'If that mockingbird don't sing' -- Peter Leyland
If that mockingbird don’t sing…* It was my birthday, and Sue and I went to see To Kill A Mockingbird at the Gielgud theatre in London. It has been rewritten for the stage from Harper Lee’s original novel by Aaron Sorkin and is directed by Bartlett Sher. You may know something of the story yourselves on account of the famous film starring Gregory Peck, where Atticus Finch defends Tom Robinson from a false rape charge, and you may even have read the book at school. Despite an excellent defence from Finch, Robinson is found guilty by an all-white jury and is later killed in a desperate escape attempt from the prison, where he is being held awaiting an appeal. There were a number of schoolboys in blazers and ties attending the performance and I surmised that To Kill a Mockingbird is likely to be a GCSE set text to be tested in the summer exams. I had read it myself as a teenager and as I watched it on stage the story took me back to my own boyhood and my...