A chill spring day in Stratford for the RSC’s launch of its summer comedies season with a new Midsummer Night’s Dream from Gregory Doran. A production to warm the heart? Certainly, for how could any half-competent staging fail to do so, and anything directed by Doran is usually rather better than that. But where so
Fate has not dealt kindly with Sir John Everett Millais (1829–96). For those who are not enthusiasts of the Pre-Raphaelites, this founding member of the Brotherhood tends to be categorised as the one who ‘went populist’ with such all-too-memorable scenes as ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’ (now in the Tate) and the notorious Pears Soap advert
While Rover sank (it was warned, twice, in this column), another car was launched, in Venice. An amphibian? No, a Bentley. Perhaps because it rarely advertises, Bentley’s car launches are like no other. Each is divided into three- to four-day segments designed for different audiences. The basis is driving and learning about the car, with
Much as I love the nostalgic idea of the original Ask the Family, the reality was rather different. The questions were way too hard and made you feel thick even when you weren’t (Robert Robinson’s smug avuncularity served mainly to rub salt into this wound), and the families were really freaky, the parents never having
