Film review: Effie Gray (12A)

Effie Gray
(12A) 108mins
★★★★✩

If Effie Gray lacks the emotional release that the painstaking accumulation of frustrations appears to demand, it is perhaps testimony to the artistic courage of script writer Emma Thompson (who also stars).

Film review: Filmed In Supermarionation (PG)

Filmed In Supermarionation
(PG) 119mins
★★★★✩

Thunderbirds visionary Gerry Anderson railed against the limitations of puppetry.

Working Mum: Why I confronted man filming kids in the park

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

Over the weekend, Master A and I went along to a free family event in our local park with one of his classmates, Talia, and her mum.

The sun was shining and laughter filled the open space. Children of all ages were taking full advantage of the activities on offer from old school fairground games and cake decorating to model car racing and crafts.

Spiral Notebook: No sleep until splat time

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." So wrote Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1973, simplifying all there is to understand about the ambition of nature.

And yet... the mosquito.What need is there for a creature who's role is purely nuisance - big brothers have filled that evolutionary niche.

Book review: The Sense Of Style, by Steven Pinker

The Sense Of Style
Steven Pinker (Allen Lane)
★★★✩✩

Steven Pinker is an dazzling thinker, an excellent writer and a brilliant matchmaker of the two - marrying complex ideas to simple English.

This has not happened by chance. He has studied hard to make his writing appear easy and now wishes to share his learning.

Stage review: Great Britain, Haymarket

Great Britain
Theatre Royal Haymarket
★★★✩✩

All the ills, woes and scandals of Britain's tabloid press are distilled, mixed with bile and chucked at the audience of the Haymarket with infectious glee in Richard Bean's state-of-the-nation farce.

Working Mum: In the desert of my social diary, how can two key events collide?

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

For my birthday my friend announced that she had bought me tickets to see Kate Bush at Hammersmith.

At first I was speechless, unable to believe what I was hearing. This stunned silence was soon broken by one almighty squeal that lasted rather longer than was necessary.

Spiral Notebook: After a flight of fancy, down to earth with a bump

Unless you have wealth, webbing or feathers, there is little glamour left in air travel.

The humiliation of the consumer is one that no other service would demand save perhaps Apple with an iOS upgrade or the NHS and its proctology (with whom, tellingly, air travel has a weird kinship).

Spiral Notebook: David, Goliath and the sickening politics of scorn in Tower Hamlets

You may believe that Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman is right to challenge the Government's investigation into alleged financial malpractice at the Town Hall.

You may believe that the council's publicly funded bid for a judicial review is a necessary David-and-Goliath battle to protect a fragile branch of democracy from Eric Pickles' Communities Department.

Book reviews: Scarcity, The Gods Of Guilt, The Young And Prodigious TS Spivet

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir (Penguin)
★★★✩✩

The authors have a "big idea", another in the newly popular field of behavioural economics. The nudgers and freaks are joined by the lackies - those who live with scarcity.