Latest news with #AChristmasCarol
The Irish Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
RTE legend's son could play mobster Gerry ‘The Monk' Hutch on big screen as top director reveals ‘key' development
REX Ryan could soon be playing The Monk on the big screen. 3 Rex Ryan will play The Monk in a new one-man play 3 Directors could make moves to develop a film about Gerry Hutch's life 3 Gerry Ryan's son could also bag a big screen role after his theatre show Credit: Chrispin Rodwell - The Sun Dublin And director Mark O'Connor revealed he is interested in turning the controversial production into a big screen biopic. He told The Irish Sun: 'I looked at 'I even had some talks with co-writers of mine about doing it. "It could be an interesting story that would span decades with periods in the 70s, 80s and 90s. READ MORE IN REX RYAN 'But what stopped me was you'd have to be in touch with The Monk and we didn't have that contact.' But the Mark, who previously made Cardboard Gangsters, said: 'Key to all this would be getting the approval of The Monk to tell his story so this is amazing news. I will be going to see this play.' And Mark, who gave MOST READ IN THE IRISH SUN He said: 'I would definitely love to see Rex in the role. I don't know Rex well but I've heard lots of great things.' Rex previously revealed he exchanged voice notes with The Monk about his play — and the mobster visited his theatre to discuss the script. Gerry Hutch leaves door open on political future as The Monk declares Dail run 'great campaign' & clashes with RTE star He told the Sunday Independent: 'I had written that his father was a mechanic. 'He said he was a docker. I got some names wrong and he corrected them.' CLONTARF CONNECTION Rex's original connection to The Monk came through Hutch's son Jason who Rex grew up with in Clontarf. Rex made a video call to Hutch while he was in Wheatfield Prison to tell him he wanted to play him and tell his story on stage. Rex said: 'What do you think of that?' He said: 'You do whatever you want, Rex. You have my blessing.' I said thank you. And that was that.' The play is set in the holding cell of the Special Criminal Court five minutes before Hutch is set to receive his verdict. Rex said: 'I have a beard and long hair and the clock is ticking. What happens next is, Gerry puts his hand on his head and beard and hair come off and the whole space changes. 'It is TV screens everywhere and we're in the mind of The Monk. It is like A Christmas Carol…I have a guardian angel on the stage. 'She is the angel of truth. She takes him to task about his whole life before he goes out to be judged by the Special Criminal Court.' Film director Mark's new movie Amongst the Wolves stars actor Luke McQuillan as former British army soldier Danny. Ex-trooper Danny ends up homeless after returning to Dublin and struggles to survive alone until he meets Will, portrayed by young actor Daniel Fee, a teenage drug dealer on the run from a gang leader played by Aidan Gillen. One US film website hailed the Irish movie 'as beautifully shot and rich in atmosphere' and compared director Mark to This Is England creator Shane Meadows. The Monk runs at The Glass Mask Theatre on Bestseller Cafe, Dawson Street, Dublin from June 10-21.
Time Out
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Maybe Happy Ending creators Michael Arden and Dane Laffrey on their enchanting musical
Director Michael Arden and set designer Dane Laffrey make real magic onstage, and they've been practicing it for more than 25 years. The two met when they were teenagers at Interlochen, the Michigan boarding school for the arts, where they became fast friends and roommates. "Our mischief started then, and we've been working together ever since," Arden says. Their collaboration intensified in the 2010s, when Arden shifted from acting to directing, and they've recently been on a stunning Broadway roll. In the 2022–23 season, the two gave us A Christmas Carol and Parade; they are now at work on a pair of new musicals, The Queen of Versailles and The Lost Boys, that are scheduled to open in the season ahead. And this past season, they poured their creative energies into the most enchanting show on Broadway: Maybe Happy Ending, for which they have both earned Tony Award nominations. (It's the fourth for Arden and the third for Laffrey; Arden won in 2023 for Parade.) Maybe Happy Ending, an entirely original musical by Will Aronson and Hue Park, is the bittersweet story of two helper robots consigned to a retirement home in a near-future Seoul, where they find ways to connect in the shadow of obsolescence. The show's excellent cast is small: Darren Criss and Helen J Shen as the bots, Oliver and Claire; Marcus Choi as Oliver's former owner, James (and James's son Junseo); and Dez Duron as Gil Brentley, a 1950s jazz crooner for whom James and Oliver have a special affection. But while its heroes are androids, Maybe Happy Ending comes fully alive in Arden exceptional staging, in which Laffrey's designs—including the video he has created with co-nominee George Reeve—play a central, indispensable role. We talked about the specific ways in which the duo's dynamic choices guide the way audiences experience the show. You've been friends since high school, but when did you begin your current creative partnership in earnest? Laffrey: As soon as Michael started to move into directing, I think I was among the first people that he was like, 'I wanna do this. We gotta do this.' Arden: I did one little immersive thing that Dane consulted on, but Spring Awakening in downtown L.A. was kind of our first time working together. And I've been lucky enough to never be without him. Laffrey: I really only work with Michael now. With only one current exception. When I was preparing for this interview, I realized that I've given all three of your most recent Broadway collaborations five-star reviews. But they've all been very different from each other. Arden: That's what we really enjoy. We've been lucky that each thing we've done has been wildly different from the thing before. And Queen of Versailles will be wildly different from this, and The Lost Boys wildly different from that. It's just fun. It allows us to cleanse our minds. And part of the beauty of this long-term collaboration is that once we've done something, we're not interested in repeating ourselves, for better or worse. Hopefully we won't run out of ideas. One thing your shows do have in common is that the design is unusually central to the storytelling; it's hard to imagine them without the specific ways they look. At what point do you, Dane, get involved in the conceptualization of these productions? Laffrey: As you might imagine, it's at the earliest possible point. There's never a question about whether we would be working together, and in fact we discuss together which projects we do wish to be doing. So the conversation begins there. Arden: Our collaboration is implicit. If something comes across my desk, the first person I talk to is Dane. What do we think about this? Do we have an idea? What will people want to see? And then I might go work with writers for a while and then bring something back for Dane to look at, because it's great to have someone to share something with and get a fresh perspective. But he's the first port. Laffrey: I don't participate in the day-to-day in the way that he does, but I start to get a sense pretty early what he's thinking and kind of have a feel about what kind of event we're making. That's baked into our whole collaboration; it's got its fingers in every possible pie. Michael, does that growing sense of how it's going to come together visually inform what you might suggest for the writing? Arden: When I'm working with writers, I try to encourage them to first write what's in their minds, and then I'll begin to round the corners and whittle it into something that Dane and I might be interested in. It's a bit like being at a pottery wheel; you begin to shape it to what you're thinking. And then Dane will come into the process and usually the writers are thrilled, because we all want lines to draw inside of—especially in the writing process, so it becomes a choice when we go outside them. But the first thing is that the writer should write whatever they want to, with no limits. And if they write, 'They get in a spaceship and fly to the moon,' then that will be a metaphor for me. It's never going to be exactly what's on the page, but we want to be able to understand their complete impulse. I was struck by the way that the design expands the world of the story as the show moves forward. You start out in a very enclosed space, enclosed by borders of light, but the space keeps getting wider until eventually Oliver and Claire go on the road and it opens up even more. Before that, though, they do an internet search together and the data sprawls out to the periphery of the stage, and we get a sense of a whole big world outside their windows (which then collapses back into their heads). T hat kind of expansion and contraction seems like an essential element of the world-building in this show. Laffrey: Yeah, very much. You're talking about it exactly the way that we would, which is that it's about making as wide as possible a range of scale. We begin in an incredibly small frame, on just [Oliver's plant] HwaBoon, and then we grow into a bit more, and you see a window and you meet Oliver, and then you see the whole room, and then you get Claire, and then you get a little more. We're using these neon irises to aggressively control the visual aperture. But also we're working towards building a sense that the space is larger than it is—we're moving toward a sense of something boundless, and to do that in the confines of a Broadway theater requires that you be very economical with scale up to that point. Arden: We also wanted the framing of the action to be in sync with Oliver's experience. We're trying to mimic, with our aperture, his understanding of his place in the world. Here's a guy whose wifi chip is broken—'The World Within My Room' is the first number—so it's about keeping it as tight as possible for as long as possible. But then we get a glimpse of Claire and it starts to open up a bit. And we're moving from a kind of digital portrait mode of how we digest information on our phones to a landscape world that feels much more organic and natural, so that by the time he's in nature, his world has never been bigger. It's never bigger than when he's with the fireflies. Yet the expansion into the natural world in that scene isn't strictly literal—as you mentioned before, it has a metaphorical quality. Yes, there's the tall grass and the fireflies, but there are also live human musicians on a turntable, and Gil Brentley conducting them and James at his piano. And those are almost dreamlike elements of Oliver's experience. Arden: The script said something like, 'A firefly appears, and then millions of fireflies.' That's all that was in the script. But we'd be crucified by PETA if we actually put that many fireflies into the air. So I was looking for the metaphor. I had a thought that, for Claire, a firefly represents deity in a way—there's religion in the fact that these living things produce light and battery on their own, which she can't. And what could that be for Oliver? It's James, it's jazz music. Like her dream is to see the fireflies, his would be, like, to see Gil Brentley play the Hollywood Bowl. Because his version of deity is humans. So to be deprived of human beings for that long and suddenly to see them felt like an apt metaphor for that. It just kind of made sense. Laffrey: And I think to see that volume of human bodies in space—after that's been withheld for every moment of the show up until then—is sort of startling. The idea that a community can exist feels like a beautiful metaphor for something that is organic and boundless. You cannot put a field of fireflies on stage in a literal way. So the thing that will unlock it is the theatrical gesture. The show has a prominent filmic aspect. Our scope of vision is strictly limited by those irises, as it would be by a camera, and there are even supertitles sometimes. There's an especially cinematic moment in which a change to the framing of a doorway gives us what amounts to a camera's pan effect. Arden: When we first got the script, one of the first things Dane said to me was, "Oh, this is a movie." It's written like a movie. Laffrey: And we constantly get scripts of movies that people want to make into musicals! So it was ironic that this is an original musical, but it has like 75 scenes in it. It's a film! Tonally, it could almost be a Pixar film. Arden: Yeah, and that's how we approached the iris: If we were doing this movie, we'd want to pan and see. And so that's how we began choreographing the no listed choreographer; it's us choreographing the interaction between the actors and the world around 'em. The production's video effects feel hugely important in establishing the world of the show. Some of them are highly detailed and realistic—like the data that comes up in the internet search, or the scenes they play back as memories—whereas when Oliver and Claire actually end up in the natural world, the background is much vaguer and more painterly. Arden: It's interesting you mention that. As we were talking about it, we thought, We want to absorb the world in the way that the bots would. What's interesting to them isn't necessarily the landscape that we as humans would see and go, "Oh my God, this is so beautiful"; for them, that is slightly watercolor, slightly blurred. What they do track are people. They are programmed to track people; any time you see video of people, you've got a tracking box around them with all the information about them. So that was how we approached that—not needing to make it too realistic or too clear. Laffrey: We remain in their POV. Video is introduced as their interiority: the way they can transfer information to each other, or how that information looks in there. You get Claire's memories and Oliver's memories, all before you see that landscape. And then in that moment, Oliver and Claire are focused on each other—or on Junseo when he comes in—and not the environment behind them. And that allows us to not fall into the trap of creating photo-real scenery. That's a slippery slope with video, I think. And we are blessed in this show that it's in conversation with technology in a way that allows us to integrate it with a lot of DNA that is born out of the story. That blurred-background effect feels cinematic as well, as though we were seeing them in closeup against a background that is out of focus. Arden: And we basically made a movie as well: of Claire's memories of her owners, both when she's having a flashback and when she downloads the memory to Oliver, and of Oliver's memories, which are all from his point of view. How we used the cameras had to do with how each robot would view the world. If she's accessing her own memories, what would that look like? How does a robot daydream versus how do they want to show you something? It was endlessly fun and gave us a lot of different modes to plan. Another striking aspect of the design is the way it uses color schemes. At first there's a very clear boy/girl, blue/pink distinction between Oliver and Claire's worlds. But their colors bleed into more of a mix, and then there's one point where a house ends up appearing—with Gil in the attic—and it's all in a warm, nostalgic orange that I don't think we've seen. Arden: No, that's the first time we use that color. We wanted to save that for the idea of how time passes and what that means, and how they at that point in their relationship have abandoned their own color schemes and found something new together. The idea of late afternoon came to mind, and that fabulous midcentury orange was exciting to us. If you're sitting upstairs, I think his carpet is that color. Laffrey: He has a kind of horrible-amazing burnt-orange rug. It all has a sort of Kodachrome feel. Gil is such a wonderful feature in this world because he lets so many different modalities bleed into the landscape. And in that one, it's like you're part of his Frank Sinatra-by-the-fireplace vibe. The show's employment of a midcentury-modern aesthetic is so interesting, I think. Oliver has clearly designed his room in imitation of James's room, which itself was a tribute to the rooms of Gil's era. Arden: A very American aesthetic. Yes, but also an aesthetic that in its time was vaguely futuristic. So Oliver's room is someone in the future trying to reproduce someone in the past's idea of the future. And it couldn't be more different from Claire's room, which is like a college dorm that she's never unpacked, with boxes of clothing and a poster askew. Laffrey: I think the difference there is the melancholy about the fact that Oliver is a bit delusional. He does not understand that he is retired. So he is making a home that he believes, when James finally comes to get him, he will be able to point to in an I-want-to-impress-my-parent kind of way—like, "See, you've taught me so well and I've been living in the way you taught me to.' Whereas Claire understands. She knows she's never going back. Arden: She's got all these old clothes her owner gave her. I imagine that Jiyeon, Claire's owner, had a phase where she loved K-pop and pink, and everything was that. Then she grew out of it and didn't want to throw it away because it was expensive. So she's basically using this as a shitty storage unit. And Claire isn't interested in that. She hasn't unpacked it. She knows too much. She doesn't need to put the poster upright. It's just there. There's a poignancy to Oliver's delusion, but there's maybe also a poignancy to Claire's knowingness. Believing in something fake and not believing in anything at all are both kind of disappointing ways to live. Arden: Right. And I think it's the hole they fill for each other. Oliver gives her a reason to imagine there is something beyond these walls, even though she knows certain things he doesn't, or won't take on. And it's beautifully put in the script when she says, 'I was wrong. He did care about you.' She needs him just as much as he needs her to try to get what they think they want. And they end up not getting those things and finding they actually just need each other. And I love what you said about how we wanted to look to the past to look to the future. Because the minute we try to design futurism, it's just terrible. Luckily we were working with a script that had Gil Brentley, so we took all of our cues from that. If James is obsessed with this singer, then that means this, and then that means this. It was a fun series of doors that kept leading to other doors. It may even be why Oliver looks a little bit like Gil—certainly in the clothes. There was a choice made. He was a doll, in some ways, for James as his companion here. It's all very sad. [ Laughs. ] Laffrey: And that section, 'Where You Belong,' when Oliver shows Claire what he thinks is going to happen when he goes back to James—it's such an interesting thing. It's sort of a memory, but it's different. He's not remembering something; he's telling her exactly what's going to happen when he shows back up at the house and James is waiting for him. He's projecting forward. There's something beautifully idyllic about that, and that's why it looks the way it does. We know that's not what their memories look like. Their memories are black and white, and have boxes around people and lots of information: how many ounces of gin James has in his martini, all that stuff. But this opens up. It's lush, and it's in color. It's a fantasy. And I love the melancholy of that because it is presumably based in reality, but we're not sure. There's Vaseline on the lens. And we're seeing a full realistic set in that song, with multiple rooms on a turntable. We're getting a different sense of the world. Laffrey: Yes—we're introducing a new axis of movement in that. We wanted that sequence to feel very unlikely but to be the most real thing we saw. Arden: There's no video in that sequence. Oftentimes for a robot, the most radical fantasy is an imagined reality. And then the other time the turntable is prominently featured is the fireflies moment, which is surrealistic. Laffrey: That's right. It helps us move into another mode. The rest has this kind of filmic, parallax, camera-on-a-dolly feeling. But that sequence is totally different: organic. Arden: In many ways, that moment is more for the audience than the characters. We want to feel what they feel about fireflies. It's like: Don't I miss people? Don't I want to see people when this is done? And then the fireflies make a reappearance at one point. Just for a moment. Arden: Again, that wasn't something that was in the script. But it just made sense. I said, 'Of course you meant them to be fireflies.' [ Laughs. ] Laffrey: It's an idea that's been with us for so long. It felt so natural. And again, it's a metaphor—it's like we've moved inside some circuits or something, so anything's possible. Ardan: We're talking about all this, but actually, Will and Hue just wrote an amazing musical. Truly. It's cool to approach work we're just trying to keep up with.
New York Post
5 days ago
- Health
- New York Post
Does eating cheese before bed cause nightmares? Doctor reveals the connection
Welcome to Ask Doctor Zac, a weekly column from This week, Dr Zac Turner explores the truth about cheese. QUESTION: Dear Dr Zac, I've heard this crazy rumor that eating cheese before bed can give you nightmares. I love eating cheese and crackers after dinner while a watch a good movie, but lately, I've been waking up from some pretty whack dreams. – Effie, 29, Bankstown, NSW Advertisement ANSWER: Double cream or troubled dreams? Let's slice into the truth. Blame it on Charles Dickens. In 'A Christmas Carol,' Ebenezer Scrooge famously blames his ghostly visions on 'a crumb of cheese.' But is your cheesy snack really to blame? In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge famously blames his ghostly visions on 'a crumb of cheese.' Dariia Belkina – Advertisement In 2005, the British Cheese Board set out to investigate. They gave 200 people different cheeses before bed and tracked their dreams. The verdict? No link between cheese and nightmares. In fact, some cheeses — especially cheddar — were even associated with more pleasant dreams. Brie-lliant, you said? Still, plenty of people swear their dreams go wild after a cheese-fueled snack. So let's look at what might really be happening under the rind. Advertisement Cheese contains tyramine, a naturally occurring compound that, in theory, can stimulate the brain by triggering the release of norepinephrine — a chemical linked to alertness, and potentially, disrupted sleep. But here's the thing: • Most people eat 30–50 grams of cheese per sitting — just a few slices or cubes. Advertisement • That delivers only a tiny amount of tyramine — nowhere near enough to whip your brain into dream overdrive. • And unless you're taking a rare class of antidepressants called MAO inhibitors, your body breaks it down just fine. In other words, your late-night snack is far more likely to be creamy than dreamy. And let's not forget: cheese is rarely eaten solo. If you're working your way through a cheese board with a few glasses of wine during that movie, alcohol could be the issue. In fact, some cheeses — especially cheddar — are associated with more pleasant dreams. lisa870 – Alcohol: it's a major sleep disrupter: • It suppresses REM sleep early on, then triggers REM rebound, leading to vivid, intense dreams. Advertisement • The result? You wake feeling like you've been drowning in an ocean of fondue all night. So if your dreams are melting into madness, it might not be the blue … but the red, rose, or white that's at the wheel. Additionally, high-fat meals — especially those rich in saturated fats — can throw off your sleep. Studies show these foods are linked to lighter, more fragmented sleep and reduced deep sleep, which can lead to frequent wakings and more vivid or unsettling dreams. Bottom line? Advertisement Unless you're on a rare medication that affects how you process tyramine, your cheese is off the hook. If anything, it's the rich meals, late timing, and alcohol pairings that stir up those surreal night narratives. And remember: Cheese is best paired with unpressed grapes and an early night. Sweet dreams — and yes, you can still keep your crackers.
Courier-Mail
24-05-2025
- Health
- Courier-Mail
Dr Zac Turner reveals if cheese can give you nightmares
Don't miss out on the headlines from Eat. Followed categories will be added to My News. Welcome to Ask Doctor Zac, a weekly column from This week, Dr Zac Turner explores the truth about cheese. QUESTION: Dear Dr Zac, I've heard this crazy rumour that eating cheese before bed can give you nightmares. I love eating cheese and crackers after dinner while a watch a good movie, but lately, I've been waking up from some pretty whack dreams. – Effie, 29, Bankstown, NSW ANSWER: Double cream or troubled dreams? Let's slice into the truth. Blame it on Charles Dickens. In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge famously blames his ghostly visions on 'a crumb of cheese.' But is your cheesy snack really to blame? In 2005, the British Cheese Board set out to investigate. They gave 200 people different cheeses before bed and tracked their dreams. The verdict? No link between cheese and nightmares. In fact, some cheeses — especially cheddar — were even associated with more pleasant dreams. Brie-lliant, you said? Still, plenty of people swear their dreams go wild after a cheese-fuelled snack. So let's look at what might really be happening under the rind. Cheese contains tyramine, a naturally occurring compound that, in theory, can stimulate the brain by triggering the release of norepinephrine — a chemical linked to alertness, and potentially, disrupted sleep. Can cheese cause nightmares? Picture: iStock But here's the thing: • Most people eat 30–50 grams of cheese per sitting — just a few slices or cubes. • That delivers only a tiny amount of tyramine — nowhere near enough to whip your brain into dream overdrive. • And unless you're taking a rare class of antidepressants called MAO inhibitors, your body breaks it down just fine. In other words, your late-night snack is far more likely to be creamy than dreamy. And let's not forget: cheese is rarely eaten solo. If you're working your way through a cheese board with a few glasses of wine during that movie, alcohol could be the issue. Alcohol: it's a major sleep disrupter: • It suppresses REM sleep early on, then triggers REM rebound, leading to vivid, intense dreams. • The result? You wake feeling like you've been drowning in an ocean of fondue all night. Alcohol is a major sleep disrupter. Picture: iStock So if your dreams are melting into madness, it might not be the blue … but the red, rose, or white that's at the wheel. Additionally, high-fat meals — especially those rich in saturated fats — can throw off your sleep. Studies show these foods are linked to lighter, more fragmented sleep and reduced deep sleep, which can lead to frequent wakings and more vivid or unsettling dreams. Bottom line? Unless you're on a rare medication that affects how you process tyramine, your cheese is off the hook. If anything, it's the rich meals, late timing, and alcohol pairings that stir up those surreal night narratives. And remember: Cheese is best paired with unpressed grapes and an early night. Sweet dreams — and yes, you can still keep your crackers. – Dr Zac Got a question? Email askdrzac@ Follow Dr Zac on Instagram Dr Zac Turner is a medical practitioner specialising in preventative health and wellness. He has four health/medical degrees – Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Sydney, Bachelor of Nursing at Central Queensland University, and Bachelor of Biomedical Science at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He is a registrar for the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, and is completing a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (UNSW). Dr Zac is the medical director for his own holistic wellness medical clinics throughout Australia, Concierge Doctors. Originally published as Dr Zac Turner reveals the truth about cheese and nightmares
New Statesman
21-05-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Dickens's Britain is still with us
Photo by Chronicle / Alamy The New Statesman staff are sometimes drawn to the windows of our first-floor office in Hatton Garden by events unfolding outside: a purple Lamborghini pulling up to the jeweller's next door, a music video being filmed on phones in the middle of the road, groups of men striking deals or squaring up to each other while security guards coolly observe. I'm always aware, though, that what we're looking at are Dickens's streets. Here are the ghosts of Victorian inequality: slumlands full of crime and punishment. A few doors down is the magistrates' court where Oliver Twist is brought and accused of picking pockets; a couple of streets east is the 'wretched place' where Fagin has his den, and the 'low public-house, in the filthiest part of Little Saffron Hill' frequented by Bill Sikes. Poverty in Britain is regularly described as Victorian or Dickensian – it has become unthinking shorthand, in the way state bureaucracy is reliably Kafkaesque and tech innovations are Orwellian. And yet, the comparison feels increasingly less hyperbolic. Revisiting A Christmas Carol last December – yes, all right, the Muppets version, but it's a family tradition, and besides the screenplay is remarkably faithful – it seemed to me that Dickens's world and our own seem to be drawing closer. The financial precariousness of the Cratchits could be described as 'in-work poverty': Bob's wages as Ebenezer Scrooge's clerk are barely sufficient to keep his family afloat. Today 72 per cent of children in poverty live in a household where someone is in work. The benefits-slashing New Poor Law of 1834 – detested by Dickens – was informed by a Malthusian approach to what Scrooge calls the 'surplus population': generous hand-outs, it was felt, would only encourage working-class families to have more children. It's hard not to hear an echo of such thinking in the Conservatives' two-child benefit cap, so far upheld by Labour: an immoral policy that punishes children from birth. And yes, that would include Tiny Tim. Three in ten children in the UK today are living below the poverty line, an appalling statistic that is at the heart of this special issue of the New Statesman guest edited by Gordon Brown. Dickens's work still speaks to us because of his genius, but his Britain should feel like history. It's to our shame that it does not. Dickens is well read in today's schools: that sounds like something to celebrate, part of the legacy of Michael Gove's education reforms, which we seem to have collectively decided were a Very Good Thing. But speaking to English teachers while looking around secondary schools for my daughter, I was struck by how narrow the curriculum has become. The tables were heaving with copies of A Christmas Carol, Macbeth and An Inspector Calls but contemporary fiction was practically non-existent. When exam boards add more adventurous and modern texts, schools – without the funds to buy new books, or the time to create new teaching resources – tend to stick to what they know. Given the golden age of writing for children and young adults we have been living through in the last 30 years – from Philip Pullman to Malorie Blackman, Katherine Rundell to Alex Wheatle – this is profoundly depressing. The number of students taking English literature at university is falling rapidly, as is the proportion of school pupils who say they read for pleasure. Our system is prioritising exam proficiency and the dubious concept of 'cultural capital' above a love of reading. I would like to say that Dickens, whose concerns were contemporary and whose instincts were unfailingly popular, would not approve – but actually I expect any arrangement that kept him in the bestseller lists would have suited him fine. This is my last issue of the New Statesman before leaving for pastures new: Tom McTague, the new editor-in-chief, launches his first edition on 13 June. I have been acting editor for the past five months, but part of the team for 11 years. Throughout, I have tried to be an evangelist for the back half of the magazine: the writing on books, culture and the 'rest of life'. There is a fallacy (not helped by our education system) that the arts are 'soft'. They are, of course, nothing of the sort: even when not overtly political, art is a lens that brings the political world into focus. It also makes us better humans. The novelist Eimear McBride describes her theatre training as teaching her to employ 'a kind of radical empathy'. That is what good art can do (just ask Dickens) – and it is something our politics is in desperate need of. In my time at the NS my colleagues and I have worked with guest editors including Grayson Perry (who scrawled: 'Cars and watches: not messy like feelings!' on his men's-mag parody cover), Michael Sheen (whose Covid-era catch-up calls included revelations about Tony Blair's Union Jack boxer shorts) and Greta Thunberg (who joined our first video call while striding through Stockholm pushing a broken bike). Gordon Brown (whose moral conviction and preacher's-son past is evident in every interaction) is the only person to have guest edited twice: we collaborated on an issue in June 2016 titled 'Britain in Europe', just before Britain decided Europe was where it didn't want to be. We may have lost that argument but we must not lose this one. On child poverty the case is as clear as the stakes are high. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See also: The catastrophe in Gaza] Related
