 'Paddington'. And after the interval William told the story of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ in a version by Lawrence Killian, with words by Margaret Killian. This year’s concert was a particularly Christmassy Christmas Cracker - with no film music and almost every piece featuring familiar Christmas carol tunes. It was billed as a British Christmas, focussing on works by UK composers, including ‘A Christmas Overture’ by Nigel Hess and Malcolm Arnold’s arrangement of ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ - but still finding room for our signature ‘Sleigh Ride’ by Leroy Anderson. It was a very slick, enjoyable concert, brilliantly held together by conductor John Gibbons and featuring excellent solos across many sections of the orchestra but I will particularly remember Helen Taylor’s beautiful flutter-tongue piccolo solo evoking Paddington’s Darkest Peru.