MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
New Scrooge, same old cause
PAUL DONOVAN applauds the dogged determination of the Old Vic to stage Dickens’s classic Christmas moral tale in support of Waterloo food bank
NOTHING TO LOSE BUT CHAINS: Scrooge (John Simm) confronts his erstwhile worker Marley (Mark Goldthorp)
[Manuel Harlan] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
A Christmas Carol
Old Vic, London
THE annual celebration of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic did not disappoint: it is an explosion of energy from an excellent cast, anchored by the outstanding John Simm playing Scrooge.
This is the eighth year that the Old Vic has performed A Christmas Carol, making it a real festive curtain raiser for the many who attend. The play represents Christmas writ big, celebration and joy, yet also a very moral story of one man’s redemption.
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From Gaza protest bans to proscribing Palestine Action, political elites are showing a crisis of confidence as they abandon Roy Jenkins’s apologetic approach for Suella Braverman’s aggressive ‘hate march’ rhetoric, writes PAUL DONOVAN
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by a deep dive into contemporary social crises, that examines how they are manipulated by elites
PAUL DONOVAN applauds a timely play that explores the resonances of McCarthyite nationalism in today’s US
