Tom Stoppard’s Rock ’n’ Roll is at Hampstead Theatre until 27 January.
In Chekhov’s The Seagull Dr Dorn is asked which is his favourite foreign city. Genoa, he replies: in the evening the streets are full of strolling people and you became part of the crowd, body and soul. ‘You start to think there really might be a universal spirit,’ he says. I remembered Dr Dorn when
Week five… which is to say I’ve been self-isolating in the country since 6 March. Meanwhile, engagements which threatened a return to town have been falling over like a row of dominos. If it were not for the terrors surrounding us, this is the life I’ve always wanted — social distancing without social disapproval. My
I wonder what happened to my first edition of A Dandy in Aspic. I must have been careless about lending it when it could no longer be bought. Derek’s succeeding novels, from The Memoirs of a Venus Lackey (1968) to The Rich Boy from Chicago (1979), are in their place on my bookshelves; seven titles,
