hamnet...

Moira and I went along to the Watershed yesterday to see Chloé Zhao’s film based on Maggie O’Farrell’s extraordinary, brilliant book (which I read 5 years ago) – which reimagines the agonising loss of a child as the source of Hamlet’s grand stage drama. It locates the play’s beginning in the imagined anguish of Shakespeare and his wife, Anne/Agnes Hathaway, at the death of their son Hamnet at the age of 11 in 1596 (apparently, there’s linguistic evidence that the two names could be used interchangeably) a few years before the play’s first performance - and long before Shakespeare had started to become recognised in London for his writing. It’s an incredibly painful and stark reminder of a time when disease was rife and childhood death common.
The performances of Paul Mescal (Will) and Jessie Buckley (Agnes) are quite, quite brilliant … and also the performances of their children (played by Jacobi Jupe, Olivia Lines and Bodhi Rae Breathnach) were beautifully impressive – as was the cinematography by Łukasz Żal and the score by Max Richter.
After having read O’Farrell’s magnificent book, there was part of me that didn’t want to see the film on the basis that it wouldn’t do the book justice… but I needn’t have worried, it’s been wonderfully adapted (O’Farrell and Zhao were screenplay co-writers).
I cried… I think you might cry too.
Just go and see it… you MUST. 

january 2026 books…

Smart-Aleck Kill (Raymond Chandler): Four short(ish), interconnected crime stories, first published in 1958, involving a private detective hired by a film studio to handle a blackmail threat against a director. Needless to say, it’s all very complicated… and involves drugs, mobsters, hit-squads and shoot-outs. Frankly, I was never really a lover of Chandler’s books and this merely confirmed my opinion. Sorry.
The Blank Wall (Elisabeth Sanxay Holding): First published in 1947, the novel portrays the everyday realities of the American home front (with all its rationing and shortages) through the eyes of Lucia Holley – a mother of two in New York with a husband serving in the Navy and a father also part of the household. She writes letters to her husband at war and generally manages all the domestic issues – but there are also darker, unexpected challenges that arise when she finds herself unexpectedly entangled in a web of criminal activity. Fiercely protective of her family, she is forced to navigate deception and danger to protect them and their reputations. The result is a compelling psychological thriller that is both gripping and unsettling. A tense start to the New Year!
The Heart Of A Goof (PG Wodehouse): First published in 1926 (100 years ago!), in Wodehouse’s inimitable style, this is a book about golf (the book’s cover defines ‘Goof’ as “one of those unfortunate beings who have permitted golf into their souls, like some malignant growth”!). It consists of a “nine-hole course of stories” told (hilariously) by the “Oldest Member” – who, these days, seems to spend all his time sitting a comfy chair in the clubhouse and grabbing hold of passing club members and insisting (against their better judgement) on recounting tales of days gone by and of “big two-fisted he-men floundering around (golf courses) in three figures”* (ie. failing to score below 100). As one would expect, it’s ridiculously dated and yet still very, very funny. A great escape from the idiocy of the present world in which we live.
The End We Start From (Megan Hunter): This is our latest Storysmith bookgroup choice (‘a book less than 200 pages long’ – after the previous 600+). First published in 2017 (and a mere 127 pages long), this futuristic fable tells of a woman who gives birth as flood waters close over London. Days later, they’re forced to leave home in search of safety… the long journey north will prove dangerous… It reminded me of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’. I started reading it on the day red alert weather warnings were being issued in the UK and with “tens of thousands without power” (not to mention the dystopian world of Mr Trump!). It’s a powerful, disturbing, thought-provoking and utterly believable book… and I loved its slender, poetic composition. One of those haunting books that stay with you long after you’ve finished it.
Let Me Be The Kind Who Weeps (Jon Swales): Jon Swales is an ordained Priest in the Church of England. He heads up Lighthouse – described as a “fresh expression of church for adults battered and bruised by the storms of life”. I’ve been using this book as part of my daily early morning reflections (and reading his poems out loud to myself!). I found his prose quite moving at times – especially his poems “from the margins” about his experiences with “those battered and bruised by the storms of life”. My own faith journey continues to run its somewhat disenchanted course, but I found this book both rewarding and, in many ways, encouraging.