It's our boy Ben's 21st birthday today, and we have had an excellent party in Whitstable. This morning's links have now been added to, with - as before - apologies for not properly crediting those who highlighted for me many more
At the end of last week, I posted about the Spaces of Television conference at the University of Reading. I greatly enjoyed the three-day event and I learned a lot from many of the presentations. One of the more
On Monday afternoon at BFI Southbank I am introducing two early films by Robert Vas (1931-1978) together with a television obituary of Vas made by Barrie Gavin and colleagues. (The obit is on YouTube but - more
Eugene O'Neill's remarkable play Strange Interlude opened at the National Theatre today to some strong reviews. Michael Billington for the Guardian praises the 'excellent' production (directed by Simon Godwin) and awards the evening 4 stars. Even at more
Yesterday, I thoroughly enjoyed the full seven hours of the BBC's 1953 Coronation coverage which BBC Parliament re-ran in (almost) its entirety. You can read the blog that I wrote here as well as see the numerous screengrabs more
17:00 So that was great, and truly interesting in so many ways, some of which I'll try to note down in a further post. A thousand thanks to the BBC for the restoration and to BBC Parliament for the re-run, although more
The question is, Is this the end of television as we know it? Henry Jenkins at Confessions of an aca-fan asks it with more acuity than most, highlighting a video (that I have embedded below) of an hour-long more
By making available in perpetuity programmes without too many rights issues, the online BBC archive collections are proving to be invaluable resources for researching television history. A parallel archive release from BBC Four (oddly unlisted on the more
Recently I sat in a viewing theatre with half a dozen other researchers and watched a truly remarkable 1965 television documentary called Walk Down Any Street. Directed for Associated-Rediffusion by Charlie Squires, the film is a clear-eyed and sympathetic verité more
Yesterday at BFI Southbank I saw a fine (although a touch short of immaculate) 35mm print of John Schlesinger's 1967 Far from the Madding Crowd. Marred by inconsistency in its central performances, this is nonetheless a magnificent film in many more