Authors Electric

In nine days’ time it will be the 534th anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth, often viewed as a turning point in English history. It’s when the medieval period is deemed to have ended and the early modern age begun – with the fall of the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, and the victory of Henry Tudor, first in the dynasty that bore his name. King Richard III of England Of course, history is never quite that simple, but it’s handy to focus on a specific date marked by a climactic battle, such as 22 August 1485, rather than have to chart the decades-long transition between medieval and modern to be found in religious changes or the gradual move from rule based on personal loyalty to a more modern, bureaucratic state. Either way, this coming weekend, the event will be commemorated in the annual Bosworth Medieval Festival on the fields of Leicestershire, with its re-enactment of the battle itself by hundreds of modern-day ‘knights in shining armour’. [The alternat...

As you know, it was the birthday and anniversary of the world's most famous writer a few weeks ago.  The 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and of course what would have been his 452nd birthday. It's funny just how much a part of our lives he is. Most of us would have studied Shakespeare when we were at school and I wonder was it just me or did anyone else used to hate the way teachers analysed every word and phrase so that you never seemed to get to read the entire play? I don't think I really appreciated Shakespeare until quite recently, although I do vaguely remember playing the part of Oberon King of the Fairies from  A Midsummer Night's Dream in a schoo l play. However, it's all very vague – as if the brain is blocking out a bad experience! I also remember playing Mr Hardcastle from She Stoops to Conquer where our poor English teacher would probably give her eye teeth to forget the performance our group of 14 year olds p...

If you've been following my posts for the last few months, you know that I am now embarked on  another countdown . This time we're counting down the five best metafictional comics. These are comics that in some way deal directly with the art of writing. Before we move on with the countdown, though, I thought I'd like to take a minute to explain the highly scientific method I employed to arrive at this list. First, I approached a trained team of comic book scholars . . . Well not exactly like this group... yeah, that's more like it. . . . and asked them for recommendations. From this list, I eliminated the titles that were not applicable to my purpose (or that I had not read and were too long to skim over). I then chose the five titles that best fit my description of metafictional (in other words, the ones that I liked best). Finally, I presented my team of experts with my list and asked their opinions, eliminating any opinion contrary to mine. ...

At the end of last year, a birthday gift – the DVD of “Roman Polanski’s Film of MACBETH”, as the cover has it. There, too, on the cover, a robed, crowned, bearded and enthroned Martin Shaw, holding what could be a shield, or a mirror, or a scrying glass, turned outwards and away from  himself. Of course, in the film, Martin Shaw plays Banquo, not Macbeth. I assumed that Shaw was on the cover because his fame nowadays is greater than that of the late Jon Finch, who did play Macbeth in this film, and that this was an attempt to shift DVD copies to Shaw fans. Google suggests otherwise, though, with the consensus seeming to be that the company which produced the DVD had mistaken Shaw for Finch/Macbeth, and put him on the cover by accident, lifting the first still image they found on a scan, of an actor wearing a crown in the film. I watched the DVD just after Christmas, with the friend who had bought me it. We watched it in Inverness where it seems the real h...