1950s

Tuesday

D.J. Taylor

One of the boys: From Scenes Like These, by Gordon M. Williams, reviewed

Although Gordon M. Williams died as recently as 2017, his heyday was the Wilson/Heath era of the late 1960s and 1970s. During that time he managed to appear on the inaugural Booker shortlist, dash off a ten-day potboiler, The Siege of Trenchard’s Farm, that would be filmed by Sam Peckinpah, and continue to file a series of ghost-written newspaper columns for the England football captain Bobby Moore. As these accomplishments might suggest, Williams was the kind of writer whom the modern publishing world no longer seems to rate. Essentially, he was a literary jack-of-all-trades, alternating straightforward hackwork with more elevated material as the mood took him, and eventually abandoning fiction

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Kids will enjoy this new show at the West End’s newest theatre more than adults: Marvellous, @sohoplace, reviewed

London has a brand-new theatre – yet again. Last summer, a cabaret venue opened in the Haymarket for the first time. More recently, the Marylebone Theatre near Regent’s Park held its debut show. And now Nica Burns of Nimax Theatres has announced a new venture, @sohoplace, which she says is the first West End venue to open for 50 years. The playing area is a hoop-shaped enclosure with rising tiers of seats overlooking a deep oblong pit. Cage fighting and mud-wrestling could be staged here to great advantage. The poster for the debut show, MARVELLOUS, features the title in bright pastel letters with a yellow balloon, a pair of clown’s

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Even I, a bitter and cynical middle-aged woman, felt stirred: Sylvie’s Love reviewed

Sylvie’s Love is an exquisitely styled, swooning, old-school, period Hollywood romance and while it has been described as ‘glib’ in some quarters, it’s Christmas, we’ve had a rotten year, and it may be just what the doctor ordered. And if it is glib — I’m not convinced it is, actually; it may even be quite groundbreaking — it is, at least, adorably and cheeringly so. (My heart was warmed.) It is written and directed by Eugene Ashe, and opens in Harlem in the summer of 1957 with Sylvie, played by a luminous Tessa Thompson. She works in her father’s record store but is obsessed by television and dreams of becoming

Saturday

Taki

How tennis went socialist

Desperately boring times but very healthy ones. No parties, no girls, not too much boozing, lots of smoking and reading very late into the night. And non-stop training and sport. What else can one do when locked in with one’s wife and one’s son and with nostalgic thoughts of a time when people gathered in groups? It seems very long ago but do any of you remember when people gave parties? Desperate times demand desperate measures and make for desperate columnists. Meditation might be good for philosophers and their ilk, but correspondents need to get out and get the story. The only thing to report nowadays are the sleeping habits