The debonair Basil Marigold's

It comes around every three years and has done since, 1882 when they choose Sophocles to be the first tragedian that was acted out for the audience and his play, Ajax. There followed, in triennial periods now, the now named Cambridge Greek Play. To think it has lasted just over 125 years is quite impressive in itself, especially when in 1890, the  Daily Chronicle  stated that 'Greek Plays are a fashion not likely to last'. Yet it has and now flourishes and provides acting talent to the world, most recently; Loki actor Tom Hiddlestone, who played Orestes, in the 2001 Sophocles  Electra.  These are most talented folk. The Prometheus bound (The Tragedy) was as powerful and as searing as you would expect when you are talking about the god who provided skills to man in defiance of Zeus. Prometheus; the fire bringer, now chained to the rocks and being tortured for betraying the olympian gods and withholding the name of the love interest that should Zeus lie with, then their child w

I have no finally finished my first Agatha Christie novel, The ABC murders. As discussed earlier, it was driven by an interesting discussion on BBC Radio 4's 'good reads' programme, was it a good read? Yes, it was a very good read. I have thoroughly enjoyed every single page of the 'Hercule Poirot' murder mystery. I particularly loved the almost alien language and writing style, a product of the book being nearly 80 years old itself. Yet, the language was fluid and carried me along with good descriptive passages and the pace is deceptively quick for a character, in Poirot, who is designed to be slow and thoughtful. It carries along at two speeds, a ripping yarn and above that the thought process of the Belgian unfolds above it and they meet simultaneously, in a beautifully written twist at the end that truly blew me away.  Whatever my preconceptions were the one thing I was aware of, was Christie's love of a plot twist in the style of most thriller novels, a

Over the last few weeks I have found myself pulled back into resharpening my knowledge of ancient Greek (Athenian, really) theatre. Six years after completing my masters degree dissertation, surprisingly for me at least, on the subject of Greek theatre & transgressive women. A lot has been driven by trying to increase my reading time, attending a couple of plays one a few months ago and the triennial ' Cambridge Greek Play ' , this coming month.  It was whilst reading a book on Greek Dramatists by, Prof Alan Sommerstein of Nottingham University (Not so far away from home) that I stumbled upon a fact I had not known. A little curiosity that seemed quite fun and that fact turned out to be that the creation of Opera may well have been by mistake and therefore, arguably one of the greatest misunderstandings that has spawned an expression of high culture and some of the most appealing works of art in the history of mankind. And it was all evidently built on a huge error mad