08/07/2011 The Review Show

Tonight on the review show, the world but not as we all know it.

Spiritual, venal, surreal and Terrence Malick's personal,

emotional Palme d'Or winning, The Tree Of Life, will it capture a new

audience. Some day we will fall down and weep. Sam Mendes and Kevin

spacey together again n a modern setting of Richard III, is there

sympathy for this devil? Hats, pipes and trains, is the

Magritte exhibition at Liverpool suitably surreal. Love, loss and

libido in the devastation of war in the adaptation of Sarah Waters's

novel, The Night Watch. I think it is easy to be brave in war time.

Plus, folk rock taub dor - Troubadour performing.

Joining me to chew over the cultural week are Sarah Churchwell,

writer and broadcaster, Paul Morley, comedian and writer, Natalie Haynes,

and last but not least, film historian, Matthew Sweet. And as

ever, we look forward to hearing from your tweets too.

In a movie career spanning four decades, reclusive author, Terrence

Malick, has directed five films, beginning with the ground-breaking

Badlands in 1973, we propelled Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek to

stardom. His latest people, The Tree Of Life was releeld to the

Cannes Film Festival to standing ovations and a few boos, and walked

off with the Palme d'Or prize. Has it been worth the wait for this

highly anticipated movie. Some day we will fall down and weep. We

won't understand at all. We will understand all things. Starring

Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and Sean Penn, The Tree Of Life looks

into human existence, through the film lens of a 1950s family,

focusing on Jack, the eldest of three brothers.

Amidst the golden glow of endless summer, we follow Jack's journaly

through childhood innocence, witnessed in a series of stylised

shots, his angelic bond with his loving mother, but a more complex

relationship with his disciplinarian father. What are you

doing son. The adult Jack is played by Sean

Penn, a disillusioned man, cast adrift amongst the steel and glass

of the modern world, looking back on the lessons of his childhood.

Father, mother, always you wrestle inside me. Although framed by the

death of one of Jack's younger brothers, the film has an

impressionistic, non-linear narrative that operates on an ind

mit and panoramic scale, exploring metaphysical questions of life and

death. With dramatic scenes on the origin of the planet and the huge

Cosmos. Malick also employs his characteristic signatures of

imagery, sweeping music score and internal monolougue. Unless you

love, your life will flash by. such immense themes, big questions

and painter's canvas, has he created a film that will appeal

broader than his loyal and patient fan base. Lots of patience, because

it was ready in 2008, it is six years since his last film, one

senses Malick has been thinking about this since he was a little

boy. I have a lot of time for Terrence Malick, you need to,

because the films are so long and the gaps between them are so huge.

All the other films are masterpiece, I wauted for this one to overwhelm

- I waited for this one to overwhelm me, it didn't happen.

Despite the beautiful images there are vulgar things in it, the CGI

dinosaurs down the river. Is it creationism? It is a religious film

too, this is where some of the vulgarity comes from. We get this

image of the afterlife that looks like something from the Halifax

advert. Sean Penn wandering around on the beach with families being

reunited. Or something from the cover of a Christian self-help book.

Do you really have to have something that's cut and dried.

Terrence Malick's films aren't cut and dried, there is room for lots

of interpretation in this, you don't have to have a big storyline?

There is room for lots of interpretation, read the reviews.

Some people think he's an architect and engineer, Sean Penn, some think

he's the darker and light child. Whose bedroom is he in when he goes

through the underwear drawer, you have to pay attention. That is no

bad thing? That is the thing for me, it looks beautiful, it is a sign of

my vulgarity, this is what I like, a story, a really good story, and

the kind of punch of the story is taken away, we see at the very

beginning, not just the little boy dying, but that information comes

via a telegram, you go OK, so he's away from home when he dies. You

have this incredibly Spence-filled family dynamic. It are too hard

work? We are going to say this film is a difficult thing to watch and

throw out a good bit of thinking. I would rather watch this than

Transformers, when I came out of the film tonight and people going

in for the other showing. The film ended in stunned silence, it is

either good or bad, but it is something. I wanted to say to

people outside, I didn't know if I wanted to say don't go in or go in.

I couldn't make my mind up. Whether it would be something very exciting

or not. That is maybe dialogue Terrence Malick might think of at

10.00 in the morning! It is like a series of high-level home movies,

some happen to be at the beginning of time and the big bang. I'm not

sure if we are being fair, it is a movie that does. That it is two

different movies stitched together, one of the movies is fanttationia,

it is the - Fantasia, it is the origins of man through the

dinosaurs, joined with the story of a coming of age, a very familiar

intimate small story about coming of age with a young man. With an

extraordinary performance by the boy who plays Jack. By all the

children. And Brad Pitt giving a very fine performance. It was to be

Heath Ledger, and Brad Pitt to produce: the beauty of it, we can't

gloss over, that it is spectacularly beautiful. The music

is spectacular but also very over the top. I think another of his

missteps is the music. For something that is meant to be

something like Kubrick, his timing with the use of music is slipshod,

I don't think he does it well. is a very, very fragile film. It is

a film that is really affected by the context in which you watch it.

At the press screening there was an air of difference silence, people

were afraid to swallow their crisps too loudly to disrush those around

him. I saw it in a public - disrupt those around him. I saw it in a

public screening in Paris and people were laughing at it. Hunter

as the older boy, the children hadn't acted before, Terrence

Malick dealt with them in a very interesting way, he told them very

little about what will happen. These are young kids. What they

delivered was something quite mesmeric. He has coaxed something

very wonderful out of them. whole idea that the basis of this

film has something important at the centre. The internal monolougue of

the wife saying is it about grace and nature. She's about grace and

the husband about nature. problem with the film, ultimately,

I felt as if I had assigned to an undergraduate to ask them to

interpret a coming of age story set in Texas. They would have said in

order to do this I must go back to the big bang, go through images of

women and look at religion, I would say, you can, but you don't have to,

it doesn't add too much. We have all done it, I'm reminded of

Charley cough man's adaptation, you go dr Kaufman's adaptation, and you

go further back and further back and further back. To God.

I felt that he was very much, I couldn't work out if he was

completely out of his depth and can only con cinema critics, we are

easy to do that to, because we are always looking, I'm thinking of you

as a film historian. Does this make him the auteur's autuere. He's so

venerated it is difficult to criticise him. He's very

pretentious, it is philosophically pretentious, but asthetically

gorgeous, that is why people still love him. He doesn't always hold up

to the veneration he's given. don't know what you take from Paul

Morley's go or don't go, if you want to go The Tree Of Life is in

cinemas now. Kevin Space is at home on the screen, but his main focus

of the last 12 years has been the Old Vic theatre in London. His day

job there is of artistic director, but he has contorted himself into

the Shakespearian villain of villains, Richard III, in Sam

Mendes's latest production. Richard III has been a frequent presence on

the stage, played by Laurence Olivier and Ian McKellen to name a

few, it is the blueprint for a coup d'etat. One thing that still

commands the imagination is Laurence Olivier's portrayal of the

bad boy on screen and the stage of the Old Vic itself. Olivier's

theatre has welcomed back the play, this time under the direction of

Sam Mendes, and the Old Vic's artistic directsor, Kevin Space,

taking the lead role. The last time they worked together was on the

1999 Oscar Garlanded film, American Beauty. They have both previous

experience of the play. Mendes directed a production in 1992, and

Space played Buckingham opposite Al Pachino's Richard on screen. This

comes to the end of a three-year victory, with Sam Mendes bringing

much screen talent to the play. Space joins a leg caliper, a claw-

like glove for a hand, and a military uniform with echos of

dictators. Richard meets the force of royal and regular GAL, Gemma

Jones's Annabel Scholey and Niall Quinn give as good as they get.

Does Space steal the show? Did he steal the show? He did for

me, he's a cerebral actor and he liked it. It works very well with

the role it's the arch manipulator, that is the point. I spoke to a few

people who said he didn't emotionally inhabit the role.

Richard III, it is a post fraudian idea to think we need to know his

emotional ambition, we see in the news this week that material

motivation is enough to make people do bad things and he wants the

Crown. He plays all the layers of Richard's man nip laigs and comedy

and shifting and his anger - man nip laigs and comedy and shifting

and his anger. When he's offered the crown three times we see close

ups on the screen. What about the cinematography, that is great?

is an interview, it seems to be a live relay, this isn't some kind of

dangerous work they are doing with recording material. I wondered

about, Spacey, this is inevitable in a production, but he dwarfs

everybody, apart from the women. I wonder, I hate to blame the

Americans, because they have to take the blame for everything, but

there is something about an American actor saying the word

"Tamworth", or "Leicester", that I can't quite take seriously! On a

serious point of Tim dwarfing the other actors - him dwarfing the ear

actors, in the very long - the other actors, in the very long

first half the other actors don't seem to figure. It is Spacey's show,

it all falls away behind him, he's constantly on, he's thinking, the

extraordinary energy he emits. It is the cinematic Richard III.

his cinema career, it is the twisted leg to remind us of the

Union Suspects,s had the head in the box we reminds us of Seven.

There is a small homage to all the films he has been in. It is

brilliantly clever. I have said it before, Shakespeare is a very good

HBO box-office writer. That constant sense of drama. Spacey has

elevated it above any problems of Tudor propaganda or the cripple

being made out to be evil. It is sheer performance, it is not even

history just sheer performance. a sense it was a shame in the first

half, I thought, that the relationship with Buckingham

couldn't be intense enough to actually bring that alive as

someone else that was acting alongside him? Spacey seemed to act

as if Buckingham was OK. He still seemed to be reacting. In a sense

it works, it is a strange way to look at their relationship, you

don't get the pain of it. You do get the idea as Buckingham as a

spin doctor, it works well, particularly for putting the idea

of the play across to the audience. It is a populist version of the

play. Some purists won't like that, it is playing to a crowd, it is

presuming you don't understand what is happening. I think it works

really well, it is putting across theatrically what the underlining

meanings of the story are. What happens is you have the very long

first half, you are slightly concerned that it is going to be

Spacey, Spacey and Spacey, then the glorious change of gear with Haydn

Gwynne and Annabel Scholey, it is extraordinary how these women can

completely command the stage and challenge him in every way. Haydn

Gwynne especially, the scene where he's Bartering for her daughter's

hand, he's reminding him he has killed everyone else she's related

to apart from this daughter. I was sitting there properly jaw-dropped,

you realise there is someone else on stage who can go toe-to-toe and

jaw-to-jaw. She relished it, and it drew attention to the other guys

not. This first two hours were testing, to choose to break the

show at that point was really quite brilliant. That moment that he's

crowned. To come back from the same scene with a different perspective

altered. There was a good reason for having wimpy men, it works well

with him as a modern dictator, and once again the news this week, we

are sitting thinking, big terrifying significant at the core

and satellite wimpy people around him. Women with wild hair, I'm

feeling this is kind of working for me. Life on Richard III could be

the dramatisation of News of the World. You can't get away from it.

There is a serious point here, I have never seen a production of

Richard III where I thought the women mattered in the way they do

in this production. Things with Queen Margaret, you think actually

she's important here. They overplayed it by the end. They like

decision that is are also very Machiavellian in themselves, I

thought that was really good. brings out the strength of the way

these characters are writen, and they are the - written, they are

tend to be the dopey and wimpy ones, that is a question of direction and

performance. You realise as it is written these people can be

incredibly powerful. A quick word on The Bridge Project, that is

three years, a success? I don't know, I think they have all, they

have all dropped where somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, these

productions. Something happens when actors from these two different

cultures get together. It slows everything down. Jeff goldbloom and

Sissy Spacek? Some of them have been terribly show. What happens

when critics of different things get together. It is much more

successful, clearly. It continues until September, with handful of

tickets available. Pipes, bowler hats, trains, are some of the every

day objects that Rene Magritte painted over and over again. In

infusing them with new meaning, or maybe not, intentionally, or maybe

not. The Pleasure Principle is the first major British retrospective

of the work of the Belgian surrealist in 20 years. Including

the familiar iconic paintings and little seen photographs, commercial

What we were trying to do in Liverpool is to stage a number of

important exhibitions which look at particular aspects of important

figures in 20th century art, Magritte now, and trying to put a

different angle on well known figures. Magritte is one of the

most popular artists there is. He's a poster boy of Surrealism. What we

tried to do is look behind that facade of normality that he

presented and see how powerful his work still is. Magritte is a

perennially popular artist, but with this appeal comes the risk of

overfamiliarity. In a bid to dispel our preconceptions of the work,

Tate Liverpool has put the show under different headings.

In this show you have all of the iconic works, you have the pipes

and the apple, you have the clouds, you have the train coming out of

the mantlepiece, you have the man in the bowler hats, all the icons

are here. But at the same time you will see the unknown Magritte, the

painter Magritte, the breaks in his work, where he suddenly paints

completely sloppy and expressive, that is what makes his work

interesting. The exhibition also showcases the

commercial work of his advertising days, and surrealist home movies

with his wife and muse, Georgette. Magritte, maybe more than any other

of the surrealist, has created images that are instantly

recoginsable, but they are complex. The dommin I don't know of day and

night, - dommin I don't know of the day and night, perfectly executed,

simple but also intriguing, disturbing, puzzling, that is a

power of his. The excuse is perfect, simple and effective though the

Paul, did you get a sense from this exhibition that although you knew

about Magritte you only had passing acquaintance before? He is one of

my favourite artists, I did think I knew enough. There were surprising

turns. I got the feeling the exhibition was trying to recover

his reputation a bit, he's obviously overexposed, a lot of the

cliches in kitsch world could be sourced back to Magritte, he has a

lesser reputation. I got the impression they were trying to

position him more to DeJomp, I thought if he's more a Bob Dylan! I

got this sense that it is the thing about being overfamiliar with these

exhibitions is will the exhibition itself transform the reputation of

Magritte or will the individual works. Or the shop? The shop is

handily placed at the end of of the familiar paintings. What I found

that was thrilling, frs not so much the exhibition or how it was

curated, and there was a lot of great work, and it made me see how

he thought, I got into the idea of the paintings not the exhibition.

In an exhibition it will deral and desting Surrealism, it - it will

devalue Surrealism. It didn't do that.

I kind of felt like Magritte is one of those people who got turned into

too many posters. The great moment in the Thomas Crown Affair, where

everyone pretends to be somebody from Magritte. I was excite today

see it away from the tea towels and all that, you can see it at the end,

you have the perfect moment of repcation, here are ten or eight

different versions of men in bowler hat, and here you can take your

own! I found it really intriguing, there were lots of paintings I knew,

and far more that I didn't know, especially the comic book of this

figure, the Phantomas, he's a cat burglar and criminal, there he is

suddenly turned into a Magritte. The Basque, the erotica there was

so much, the bad period, the Renoiresque stuff, there was a

complete fabulousness of Magritte in all his periods. I'm not sure if

I felt the fabulousness or much pleasure, frankly. I remember when

they did George Melly on Through The Keyhole, and Lloyd Grossman

went around snooping and it was full of surrealist art, I thought

there was nothing good enough to put in George Melly's bathroom.

think he's amazing. That was the stuff I wasn't nearly as familiar

with as I thought I was. It was one of those exhibitions where I

realised I didn't know Magritte at all. I thought I was passingly

acquainted with him. Particularly he has all these paintings where

he's playing with language and he has all these ideas about

literalism, and then representing what the idea might be in its

relationship to language. Some worked better than others, but the

way in which he was thinking conceptually about what he was

trying to do and questions about ideas and representation. I think

he does the kinds of things that Terrence Malick thinks he does and

doesn't do. There was some things of equisite beauty, hi no idea that

the Domain of Skaf life had been done, 16 times. When you see them

all there. Thu suddenly lit up like Turner, you could see the technique

that was there, that I had also underappreciated, he made it really

beautiful. In a way he withdrew behind the bowler hat and created

this image of himself. But for that anonymity, he was constantly

present, he was sending himself to the future in a way that outdoes

Andy Warhol and Hirst, he was replicating his own reputation.

of the paintings, which until two years ago nobody knew had a mirror

image partner, it was only just found two years ago? Amazing, and

the question of whether he did it because there are two customers.

That is the exact type of anecdote I want to find out at an exhibition.

My problem with the exhibition is I wished because it actually covers

the long career of a man who lived a long time. I actually think they

overegged the pudding, they could have gone for the more straight

forward chronological, so we could see the way his ideas developed.

Here is a painter, I'm grumpy about this, it is a painter playing with

the idea of banality, that is a dangerous game to play. They seem

to be representations of a moment when something was dead pan and

something was cool. I wonder whether the dead bit isn't the bit

that seems most apparent, to my eye. These all seem very flat and

unexcited. I know they play with the idea of flatness, and

unexcitingness. But still for me. There is a lot of value in terms of

the idea of the mystery of appearance. There was all those

things that seemed like cliches before I went and suddenly came

alive again. What excited me was the commercial art, actually. The

vitality of that, the vitality of his film posters, and his orange

juice adverts seemed to be more. was not about designing wallpaper,

the whole exhibition was like a wallpaper sample board, full of

unbelievable images. The back room with porn too. No time for that!

The Pleasure Principle continues at Tate Liverpool until October.

Award-winning author, Sarah Waters is renowned for historical novels,

known as lesbian historical romps. The books have proved popular with

TV audiences, The Night Watch has been adapted for BBC. In a

departure from her usual Irene that it is September after the Second

World War. We spoke to Sarah Waters and about why her new work lends

itself to television. It is like her putting on a display

just for us. Bravo. . I'm pretty much an old fashioned

storyteller. I like plots, characterisation, dialogue. I'm

part of a generation of people who grew up watching an awful lot of

tele, films. I know when I'm writing a scene, usually I

visualise it and write down what I'm seeing in my head. Following

the lives and losses of four Londoner, The Night Watch explores

the convolume luted emotional relationships and seemingly abitary

connection that is interlink the main characters. My starting point

for the novel was writing about relationships that had failed. The

Victorian novels had young women at the start of their lives. For this

I wanted to write about women my own age who had done that and

moving on to something else. And dealing with the problems of

relationships. Anna Maxwell Martin is Kay, an androgynous loner,

scarred by emotional loss and scarred by his experience as an

ambulance driverburg the blitz. were - during the blitz. You were

the bravest person I know. It is easy to be brave in the war.

Duncan, played by Harry Treadaway hides a dark secret, and battles

with his own sexual desires. What so there is no shame in the army

making you into a murderer, as long as for king and country it is OK to

have blood on your hand. You want to talk about shame, you wait until

you are out of here and you can't walk down the street without people

pointing at you. The drama follows the unusual narrative structure of

the novel, beginning during the period of reconstruction in 1947,

and jumping back in time to 1944 and 1941 and the chaos of horrors

of the blitz. As each character's past actions are revealed, their

present and futures are explained. When I was writing The Night Watch,

I thought nobody will want to adapt this. Everyone is a bit glum in it,

for one thing, it has this rather difficult structure where it moves

backwards. It was a technical challenge, but I enjoy that. I do

like figuring out how best to tell a story. So has its film succeeded

in capturing the war and post-war time atmosphere and the emotion of

fraught and fractured lives. They say romance is dead.

Natalie, you have come to this fresh, without reading the book.

Saved myself some time too, well done. Do you get the atmosphere of

the fear and recklessness and excitement and bravery attached to

the war? Yes, all of those things are there. Also it is beautifully

shot. You can feel the fabrics that everyone is wearing t made me feel

strangely closer to the war than the future for the first time in a

really long time. And I think it is really carried by its performers,

Anna Maxwell Martin is just about as good a TV actor that is working

at the moment. She's extraordinary. Once she's on the screen, she eats

it, it doesn't matter how good the people around her are, she's all

I'm focusing on. I never say this, I have been doing this programme

for five years, do you know, it could have gone on longer, what

about two episodes. They short changed the story? I think they

have squadered one of the hottest literary properties that there has

been in a decade or so. Why wasn't this three episodes when we could

have really delved into the world. Given that we are right now airing

Duncan Pearce a very silly novel, given this incredible reverential

treatment. And you think here is a very good novel that deserves that

five hours of attention. That was my problem, it whistles through it.

I'm wondering if the chronological thing needs to work in a complete

space, split over there it would be less. It is great in the book I

love that thing, Terrence Malick has missed a bit of a thing. It has

this sense of after the war, when we find them, everything is

fragmented and broken up. People are broken? Then we go back to

piece it together. It works wonderfully. To an extent it was

sort of experimental in the book, but here it works so well. That may

be why they needed to do it in one space. It is like a cousin to Scott

and Bailey, the detective series set in the north, with the women at

the front and men hin. It is so refreshing. One of the amazing

things, the dialogue is terrific, it is not overblown, not

sentimental it is heart wrenching? It is precisely researched, the

work that went into the novel, the work went in to research war time

prison life, all of that is transferred to the screen, very

effective, the sub cultures between conscientious objectives and that.

The film does this very well, it is a film populated by adults, that is

a good thing, they had the guts to keep it adult. They haven't dumbed

it down or patronised it, except the crucial bit of them deciding

they needed to rewind for those of us who couldn't read 1947 and then

1941. History tends to be sentimentalised

and later in the war and after the war, apart from anything else it

provide as great historical service. I hadn't realised that so many

people actively didn't go to the bunkers, they wanted to see what

was happening, it was almost like come and get me. Everyone was limb

rated from their positions, they could anticipate things.

finally get gay war time London instead of gay war time Berlin.

a sense it wasn't a novel I think about gay love, it was a novel

about a coming of age of women, and very much in the same way of the

munitions with the First World War, in the Second World War they were

taking charge of all sorts. Women's sexuality is at the heart of it,

but it is not always about at the sire, it is certainly not all about

lesbian sexuality, but there is questions about women's rights.

hasn't invented this idea, this is a cue she's taking from the cinema

of the period, when had you a generation of the stars, like

Margaret Lock wood, all appearing in melodramas set on the home

fronts revolving around stories not entirely unlike this one. What was

very brave, not giving away this end, there is only one resolution

regarded as a traditionals re l the unhappiness doesn't get magiced

away. All of that is transferred very precisely from the book. It

has a lovely Mel collie feeling to it. I wond - Mel Len collie feeling

to it - melencholy feel to go it. The budget wasn't big enough to do

the burning London. This isn't Hollywood. It is on next Tuesday

night at 9.00. It is turning into a weekend of farewells, the News of

the World, the space shuttle and Harry Potter, the final film.

You know the stats about Harry Potter, 400 million books sold,

translated into 67 language, including ancient Greek, including

the most lucrative movie franchise of all time. The little wizard has

come into millions of homes and people's careers.

The spotlight tonight is Lizo, the BBC entertainment correspond

department. Which of the Harry Potter books has told the most?

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2. What two conditions

were imposed on the making of the Royal Hospitals Trust films?

wanted it an all-British cast made in the UK, number two commercial

partners involved in merchandising, putting money into good causes.

was JK Rolling's first choice to direct the movie? Terry Gillingham.

Why did Steven Spielberg turn it down? He wanted it an animated

movie and starring Haley Joel Osmond. Why has it been successful?

People say because it explores folklore and drawing it together.

Correct, it is said one in four American adults have seen a Harry

Potter film, why? There are so many different reasons for that, firstly,

it is because Americans are fascinate bid British culture.

there be any more Harry Potter stories? No. I'm not entirely sure

I agree with that. Excuse me, I have started so I will finish. I

think she will carry on, it is not about money, JK Rolling has plenty

of that, it is about the writer's need to write. She has done perhaps

the most difficult thing, to create characters which mean something to

her readers. They want more. I don't think she will be able to

resist the urge to give it to them. Well, well. What brings you here

Potter? Can you believe it's the Harry Potter final film, in a sense

it has been, what, seven book, set films, in real time. Only eight,

really. It seems like 27 to me. don't mean that. What have they

contributed to the film industry, apart from anything else? Apart

from giving aen to of people a tonne of people a huge tonne of

work. I think they have realised British film makers, they are

British book, set here, there was an option early on made by

Spielberg in America, no, they stayed here, they stayed very

British, it is a positive British brand. A film studio exists in this

country that wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for the Harry Potter

films. That's worth celebrating. I'm glad to see the back of them.

Just before we end this conversation, space shuttle, Harry

Potter, News of the World, what will you miss the most? I'm not

going to miss any of them, never see Harry Potter films unless you

send me, I have never read News of the World, space shuttle maybe, the

only thing at the moment is Wimbledon and the sun. A going

backwards not going to space, we don't read books but strange

screens. I'm always saying goodbye to Harry Potter, if the News of the

World goes permanently that would be a great thing, but it might be

replaced with something that could take us to the past. It has to be

Harry Potter, a true case of plot over everything and working for it.

The shuttle, now I won't get the chance to fly t I thought maybe I

would be able to sort it out as co- pilot. Sorry to leave you on a sad

note. That is almost all for tonight.

Remember we are standing by for your tweets. My thanks to Sarah

Churchwell, Paul Morley, Natalie Haynes and Matthew Sweet, we take a

short break until the Edinburgh Festival next month, but it is

entertainment galore on The Culture Show on Wednesday at 7.00 BBC Two.

We leave you with Frank Turner from the album Peggy Sings the Blue,

# Peggy came to me # In my sleep

# In the middle of the night # On a Friday night last week

# She whispered hot shot # Now don't be scared

# Got me through words of wisdom # I came back to share

# She said # It doesn't matter where you come

from # It matters where you go

# I said Peggy won't you stay here for a while

# We could drink whiskey # We could play cards

# We could get wild # She said we'll play poker

# Play for keeps # I only play angels

# They never let me cheat # She said

# It doesn't matter where you come from

# It matters where you go # No-one gets remembered

# In this senseless life # For the things they didn't do

# You could say you had a good start

# You could say I had class # You could say I was born beneath

# The ceiling made of glass # I always kept an open house

# And always do right by my friends # And when I got to St Peter's gate

# I told the keeper # I'm not the one

# Who needs to make amends # Because better times are coming

# Bad times ahead # No-one gets remembered

# My death is # To rest too long in # Peggy said

# It doesn't matter where you come from

# It matters where you go # No-one gets remembered