I suppose I should confess at the outset that my interest in Queen Mary I’s embalming didn’t spring from some lofty academic impulse, but from years spent in the trade myself — years of sewing mouths shut, persuading stubborn limbs into positions they hadn’t attempted since the Thatcher era, and discovering that even the most … Continue reading The Queen in Two Pieces: Mary I, Embalming, and the Illusion of Dignity
Month: November 2025
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui: A Morality Play for a World That Has Mislaid Its Morals
Sometimes a playwright seizes history by the throat, shakes it like a terrier with a stolen bone, and shouts: ‘Look at this — don’t you dare look away again.’ Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is one such moment: a gangster parable masquerading as a clown show, a political sermon delivered by a … Continue reading The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui: A Morality Play for a World That Has Mislaid Its Morals
Ubu Roi: The Crown, the Curse, and the Colossal Belly of Human Folly
If Gogol showed us corruption, and Beckett showed us despair, then Alfred Jarry — bizarre, bicycle-riding prophet of the avant-garde — showed us what happens when civilisation finally gives up pretending to be civil. Ubu Roi isn’t a play; it’s a cultural detonation, a theatrical act of vandalism so gleefully grotesque that even today it … Continue reading Ubu Roi: The Crown, the Curse, and the Colossal Belly of Human Folly
A Short Epitaph for Peter Whittle
Peter Whittle, founder of the New Culture Forum: 27 Nov. 2025 Peter Whittle walked through our cultural twilight like a man holding a lantern against the wind — stubborn, luminous, and unashamed. He believed that nations aren’t built merely by borders or ballots, but by the fragile things: memory, beauty, belonging, truth. And he fought … Continue reading A Short Epitaph for Peter Whittle
The Cry from the Cross
The question drifted across my day like an unexpected visitor — not hostile, not foolish, just curious: ‘If Jesus is God, then who was He talking to on the cross?’ It’s not the first time I’ve been asked it. In fact, it seems to surface every few months, usually in the same tone: part intrigue, … Continue reading The Cry from the Cross
Wording 