I once appeared on stage with Sir Ian McKellen. It was not one of my greater moments in the spotlight. It came about late in 1994 (I forget the exact date), when I was in the middle of programming a long season of Shakespeare-related films at the National Film Theatre. One of them was aRead More
To Margate on a grey summer’s day, to the Turner Contemporary, which always has something interesting to show, occasionally exhilaratingly so. And so it was this time. The exhibition was of works by American Abstract Expressionist Ed Clark (1926-2019), of whom I knew nothing until now. Over four rooms, with a fifth devoted to aRead More
Bob Dylan is an artist I hugely admire. I always have done. But no artist can be excellent all of the time and a good many of those who have enjoyed a long career have produced much that is average and a fair amount of that which is terrible. William Wordsworth, having written sublime poetryRead More
Let’s go to the Hay Festival. Three days of books and people, just over the border into Wales. Well, I’d not been to the Festival before now, for all its fame, and it’s been too long since I visited the book town that gave the world book towns. Staying just outside Hereford. A so-so townRead More
There is no time for complacency, the next attack on knowledge is about to happen. Richard Ovenden, Burning the Books (2020) The British Library has been a news story of late, and not a happy one. On 28 October 2023 the Library fell victim to a cyber-attack. A criminal group named Rhysida infiltrated the Library’sRead More
‘I saw them play.’ Those are precious words to be said of any notable sporting figure, that you played your part in making them great because you were there in the crowd, witness to their exceptionalism. So I saw Derek Underwood play, the Kent and England left-arm spinner, who died aged seventy-eight on 15 AprilRead More
One of the great fascinations of early cinema is the archaeology involved. While for later periods of film issues of identification are relatively clear (title, authorship, duration, variations, ownership etc), for early films when the business was young and its nature indeterminate, things are not always straightforward. If you combine this with all the changesRead More
In 1830 two men were born who were to have an immense influence on the creation of cinematography, both technically and aesthetically. Both died in the same year, 1904. Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey are recognised as the twin pillars on which the art and science of motion pictures were formed. It is a measureRead More
I have a third past paper that I am publishing on this site. Back in 2011 I was invited to speak at the 8th Seminar on the origins and history of cinema, a series hosted by the Museu del Cinema in Girona, Spain. The title of the seminar (a conference really) was ‘The Construction ofRead More
I’m continuing to look through the files at papers I wrote which were published but are no longer available, or which were never made available in the first place, with the aim of publishing them on this site, in the hope that this is useful to someone. One paper that falls into the never madeRead More