My two most recent play publications - Divine Vision: William Blake in Felpham and The Pilgrim's Progress are available from @TSLpub The Pilgrim's Progress Step into an unforgettable journey with this epic adaptation of John Bunyan’s timeless allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Originally commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, this dramatization brings to the stage the tale of Christian, who flees the City of Destruction on a perilous quest to reach the Celestial City. Guided by Evangelist, Christian encounters a host of vivid characters—both friends and foes—including the treacherous Mr Worldly Wiseman, the loquacious Talkative, and the fearsome Apollyon. We follow Christian’s trials as he battles through the murky Slough of Despond, faces persecution at the chaotic Vanity Fair, and confronts the enormous Giant Despair in the menacing Doubting Castle. Meanwhile, his family endures their own hardships in his absence, adding a poignant counterpoint to his epic journey. tslbooks.uk/product/the-pilg… Divine Vision: William Blake in Felpham London, 1800. Things aren’t going too well for William Blake. He lacks work, his wife worries over the bills, he’s seeing visions of the Apocalypse, and his planned epic poem on the divine remains unwritten. When Blake gets an offer from famous poet William Hayley to leave London and settle in a cottage at the seaside village of Felpham, he jumps at the chance. In Felpham, things don’t quite work out the way Blake had them planned… tslbooks.uk/product/divine-v… The cover designs are by brilliant @MiddlesexUni BA Graphic Design graduate Phillip Block.

Gareth has gone over and above the call of duty, wading through the output of this Dunt.

What fudge brains voted this rubbish the nation's favourite play?!

The Colosseum is a consecrated site in memory of the many Christian martyrs who went to their death there.

Another paddle into Chabrol's murky waters, Inspector Lavardin (1985), turns up more torpor than intrigue. letterboxd.com/jmcfire/film/…

“I said a GAP in the market, Alan!”

“The people are revolting!”

A malevolent man, laughing at serious issues such as slave labour.

The little ripple of applause after “running baths cannot resolve systemic class injustice” is the chef’s kiss.

Tracked down a copy of Gerald Thomas's penultimate movie, the war drama The Second Victory. Very intriguing, especially with the cast including Max von Sydow (a shoe-in for Carry On Cheer Up It Might Never Happen).

There needs to be a complete purge of everyone who wants to decolonise our museums, educational and cultural institutions

Team Callum.

In The Margin (1976, aka The Streetwalker), Sylvia Kristel and Joe Dallesandro enter Borowczyk’s seedy Parisian half-world, where sex, money and death prove difficult to disentangle, and people join the other objects. letterboxd.com/jmcfire/film/…

Stella Creasy, who is pushing 50, is still using the expression “call out” in 2026. You’re disagreeing with someone, who are you “calling out” to?

Danny is caught, like a shamed young Pasha romping with today’s chosen from his harem of cushions. The unchosen lie desolate and discarded.

From the first sentence of the abstract, this paper by Aspinall and Duncan is a prime example of the complete failure of the peer review process in contemporary research publishing within the social sciences.