James Martin Charlton

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-pi… 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… The cover designs are by brilliant @MiddlesexUni BA Graphic Design graduate Phillip Block.

Frankie Howard marrying deaf Joan Sims with a deaf vicar presiding in Carry On Doctor.

This drivel from the fake “artist”/propagandist Matthew Collings us very telling. There’s nothing unique about the conflict in Gaza, that it should destroy the entire concept of art. Conflicts such as this are as old as history. Of course, it’s self-serving for the talentless to reject the notion of art as aesthetic achievement.

As chat up lines go, “put your devil in my hell” isn’t the most appealing.

Daily Danny: dandelion addict.

It’s absurd that a university should be getting itself involved in squabbles between students, never mind taking sides. But it doesn’t surprise me at Royal Holloway, which employs some of the nastiest activist academics I know.

Wuthering Heights (1939) is a polished but sanitised version that turns Brontë’s wildness into a glossy argument for “authentic love” - with Hollywood killing its lovers to make the point. letterboxd.com/jmcfire/film/w…

Haven’t the Cuban people suffered enough?

My lecture “Why I hate Grayson Perry” is available at Speakers Corner tomorrow. All welcome.

@hellothisisivan @OldRoberts953 The epitome of a contradiction in terms.

@OldRoberts953 I don’t think any phrase has ever made me shudder like “community art”

New at my St*ck - A SPECIAL EDITION - I take you back to my university days, and my early encounter/collision with the manias of today … Link below ⤵️

This is splendid from Gareth and much needed, because people are often unaware of how ingrained these pernicious attitudes are in education (and, alas, beyond). It broke my heart when, as a working class person who was completely liberated by colliding with high culture, I met educators who thought keeping kids away from that stuff was their calling.

@hellothisisivan They didn't even have the decency to get AI to write that trash.

Happy weekend

Stylish, starry and faintly clever, Bullet Train (2022) is slick nihilism dressed up as wit - a puzzle box of violence that never quite justifies itself. letterboxd.com/jmcfire/film/b…

And people say GBS is dull…

Masked and Anonymous

Daily Danny: Our doggy of the camellias.

Patrick Stewart in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Plays and Players, July 1977.

@AtticumFloreat St Alban!

Who should be England's Patron Saint?

A wild structural mess held together by one of literature’s most enigmatic figures, Wuthering Heights fascinates less as a story than as a puzzle about what Heathcliff actually is. goodreads.com/review/show/84…

What an absolutely dreadful piece of work Wright is.