John Baker’s Blog

A taster:
I had in a drawer an illuminated parchment on which was written in elegant characters that on Primo Levi, of the Jewish race, had been conferred a degree in Chemistry summa cum laude. It was therefore a dubious document, half glory and half derison, half absolution and half condemnation. It had remained in that [...]

Two items of good news this week. I don’t usually rate literary prizes, and the announcement of their winners often elicits a groan of pain from me. But both of these were deserved.
1. Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe won the 2007 Man Booker International Prize for fiction. Other nominees for the prize included Philip Roth, Margaret [...]

Although not the best (or the best-known) of Miller’s plays, The Price is not without interest for a modern audience, dealing, as it does, with contemporary and timeless themes.
Act One opens with Victor Franz (Robert G Slade) strolling around the attic in which the material remains of his deceased parents are stored. Victor is [...]

Two types of character have inhabited my mind over the last few days. You could imagine either of them conscripted into the army in the early days of the 1914-18 war in Europe. They are both young men, but they neither have to be young or male to inhabit the kind of fictional characterization I [...]