John Baker’s Blog

Equus, Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play, tells the story of a psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man convicted of blinding six horses.
Over the weekend we were lucky enough to catch the touring version at Sheffield’s Lyceum Theatre. The play opened at the National Theatre in 1973 and was subsequently performed all over the [...]

Edward Albee told a story about Bette Davis wanting the part of Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf on film, claiming she was his first choice. Albee thought it would be wonderful for Davis to open the film with the line, “What a dump. Who said that, George, ‘What a dump’?”
When, of course, it [...]

Amazon’s reply to criticism of its recent POD announcement, insisting that POD publishers use its own BookSurge publishing service.
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Joan Didion’s memoir about trying to come to terms with her husband’s death became ‘the indispensable handbook to bereavement’. Then her 39-year-old daughter also died. As The Year of Magical Thinking arrives in London, David Hare describes [...]

The Nobel Prize in Literature has only been shared on two or three occasions in its history, and the first of these was in 1904 when it was divided equally between
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL in recognition of the fresh originality and true inspiration of his poetic production, which faithfully reflects the [...]