Image: Warner Bros. The first 300 movie was a camp but awesome film with Gerard Butler’s King Leonidas coming out with some of cinema’s coolest phrases while he and his men armed with big abs […]
TV | Ant & Dec – What's their enduring appeal?
The start of the eleventh series of Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway is upon us, which presumably, still provides some entertainment for at least a few families around the country, but after 12 years […]
TV | First Dates – A dating show with a difference?
First Dates is Channel 4’s latest attempt to spice up the rather stagnant pool of TV programs about dating. It strays away from the game show format prominent in recent shows like Take Me Out […]
TV | Mary Berry Cooks – More simple and delicious recipes from the Queen of baking
Several years after the BBC ditched the likes of Delia Smith from their schedule, in a seemingly ageist move that instead sought after bright young TV chefs, this approach has been reversed in recognition of […]
TV | Freeview Flicks of the Week – Memento, Fight Club & Whip It
There’s always a wide selection of great films available on Freeview. And seeing as staying in is the new going out, TV presents the ideal opportunity to catch up on what you might have missed […]
TV | Outnumbered – The teenage years
The final episode ever of BBC1’s family comedy Outnumbered has now been aired. Having followed the family since 2007, I was enthusiastically anticipating its fifth series. However, as the children turned 11, 13 and 17, […]
Books | Butcher's Crossing
With the rediscovery of the 1965 novel, Stoner or “the greatest American novel you’ve never heard of” last year, the late John Williams has been propelled from relative obscurity to take his rightful place as […]
TV | Silk – Courtroom battles, sex, hypocrisy and even a little bit of Joy Division
Battles in the courtroom, sex, hypocrisy, terminal illness, love, power, and even a bit of Joy Division. What doesn’t series three of Silk have to offer? Well, for Martha Costello (Maxine Peake), it doesn’t seem […]
Books | Cheat's guide to Crime and Punishment
In honour of Penguin’s re-release of the Russian classic, we give the low down on Dostoyevsky’s magnum opus . Existentialism and axe murders. Need we say more? Who? Rodion Raskolnikov -A destitute former student, handsome but morally […]
TV | 37 Days – A wonderfully witty docu-drama
With Downton Abbey going from strength to strength, this drama about the period between Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination and the declaration of war is quite like a costume drama mixed with politics. War buffs will enjoy this […]
Art | Alfred Drury – Victorian sculpture on campus
Image: Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery Tucked away in the Stanley and Audrey Burton gallery is a small yet extensive exhibition of Alfred Drury’s life works. An influential architectural sculptor of the Victorian and Edwardian […]
Ballet | Cleopatra – enjoyable, but not quite feminist enough
Image: Bill Cooper Northern Ballet have revived their 2011 production of Cleopatra for what their Artistic Director, David Nixon, calls ‘a fresh look’. Cleopatra sees the second collaboration by David Nixon and composer Claud-Michel Schonberg […]