News & Features

The case of the 18th-century man of letters John Hawkesworth (1715?-1773) is not as often invoked as it ought to be. This is perhaps because no one has heard of him. Search books of notable Georgians in England, and alphabetically they go straight from Hawke to Haydon. Even in Boswell’s…
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These questions were put to me when the second series of A Certain Age went out in 2005. You will see there were a couple of questions I didn’t answer. 1. Did you find it difficult writing about men and examining relationships from a man’s point of view? I think…
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In the 1980s, when the BBC arts department spent several years putting together a history of the theatre (presented by Ronald Harwood), it was worth phoning the production office just to hear the unenthusiastic tone of the person answering. He had evidently not left his desk in three years. “All…
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