Enthusiasms

The smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd, the flare of the floodlights – what enchantments they conjure! If you’d visited a regional playhouse over two centuries ago, though, a very differe

Bob Cooper of Macclesfield, Cheshire remembers: From an early age, I have always loved reading and writing. My best subject at school was English to the detriment of maths, and I managed to become top

There are currently five main theatres in the centre of Birmingham but, in the past, there were many more. Most of those were lost as cinema, radio and television took hold, as audiences, especially f

Dear Simon, Reading Larry Brayshaw’s letter, A Knockout Visit, in the July issue, reminded me of the time I also met a British heavyweight boxer. Dick Richardson was based in Staines and we would meet

In a John Behan bronze, collector Jacqueline O’Donovan, a child of the Irish diaspora, can sense the desperation of a starving people forced to flee their land

I found it quite disconcerting, drinking a pint with Queen Boudicca and her Iceni warriors lurking behind me. I was in the Odd One Out, a quirky pub in Colchester and was getting used to finding histo