Filmmaker Ken Russell has died at the age of 84. The extremely prolific Russell’s films include: Tommy; The Harry Palmer film, Billion Dollar Brain; Women in Love; The Music Lovers; The Devils; Altered States; Crimes of Passion; and Lair of the White Worm. The Guardian has an obituary […]
Actor John Neville has died. Gutter readers might be most familiar with his work in Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and in The X-Files. According to the Guardian’s obituary, he was seen as a successor to John Gielgud and performed Alfie on the British stage before […]
Adam Roberts (perhaps still scarred by his encounter with The Wheel of Time) takes a look at the relatively brisk 400 pages of Rivers of London and reflects on the appeal of a certain type of bulked-up reading experience, with a detour to talk about Sir Walter Scott: […]
It’s summer time and instead of beer bottles exploding out of coolers in a shower of refreshing ice, bikini-clad hotties and fireworks as we know it should be, everything is wilting and perhaps even melting. As far as I can tell there are only two possible explanations—Hot Lava […]
Scholars are combing digitized records from London’s Old Bailey and discovering fascinating trends in plea bargaining, divorce and bigamy in the 1800s.
British actor Edward Hardwicke has died. He is best known as Dr. John Watson in the 1980s and 1990s BBC Sherlock Holmes series co-starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes.The Guardian has an obituary and here is a video of Hardwicke and Brett interviewed about playing Watson and Holmes.