Song-writing

On 7 December 2015 the Kennedy Centre Honours were awarded to Carole King, George Lucas, Rita Moreno, Seiji Ozawa and Cicely Tyson. King sat by the White House Christmas tree during the afternoon reception wearing her medal and laughing as Barack Obama recited the most familiar of her thousands of song lines: ‘You make me feel like a natural woman.’ Obama grinned: ‘I think I just became the first president ever to say that… It sounded better when Aretha said it.’ That evening the tribute to King as a singer-songwriter included performances from James Taylor and the cast of the Broadway spectacular Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and concluded with

The sea, as you might expect, looms large in Benjamin Wood’s finely tuned novella Seascraper. Thomas Flett – one of the most touching protagonists I’ve encountered in recent years – is barely out of his teens, but he’s already battered by toil. His days are spent shanking – gathering shrimps on the beach – with only a horse and cart for company. The setting, gorgeously evoked, is Longferry, a grim coastal town in 1950s Britain. Tom himself appears as if he’s been transplanted from the 19th century. The sea, though, brings change, when hidebound past comes crashing against thrusting future. Tom has a stifling oedipal relationship with his mother, who