The Creative Identity

Intermission

One day... we'll have a decent Easter... and that day was not today. London, I live in hope. Read more →

Letters Live 2015

On Thursday, I kicked off the Easter week-end with one of the Letters Live performances of 2015. The day before, an electrical fire raged underneath Kingsway, virtually next door to the Freemasons' Hall, and that evening's performance was cancelled. Too bad for the Wednesday ticket-holders and too good for us; the line-up was carried over for a show that clocked up at 3 hours and 45 minutes (with a 15-minute interval) and included Ben Kingsley, Clarke Peters, Danny Huston, Ian McKellen, Sophie Hunter, Ferdinand Kingsley, Simon Callow, Louise Brealey, Andrew Scott, Greta Scacchi, Dominic West, Joss Ackland, Andrew O'Hagan, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alan Rusbridger plus the musical performances of Kelvin Jones and Natalie Calvin. I've always loved reading letters, both the ones I receive and even the ones I re-read before I send them, and in fact, I have an illustrious past (ahem, allow me) as a letter-writer that started when I was eight, and I wrote to Barbie Magazine enquiring after pen friends (these were the 1980s and no, I am not joking, just ask my mum). They published my letter with my address and I received tons and tons of replies and cost my parents a fortune in stamps because, even though many of these pen-friends dropped away as time passed, a few did not. One of them has stuck around all this time, and even though we now only catch up at Christmas and for our birthdays, this year we celebrate thirty years of correspondence without ever having... Read more →