GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
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Christine Keeler was pilloried by the Establishment and the tabloids but a new exhibition salvages her tarnished reputation in a telling commentary on class, male power and sexual politics, says JAN WOOLF
Sadie Lee; Scandalous (Detail)
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
Dear Christine
Vane
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
AS A 13-year-old delivering newspapers in a Surrey village, I read about Christine Keeler on my paper round, gaining rudimentary political education comparing redtop and broadsheet headlines.
With that long lustrous hair, I thought Keeler beautiful and was intrigued that she’d had sex with a Russian.
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