Self-doubt can be one of the biggest battles for writers. It makes them avoid the very thing they yearn for most because writing is so painstakingly, painfully difficult to do well. As the great Mancunian author Anthony Burgess...
Read MoreA metaphorical torch is now shining its ‘New Light’ in some of the North of England’s artistic corners, and a few of them are surprisingly dark and desolate. Laid bare in the Tullie House Museum and Gallery in Carlisle is the...
Read MoreThe woman behind me sat up at the interval and said to her friend, “I fell asleep, I’m going home”. She wasn’t the only one. This National Theatre touring performance of one of Shakespeare’s goriest and greatest...
Read MoreThe heatwave well and truly hit Harrogate on day three of the town’s five-week Music Festival, which runs to July 29. Not the heatwave of record-breaking temperatures – that’s not even news these days – but the heat coming out...
Read MoreFor such a towering musical icon he looked small, but anyone would from the back row of the upper tier of a vast, fan-shaped arena accommodating 13,000. The Desperate Dan jaw, shoe-brush eyebrows and quiff-hawk hair (now in...
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