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8/19/2019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/theindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 1/40 Can it really  be years? THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE .. A Shakespeare Special Starring Joan Bakewell, Samantha Bond, Tim Key, Oscar Quine and Thea Lenarduzzi Plus: Grace Dent on her mother, the internet refusenik
Transcript
Page 1: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Can itreally

be 983092983088983088years

THEINDEPENDENTMAGAZINE

983088983093983088983091983090983088983089983094

A Shakespeare SpecialStarring Joan Bakewell

Samantha Bond Tim KeyOscar Quine andThea Lenarduzzi

Plus Grace Dent onher mother the

internet refusenik

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983093

Te Front Pages

Meet my mother the internetrefusenik And donrsquot tell me

shersquos got things wrong

THE PRIME OF LIFE

6pm to ri1047298e through the Whoops reduc-

tions on fresh cream cakes Then thereare her weeks in Blackpool playing

dodge-the-mobility-scooter which shebooks from the back of the local paperNo lastminutecom for my mother

So therersquos no point in me littering

social media on Mothering Sunday withphotos of her cuddling me as a podgytwo-year-old as is the modern way

Motherrsquos Day on Instagram is a newfeast day for the gushingly sentimental

and showy A certain oneupmanshipsets in by around 11am You thought I was great people seem to be saying butwait herersquos my mother Itrsquos remarkable

how many peoplersquos mothers ndash accord-ing to Instagram ndash were a heady mix

of Germaine Greer Mother Theresaand Delia Smith or at the very least the

local answer to Brigitte Bardot I save myenergies and my battery life My mother

wouldnrsquot see the photos anywayAnd even if Margaret at No 22 ndash who

has a Dell laptop in order to Skype her

kids in Australia ndash showed my mother myInstagram love-fest she would merely

wonder why Irsquod put a photo of me andher at the 1975 Farnborough Airshow

on to the World Wide Web for any oldweirdo to gawp at Face it if you want to

make women like my mother happy onMotherrsquos Day forget the internet You

get on a train You leave your phone andyour laptop behind You show up and eat

fruit scones with her in person Itrsquos likea text message but better

As my life has gone fully digital andIrsquove become welded to 4G and superfast

wi-1047297 my motherrsquos demands have startedto seem thoroughly unreasonable Shewants me to ring her on a landline at a

prearranged time and spend 45 minuteschatting What ndash on my blistering impor-

tant schedule She wants me to schlepto a Clintons and 1047297nd an actual birthday

card with a ldquonice verserdquo in it and thenwrite inside the card ndash with a pen ndash and

then 1047297nd a stamp and a postbox Whatare we Amish

She wants me to either ldquobe at workrdquo orldquonot be at workrdquo and she doesnrsquot want

me to be in a permanent hinterlandreplying to Twitter direct messages at

quarter past midnight and again at 715in the morning She wants me to see the

whites of my brothersrsquo eyes and not justtheir updates on Facebook She is un-swerving in these opinions She is the

last standing guard of internet refuseniksShe annoys me but I love her And a quiet

voice in my soul knows that shersquos rightand that our real-life time is precious I

should send her a text and tell her this IfIrsquom lucky she might read it by June microgracedent

My mother has never used the

internet Not once Not ever Sheis not available on Facebook Twitter or

Instagram You cannot drop her a quicktext You can try but the mobile phone

that we ndash her children ndash thrust upon herto use in case of emergency lives in the

glove compartment of her Volvo next toa Daniel OrsquoDonnell CD its battery tepid

She has a BT landline with no answermachine and she moans that Irsquom never

in touch It makes me incandescentldquoYou are 79 years oldrdquo I shouted at her

the other week ldquoYoursquore out in your car

every day and yoursquore only just over yourcataract operation Do you not think I

worryrdquo It is part of the cycle of life thatone day you will 1047297nd yourself haranguing

your OAP parents in exactly the samevoice with which they once harangued

you to remember your PE kitldquoIf you donrsquot switch on the phone

how can I keep track of where you arerdquo Ishouted ldquoWell Irsquom either here or Irsquom in

Morrisonsrdquo she said pausing to thinkldquoOr Irsquom down Aztec Soft Play with our

Lola Or Irsquom in Blackpoolrdquo She foldedher arms to indicate her interest in the

discussion ending ldquoWhat morerdquo shesaid ldquodo you need to knowrdquo And at thispoint I gave up my lecture on safety

security and the innate usefulness ofmodern social media

But why would anyone she said wantto carry on like this in public She spoke

with some experience of public embar-rassment In 1957 she was photographed

screaming outside a Frankie Vaughan

concert and the picture was published

in the Cumberland News without herconsent My mother remains to this

day completely livid about itMy motherrsquos off-line presence puts

something of a distance between usShe comes from a time before Facebook

check-ins and Twitter geo-tags Shehas never known the glory of 386 new

updates glowing on her WhatsApp iconShersquos never hate-followed a frenemy on

Instagram just for the sadistic drip-dripthrill Shersquos never ghosted a friend whois past their sell-by date Shersquos never

trolled then regretted trolling She doesnot suffer power-noia or Tumblr-related

FOMO She is perfectly equipped brain-wise to enter the 21st century but shersquos

had a think and shersquos not that fussedBesides venturing forth would get

in the way of her punishing schedule ofwatching episodes of Homes Under the Hammer followed by a trip to Asda at

Grace Dent

I L L U S T R A T I O N B

Y P I N G Z

H U

partpartShe has never

known the glory of 386new updates

glowing on her

WhatsAppicon

sumsum

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983095

Te Front Pages

103

The most famous monument to

Admiral Horatio Nelson is the 169ftcolumn erected in Londonrsquos Trafalgar

Square in 1840 but Dublin had its owncolumn (Nelsonrsquos Pillar) more than 30

years earlier Slightly shorter but noless imposing it stood in the middle of

OrsquoConnell Street and drew its fair shareof controversy particularly after the 1916Easter Rising In 1938 a failed attempt

was made by Irish nationalists to blowit up in 1966 50 years ago this week

another attempt succeededldquoOperation Humpty Dumptyrdquo left

Nelsonrsquos Pillar some 50ft shorter andtwo days later what was left of the

monument was demolished with Nel-son himself placed in a Dublin Corpora-

tion lockup on Clanbrassil Street Buthe didnrsquot stay there for long

Suffused with the spirit of rag week agroup of students at the National College

of Art and Design liberated Nelsonrsquoshead and after sending a few pounds to

the Dublin Corporation to pay for thedamage theyrsquod caused set about usingit to pay off Student Union debts

983089

Which Best PictureOscar winner wassubtitled lsquoor (The

Unexpected Virtueof Ignorance)rsquo

983090

Jackspeak is slangused by whom

983091

Which bandrsquos 1047297rstgig was at

St Martinrsquos Collegein London on

6 November 1975 983092

How was Muslimminister el-HajjMalik el-Shabazzmurdered in 1965

better known 983093

Which item ofclothing drewgasps at Louis

Reacuteardrsquos 1946 Parisfashion show

983094

Which Londonstructure

completed in 1964did not for some

decades appear onOrdnance Survey

maps for securityreasons 983095

Kolven(Netherlands)Chole (Franceand Belgium)

Chuiwan (China)ndash all precursors of

which sport

983096

Which American(1867-1959)

declared himselflsquothe greatest living

architectrsquo

983097

Which aidorganisation was

formed in 1971from two bodies

one created inresponse to theBiafran war the

other to a cyclonein Bangladesh

983089

Whatrsquos the timeon the Doomsday

Clock kept bylsquoBulletin of the

Atomic Scientistsrsquoas of January 2015

(Answers page 38)

TheQuiz

By Chris Maume

RHODRI MARSDENrsquoS

INTERESTING OBJECTS

The headof Nelsonrsquos

Pillar

THE NOVEL CURE

Literary prescriptions formodern ailments

By Ella Berthoud andSusan Elderkin bibliotherapists

at the School of Lifethenovelcurecom

Ailment Wanting to savethe planet

Cure Te Monkey WrenchGang by Edward Abbey

Though we all want to save

the planet recycling the

wage his own type of war Hersquos

joined by a motley crew of fel-low saboteurs ndash a feminist

an outcast Mormon a doc-tor who burns billboards in

his downtime Together theyform the Monkey Wrench

Gang committed to puttingspanners ndash literally ndash into the

developersrsquo machines cuttingwires pouring corn syrup into

fuel tanks and choking en-gines with sand Their goal isto bring down the monstrous

Glen Canyon Dam and bringback the fragile gorges 1047298ooded

by Lake Powell behind itFull of explosions and en-

joyable anarchy there is acertain comic-strip vibe to

this novel which makes the

monkey wrenchersrsquo antics

not quite as shocking as theymight be and also Abbeyrsquos

characters are scrupulousabout not harming anyone

Itrsquos all about the strength offeeling behind the actions

What gives the novel itspower is Abbeyrsquos palpable love

for the natural world ndash fromthe Indian ricegrass and prick-

ly pear by the roadside to thesun1047297red outcrops of red rockFor Hayduke these are places

ldquoso beautiful they can make agrown man break down and

weeprdquo The novel reminds usthat wilderness is ldquonot a luxury

but a necessity of the humanspiritrdquo and if we destroy it we

also destroy ourselves micro

Sunday paper and composting

our coffee granules is reallylittle more than a drop in the

(warming) ocean What wouldmotivate us to take the next

step ndash to offset our CO2 emis-sions each year or even better

persuade a global corporationor two to follow suit

Edward Abbeyrsquos 1975 callto direct action inspired acts

of eco-activism in its day andremains one of the most pas-sionate pleas in literature to

protect our wild placesWhen Vietnam vet George

Washington Hayduke III re-turns from the war to find

bulldozers tearing into hisbeloved stretch of the US

south-west he decides to

when Gray arrived on OrsquoConnell Street

with the headAfter asking the crowd if anyone could

accept it on behalf of the Corporation anofficial eventually came forward ldquoAfter

all the moaningrdquo Gray told the press ldquonoone seemed to want it when we brought

it backrdquo Today the head sits quietly inthe Dublin City Library microrhodri

Over the next six months the head

went on an unusual journey It wasphotographed on Killiney beach as part

of a fashion shoot for the Evening Pressappeared on stage with the Dublin-

ers and eventually ended up in Lon-don where the antiques dealer Benny

Gray paid the students pound200 a monthto display it in his shop window It1047297nally returned to Dublin that September

Te remains of Nelsonrsquos Pillar in OrsquoConnell Street Dublin

T R I N I T Y M I R R O R A L

A M Y

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983097

Your new book Do It Like A Woman

includes a female fighter pilot in Afghanistan a Chilean revolutionaryand Pussy Riot among others Did anyof the women in the book jump out andmake you think ldquoyeah you rockrdquoFelicity Aston is probably the one I wasmost blown away by Her research stint

in the Arctic was such an incredible featof endurance for anyone man or woman

Women are often framed culturally asbeing incapable of doing things for our-

selves Also it was psychologically sochallenging having to avoid crevasses

andhellip Irsquom really sorry Irsquom struggling with

words today I went to a gig last night andmy brainrsquos just not on it apparentlyGood gigIt was a friend of mine I ended up drinkinga lot of vodka diet cokes and itrsquos just not

working out well for me today Well on we shall soldier The book hasbeen compared to Sheryl Sandbergrsquos

Lean In but that broadly encouragedwomen to play men by their own rules

What do you make of that ideaFirst I think that Sandbergrsquos book hasbeen unfairly represented in many places

But one of the reasons I chose that title

for my book was to counter the idea thatwomen need to do things like men There

is a way that men are supposed to behaveand a way that women are supposed tobehave which is seen as inferior But

actually many female attributes like

being caring or having emotions aregood positive humanhellip God I canrsquot speaktoday Whatrsquos the word Irsquom looking for

Things that humans haveFaculties CapabilitiesYeah maybe that Human capabilities Idonrsquot know Anyway sohellip fuck Irsquove lost

the thread of what I was saying again Irsquomso sorry this is a car crash

Haha no itrsquos not reallyI think the problem is your questions are

really hard I thought yoursquod ask easy thingslike ldquowhat do you have for breakfastrdquo and

ldquowhorsquos your favourite dogrdquoMoving on whorsquos your favourite dog

Ahaha obviously my dog Poppy Shersquossitting on me right now Shersquos a mongrelKing Charles jack russell chihuahua

Due to your dadrsquos work in the retailindustry you grew up all over the worldHow do you think that shaped youGrowing up I didnrsquot enjoy it I didnrsquot like

having to leave school every three yearsand having to make new friends But look-

ing back I think it was incredibly goodtraining You constantly have to walk into

rooms where you donrsquot know anyone Ithink also itrsquoshellip [long sigh] Irsquove forgotten

what I was going to say Is this the worstinterview yoursquove ever done

No no Irsquom enjoying it Yoursquove becomea public face of feminism Could youhave predicted that 10 years agoIf I went back 10 years I probably wouldhave thought the day before doing an

interview donrsquot go out and get absolutelysmashed But no I de1047297nitely did not plan

any of this Irsquom terrible at planning I tendto do things on emotion and instinct If

I start a campaign itrsquos not because Irsquovethought carefully about it Itrsquos just some-

thing thatrsquos pissed me offDo you feel you had the last laugh on

your Twitter abusers as it ultimatelygranted you a bigger platform

Itrsquos deliciously ironic in that they weretrying to silence me and they ended

up giving me a bigger voice So yeahthanks guys who tried to shut me up by

threatening to rape me ndash that didnrsquot reallywork out very well for you did itSo what do you have for breakfastSeriously I was joking Well thismorning the only thing that got me

out of bed was thinking about having anultimate halloumi roll at my local cafeacute I

had that and a massive cappuccino Itrsquosnot what I have every morning That

would be extravagant wouldnrsquot it micro

BIOGRAPHY

Born in BrazilCaroline Criado-Perez OBE

983091983089 is a Britishfeminist activistand writer who

campaigns amongother things to

improve womenrsquosrepresentation in

the media In 983090983089983091after challenging

the Bank ofEnglandrsquos decisionto replace the only

woman picturedon banknotes

Elizabeth Fry witha man she foundherself subject to

numerous rape anddeath threats onTwitter Her newbook lsquoDo It LikeA Womanhellip and

Change the Worldrsquois published by

Portobello pricedpound983096983097983097

partpart Irsquom terribleat planning

I do things onemotion and

instinct

sumsum

Caroline

Criado-PerezThe campaigner on her peripatetic childhood whywomen donrsquot need to do things like men and how she wishes shersquod taken it a bit easier last night

INTERVIEW BY OSCAR QUINE

PORTRAIT BY CLARE HEWITT

THE CONVERSATION

The Front Pages

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983089983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

WilliamShakespeare

died on 23 April 1616 Four centuries

on hisunderstandingof what it means

to be human

has never beenmore importantto the world

In this special

issue wecelebratehis genius

Professor Ewan Fernie gves a seminar at the Shakespeare Institu

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

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bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

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only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3240

Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

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Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

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year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

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When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

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~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

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ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

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Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

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Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

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ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

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As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

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very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

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Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

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1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Page 2: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 240

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 340

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 440

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 540

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983093

Te Front Pages

Meet my mother the internetrefusenik And donrsquot tell me

shersquos got things wrong

THE PRIME OF LIFE

6pm to ri1047298e through the Whoops reduc-

tions on fresh cream cakes Then thereare her weeks in Blackpool playing

dodge-the-mobility-scooter which shebooks from the back of the local paperNo lastminutecom for my mother

So therersquos no point in me littering

social media on Mothering Sunday withphotos of her cuddling me as a podgytwo-year-old as is the modern way

Motherrsquos Day on Instagram is a newfeast day for the gushingly sentimental

and showy A certain oneupmanshipsets in by around 11am You thought I was great people seem to be saying butwait herersquos my mother Itrsquos remarkable

how many peoplersquos mothers ndash accord-ing to Instagram ndash were a heady mix

of Germaine Greer Mother Theresaand Delia Smith or at the very least the

local answer to Brigitte Bardot I save myenergies and my battery life My mother

wouldnrsquot see the photos anywayAnd even if Margaret at No 22 ndash who

has a Dell laptop in order to Skype her

kids in Australia ndash showed my mother myInstagram love-fest she would merely

wonder why Irsquod put a photo of me andher at the 1975 Farnborough Airshow

on to the World Wide Web for any oldweirdo to gawp at Face it if you want to

make women like my mother happy onMotherrsquos Day forget the internet You

get on a train You leave your phone andyour laptop behind You show up and eat

fruit scones with her in person Itrsquos likea text message but better

As my life has gone fully digital andIrsquove become welded to 4G and superfast

wi-1047297 my motherrsquos demands have startedto seem thoroughly unreasonable Shewants me to ring her on a landline at a

prearranged time and spend 45 minuteschatting What ndash on my blistering impor-

tant schedule She wants me to schlepto a Clintons and 1047297nd an actual birthday

card with a ldquonice verserdquo in it and thenwrite inside the card ndash with a pen ndash and

then 1047297nd a stamp and a postbox Whatare we Amish

She wants me to either ldquobe at workrdquo orldquonot be at workrdquo and she doesnrsquot want

me to be in a permanent hinterlandreplying to Twitter direct messages at

quarter past midnight and again at 715in the morning She wants me to see the

whites of my brothersrsquo eyes and not justtheir updates on Facebook She is un-swerving in these opinions She is the

last standing guard of internet refuseniksShe annoys me but I love her And a quiet

voice in my soul knows that shersquos rightand that our real-life time is precious I

should send her a text and tell her this IfIrsquom lucky she might read it by June microgracedent

My mother has never used the

internet Not once Not ever Sheis not available on Facebook Twitter or

Instagram You cannot drop her a quicktext You can try but the mobile phone

that we ndash her children ndash thrust upon herto use in case of emergency lives in the

glove compartment of her Volvo next toa Daniel OrsquoDonnell CD its battery tepid

She has a BT landline with no answermachine and she moans that Irsquom never

in touch It makes me incandescentldquoYou are 79 years oldrdquo I shouted at her

the other week ldquoYoursquore out in your car

every day and yoursquore only just over yourcataract operation Do you not think I

worryrdquo It is part of the cycle of life thatone day you will 1047297nd yourself haranguing

your OAP parents in exactly the samevoice with which they once harangued

you to remember your PE kitldquoIf you donrsquot switch on the phone

how can I keep track of where you arerdquo Ishouted ldquoWell Irsquom either here or Irsquom in

Morrisonsrdquo she said pausing to thinkldquoOr Irsquom down Aztec Soft Play with our

Lola Or Irsquom in Blackpoolrdquo She foldedher arms to indicate her interest in the

discussion ending ldquoWhat morerdquo shesaid ldquodo you need to knowrdquo And at thispoint I gave up my lecture on safety

security and the innate usefulness ofmodern social media

But why would anyone she said wantto carry on like this in public She spoke

with some experience of public embar-rassment In 1957 she was photographed

screaming outside a Frankie Vaughan

concert and the picture was published

in the Cumberland News without herconsent My mother remains to this

day completely livid about itMy motherrsquos off-line presence puts

something of a distance between usShe comes from a time before Facebook

check-ins and Twitter geo-tags Shehas never known the glory of 386 new

updates glowing on her WhatsApp iconShersquos never hate-followed a frenemy on

Instagram just for the sadistic drip-dripthrill Shersquos never ghosted a friend whois past their sell-by date Shersquos never

trolled then regretted trolling She doesnot suffer power-noia or Tumblr-related

FOMO She is perfectly equipped brain-wise to enter the 21st century but shersquos

had a think and shersquos not that fussedBesides venturing forth would get

in the way of her punishing schedule ofwatching episodes of Homes Under the Hammer followed by a trip to Asda at

Grace Dent

I L L U S T R A T I O N B

Y P I N G Z

H U

partpartShe has never

known the glory of 386new updates

glowing on her

WhatsAppicon

sumsum

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983095

Te Front Pages

103

The most famous monument to

Admiral Horatio Nelson is the 169ftcolumn erected in Londonrsquos Trafalgar

Square in 1840 but Dublin had its owncolumn (Nelsonrsquos Pillar) more than 30

years earlier Slightly shorter but noless imposing it stood in the middle of

OrsquoConnell Street and drew its fair shareof controversy particularly after the 1916Easter Rising In 1938 a failed attempt

was made by Irish nationalists to blowit up in 1966 50 years ago this week

another attempt succeededldquoOperation Humpty Dumptyrdquo left

Nelsonrsquos Pillar some 50ft shorter andtwo days later what was left of the

monument was demolished with Nel-son himself placed in a Dublin Corpora-

tion lockup on Clanbrassil Street Buthe didnrsquot stay there for long

Suffused with the spirit of rag week agroup of students at the National College

of Art and Design liberated Nelsonrsquoshead and after sending a few pounds to

the Dublin Corporation to pay for thedamage theyrsquod caused set about usingit to pay off Student Union debts

983089

Which Best PictureOscar winner wassubtitled lsquoor (The

Unexpected Virtueof Ignorance)rsquo

983090

Jackspeak is slangused by whom

983091

Which bandrsquos 1047297rstgig was at

St Martinrsquos Collegein London on

6 November 1975 983092

How was Muslimminister el-HajjMalik el-Shabazzmurdered in 1965

better known 983093

Which item ofclothing drewgasps at Louis

Reacuteardrsquos 1946 Parisfashion show

983094

Which Londonstructure

completed in 1964did not for some

decades appear onOrdnance Survey

maps for securityreasons 983095

Kolven(Netherlands)Chole (Franceand Belgium)

Chuiwan (China)ndash all precursors of

which sport

983096

Which American(1867-1959)

declared himselflsquothe greatest living

architectrsquo

983097

Which aidorganisation was

formed in 1971from two bodies

one created inresponse to theBiafran war the

other to a cyclonein Bangladesh

983089

Whatrsquos the timeon the Doomsday

Clock kept bylsquoBulletin of the

Atomic Scientistsrsquoas of January 2015

(Answers page 38)

TheQuiz

By Chris Maume

RHODRI MARSDENrsquoS

INTERESTING OBJECTS

The headof Nelsonrsquos

Pillar

THE NOVEL CURE

Literary prescriptions formodern ailments

By Ella Berthoud andSusan Elderkin bibliotherapists

at the School of Lifethenovelcurecom

Ailment Wanting to savethe planet

Cure Te Monkey WrenchGang by Edward Abbey

Though we all want to save

the planet recycling the

wage his own type of war Hersquos

joined by a motley crew of fel-low saboteurs ndash a feminist

an outcast Mormon a doc-tor who burns billboards in

his downtime Together theyform the Monkey Wrench

Gang committed to puttingspanners ndash literally ndash into the

developersrsquo machines cuttingwires pouring corn syrup into

fuel tanks and choking en-gines with sand Their goal isto bring down the monstrous

Glen Canyon Dam and bringback the fragile gorges 1047298ooded

by Lake Powell behind itFull of explosions and en-

joyable anarchy there is acertain comic-strip vibe to

this novel which makes the

monkey wrenchersrsquo antics

not quite as shocking as theymight be and also Abbeyrsquos

characters are scrupulousabout not harming anyone

Itrsquos all about the strength offeeling behind the actions

What gives the novel itspower is Abbeyrsquos palpable love

for the natural world ndash fromthe Indian ricegrass and prick-

ly pear by the roadside to thesun1047297red outcrops of red rockFor Hayduke these are places

ldquoso beautiful they can make agrown man break down and

weeprdquo The novel reminds usthat wilderness is ldquonot a luxury

but a necessity of the humanspiritrdquo and if we destroy it we

also destroy ourselves micro

Sunday paper and composting

our coffee granules is reallylittle more than a drop in the

(warming) ocean What wouldmotivate us to take the next

step ndash to offset our CO2 emis-sions each year or even better

persuade a global corporationor two to follow suit

Edward Abbeyrsquos 1975 callto direct action inspired acts

of eco-activism in its day andremains one of the most pas-sionate pleas in literature to

protect our wild placesWhen Vietnam vet George

Washington Hayduke III re-turns from the war to find

bulldozers tearing into hisbeloved stretch of the US

south-west he decides to

when Gray arrived on OrsquoConnell Street

with the headAfter asking the crowd if anyone could

accept it on behalf of the Corporation anofficial eventually came forward ldquoAfter

all the moaningrdquo Gray told the press ldquonoone seemed to want it when we brought

it backrdquo Today the head sits quietly inthe Dublin City Library microrhodri

Over the next six months the head

went on an unusual journey It wasphotographed on Killiney beach as part

of a fashion shoot for the Evening Pressappeared on stage with the Dublin-

ers and eventually ended up in Lon-don where the antiques dealer Benny

Gray paid the students pound200 a monthto display it in his shop window It1047297nally returned to Dublin that September

Te remains of Nelsonrsquos Pillar in OrsquoConnell Street Dublin

T R I N I T Y M I R R O R A L

A M Y

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983097

Your new book Do It Like A Woman

includes a female fighter pilot in Afghanistan a Chilean revolutionaryand Pussy Riot among others Did anyof the women in the book jump out andmake you think ldquoyeah you rockrdquoFelicity Aston is probably the one I wasmost blown away by Her research stint

in the Arctic was such an incredible featof endurance for anyone man or woman

Women are often framed culturally asbeing incapable of doing things for our-

selves Also it was psychologically sochallenging having to avoid crevasses

andhellip Irsquom really sorry Irsquom struggling with

words today I went to a gig last night andmy brainrsquos just not on it apparentlyGood gigIt was a friend of mine I ended up drinkinga lot of vodka diet cokes and itrsquos just not

working out well for me today Well on we shall soldier The book hasbeen compared to Sheryl Sandbergrsquos

Lean In but that broadly encouragedwomen to play men by their own rules

What do you make of that ideaFirst I think that Sandbergrsquos book hasbeen unfairly represented in many places

But one of the reasons I chose that title

for my book was to counter the idea thatwomen need to do things like men There

is a way that men are supposed to behaveand a way that women are supposed tobehave which is seen as inferior But

actually many female attributes like

being caring or having emotions aregood positive humanhellip God I canrsquot speaktoday Whatrsquos the word Irsquom looking for

Things that humans haveFaculties CapabilitiesYeah maybe that Human capabilities Idonrsquot know Anyway sohellip fuck Irsquove lost

the thread of what I was saying again Irsquomso sorry this is a car crash

Haha no itrsquos not reallyI think the problem is your questions are

really hard I thought yoursquod ask easy thingslike ldquowhat do you have for breakfastrdquo and

ldquowhorsquos your favourite dogrdquoMoving on whorsquos your favourite dog

Ahaha obviously my dog Poppy Shersquossitting on me right now Shersquos a mongrelKing Charles jack russell chihuahua

Due to your dadrsquos work in the retailindustry you grew up all over the worldHow do you think that shaped youGrowing up I didnrsquot enjoy it I didnrsquot like

having to leave school every three yearsand having to make new friends But look-

ing back I think it was incredibly goodtraining You constantly have to walk into

rooms where you donrsquot know anyone Ithink also itrsquoshellip [long sigh] Irsquove forgotten

what I was going to say Is this the worstinterview yoursquove ever done

No no Irsquom enjoying it Yoursquove becomea public face of feminism Could youhave predicted that 10 years agoIf I went back 10 years I probably wouldhave thought the day before doing an

interview donrsquot go out and get absolutelysmashed But no I de1047297nitely did not plan

any of this Irsquom terrible at planning I tendto do things on emotion and instinct If

I start a campaign itrsquos not because Irsquovethought carefully about it Itrsquos just some-

thing thatrsquos pissed me offDo you feel you had the last laugh on

your Twitter abusers as it ultimatelygranted you a bigger platform

Itrsquos deliciously ironic in that they weretrying to silence me and they ended

up giving me a bigger voice So yeahthanks guys who tried to shut me up by

threatening to rape me ndash that didnrsquot reallywork out very well for you did itSo what do you have for breakfastSeriously I was joking Well thismorning the only thing that got me

out of bed was thinking about having anultimate halloumi roll at my local cafeacute I

had that and a massive cappuccino Itrsquosnot what I have every morning That

would be extravagant wouldnrsquot it micro

BIOGRAPHY

Born in BrazilCaroline Criado-Perez OBE

983091983089 is a Britishfeminist activistand writer who

campaigns amongother things to

improve womenrsquosrepresentation in

the media In 983090983089983091after challenging

the Bank ofEnglandrsquos decisionto replace the only

woman picturedon banknotes

Elizabeth Fry witha man she foundherself subject to

numerous rape anddeath threats onTwitter Her newbook lsquoDo It LikeA Womanhellip and

Change the Worldrsquois published by

Portobello pricedpound983096983097983097

partpart Irsquom terribleat planning

I do things onemotion and

instinct

sumsum

Caroline

Criado-PerezThe campaigner on her peripatetic childhood whywomen donrsquot need to do things like men and how she wishes shersquod taken it a bit easier last night

INTERVIEW BY OSCAR QUINE

PORTRAIT BY CLARE HEWITT

THE CONVERSATION

The Front Pages

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983089983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

WilliamShakespeare

died on 23 April 1616 Four centuries

on hisunderstandingof what it means

to be human

has never beenmore importantto the world

In this special

issue wecelebratehis genius

Professor Ewan Fernie gves a seminar at the Shakespeare Institu

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2040

983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

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Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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Choose from

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Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3440

Save water energy and

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Jetstorm can save

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Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

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When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

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~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

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ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

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Fast and easy universal

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

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96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

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Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

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L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

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bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

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bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

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Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 3: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 340

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983093

Te Front Pages

Meet my mother the internetrefusenik And donrsquot tell me

shersquos got things wrong

THE PRIME OF LIFE

6pm to ri1047298e through the Whoops reduc-

tions on fresh cream cakes Then thereare her weeks in Blackpool playing

dodge-the-mobility-scooter which shebooks from the back of the local paperNo lastminutecom for my mother

So therersquos no point in me littering

social media on Mothering Sunday withphotos of her cuddling me as a podgytwo-year-old as is the modern way

Motherrsquos Day on Instagram is a newfeast day for the gushingly sentimental

and showy A certain oneupmanshipsets in by around 11am You thought I was great people seem to be saying butwait herersquos my mother Itrsquos remarkable

how many peoplersquos mothers ndash accord-ing to Instagram ndash were a heady mix

of Germaine Greer Mother Theresaand Delia Smith or at the very least the

local answer to Brigitte Bardot I save myenergies and my battery life My mother

wouldnrsquot see the photos anywayAnd even if Margaret at No 22 ndash who

has a Dell laptop in order to Skype her

kids in Australia ndash showed my mother myInstagram love-fest she would merely

wonder why Irsquod put a photo of me andher at the 1975 Farnborough Airshow

on to the World Wide Web for any oldweirdo to gawp at Face it if you want to

make women like my mother happy onMotherrsquos Day forget the internet You

get on a train You leave your phone andyour laptop behind You show up and eat

fruit scones with her in person Itrsquos likea text message but better

As my life has gone fully digital andIrsquove become welded to 4G and superfast

wi-1047297 my motherrsquos demands have startedto seem thoroughly unreasonable Shewants me to ring her on a landline at a

prearranged time and spend 45 minuteschatting What ndash on my blistering impor-

tant schedule She wants me to schlepto a Clintons and 1047297nd an actual birthday

card with a ldquonice verserdquo in it and thenwrite inside the card ndash with a pen ndash and

then 1047297nd a stamp and a postbox Whatare we Amish

She wants me to either ldquobe at workrdquo orldquonot be at workrdquo and she doesnrsquot want

me to be in a permanent hinterlandreplying to Twitter direct messages at

quarter past midnight and again at 715in the morning She wants me to see the

whites of my brothersrsquo eyes and not justtheir updates on Facebook She is un-swerving in these opinions She is the

last standing guard of internet refuseniksShe annoys me but I love her And a quiet

voice in my soul knows that shersquos rightand that our real-life time is precious I

should send her a text and tell her this IfIrsquom lucky she might read it by June microgracedent

My mother has never used the

internet Not once Not ever Sheis not available on Facebook Twitter or

Instagram You cannot drop her a quicktext You can try but the mobile phone

that we ndash her children ndash thrust upon herto use in case of emergency lives in the

glove compartment of her Volvo next toa Daniel OrsquoDonnell CD its battery tepid

She has a BT landline with no answermachine and she moans that Irsquom never

in touch It makes me incandescentldquoYou are 79 years oldrdquo I shouted at her

the other week ldquoYoursquore out in your car

every day and yoursquore only just over yourcataract operation Do you not think I

worryrdquo It is part of the cycle of life thatone day you will 1047297nd yourself haranguing

your OAP parents in exactly the samevoice with which they once harangued

you to remember your PE kitldquoIf you donrsquot switch on the phone

how can I keep track of where you arerdquo Ishouted ldquoWell Irsquom either here or Irsquom in

Morrisonsrdquo she said pausing to thinkldquoOr Irsquom down Aztec Soft Play with our

Lola Or Irsquom in Blackpoolrdquo She foldedher arms to indicate her interest in the

discussion ending ldquoWhat morerdquo shesaid ldquodo you need to knowrdquo And at thispoint I gave up my lecture on safety

security and the innate usefulness ofmodern social media

But why would anyone she said wantto carry on like this in public She spoke

with some experience of public embar-rassment In 1957 she was photographed

screaming outside a Frankie Vaughan

concert and the picture was published

in the Cumberland News without herconsent My mother remains to this

day completely livid about itMy motherrsquos off-line presence puts

something of a distance between usShe comes from a time before Facebook

check-ins and Twitter geo-tags Shehas never known the glory of 386 new

updates glowing on her WhatsApp iconShersquos never hate-followed a frenemy on

Instagram just for the sadistic drip-dripthrill Shersquos never ghosted a friend whois past their sell-by date Shersquos never

trolled then regretted trolling She doesnot suffer power-noia or Tumblr-related

FOMO She is perfectly equipped brain-wise to enter the 21st century but shersquos

had a think and shersquos not that fussedBesides venturing forth would get

in the way of her punishing schedule ofwatching episodes of Homes Under the Hammer followed by a trip to Asda at

Grace Dent

I L L U S T R A T I O N B

Y P I N G Z

H U

partpartShe has never

known the glory of 386new updates

glowing on her

WhatsAppicon

sumsum

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 640

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983095

Te Front Pages

103

The most famous monument to

Admiral Horatio Nelson is the 169ftcolumn erected in Londonrsquos Trafalgar

Square in 1840 but Dublin had its owncolumn (Nelsonrsquos Pillar) more than 30

years earlier Slightly shorter but noless imposing it stood in the middle of

OrsquoConnell Street and drew its fair shareof controversy particularly after the 1916Easter Rising In 1938 a failed attempt

was made by Irish nationalists to blowit up in 1966 50 years ago this week

another attempt succeededldquoOperation Humpty Dumptyrdquo left

Nelsonrsquos Pillar some 50ft shorter andtwo days later what was left of the

monument was demolished with Nel-son himself placed in a Dublin Corpora-

tion lockup on Clanbrassil Street Buthe didnrsquot stay there for long

Suffused with the spirit of rag week agroup of students at the National College

of Art and Design liberated Nelsonrsquoshead and after sending a few pounds to

the Dublin Corporation to pay for thedamage theyrsquod caused set about usingit to pay off Student Union debts

983089

Which Best PictureOscar winner wassubtitled lsquoor (The

Unexpected Virtueof Ignorance)rsquo

983090

Jackspeak is slangused by whom

983091

Which bandrsquos 1047297rstgig was at

St Martinrsquos Collegein London on

6 November 1975 983092

How was Muslimminister el-HajjMalik el-Shabazzmurdered in 1965

better known 983093

Which item ofclothing drewgasps at Louis

Reacuteardrsquos 1946 Parisfashion show

983094

Which Londonstructure

completed in 1964did not for some

decades appear onOrdnance Survey

maps for securityreasons 983095

Kolven(Netherlands)Chole (Franceand Belgium)

Chuiwan (China)ndash all precursors of

which sport

983096

Which American(1867-1959)

declared himselflsquothe greatest living

architectrsquo

983097

Which aidorganisation was

formed in 1971from two bodies

one created inresponse to theBiafran war the

other to a cyclonein Bangladesh

983089

Whatrsquos the timeon the Doomsday

Clock kept bylsquoBulletin of the

Atomic Scientistsrsquoas of January 2015

(Answers page 38)

TheQuiz

By Chris Maume

RHODRI MARSDENrsquoS

INTERESTING OBJECTS

The headof Nelsonrsquos

Pillar

THE NOVEL CURE

Literary prescriptions formodern ailments

By Ella Berthoud andSusan Elderkin bibliotherapists

at the School of Lifethenovelcurecom

Ailment Wanting to savethe planet

Cure Te Monkey WrenchGang by Edward Abbey

Though we all want to save

the planet recycling the

wage his own type of war Hersquos

joined by a motley crew of fel-low saboteurs ndash a feminist

an outcast Mormon a doc-tor who burns billboards in

his downtime Together theyform the Monkey Wrench

Gang committed to puttingspanners ndash literally ndash into the

developersrsquo machines cuttingwires pouring corn syrup into

fuel tanks and choking en-gines with sand Their goal isto bring down the monstrous

Glen Canyon Dam and bringback the fragile gorges 1047298ooded

by Lake Powell behind itFull of explosions and en-

joyable anarchy there is acertain comic-strip vibe to

this novel which makes the

monkey wrenchersrsquo antics

not quite as shocking as theymight be and also Abbeyrsquos

characters are scrupulousabout not harming anyone

Itrsquos all about the strength offeeling behind the actions

What gives the novel itspower is Abbeyrsquos palpable love

for the natural world ndash fromthe Indian ricegrass and prick-

ly pear by the roadside to thesun1047297red outcrops of red rockFor Hayduke these are places

ldquoso beautiful they can make agrown man break down and

weeprdquo The novel reminds usthat wilderness is ldquonot a luxury

but a necessity of the humanspiritrdquo and if we destroy it we

also destroy ourselves micro

Sunday paper and composting

our coffee granules is reallylittle more than a drop in the

(warming) ocean What wouldmotivate us to take the next

step ndash to offset our CO2 emis-sions each year or even better

persuade a global corporationor two to follow suit

Edward Abbeyrsquos 1975 callto direct action inspired acts

of eco-activism in its day andremains one of the most pas-sionate pleas in literature to

protect our wild placesWhen Vietnam vet George

Washington Hayduke III re-turns from the war to find

bulldozers tearing into hisbeloved stretch of the US

south-west he decides to

when Gray arrived on OrsquoConnell Street

with the headAfter asking the crowd if anyone could

accept it on behalf of the Corporation anofficial eventually came forward ldquoAfter

all the moaningrdquo Gray told the press ldquonoone seemed to want it when we brought

it backrdquo Today the head sits quietly inthe Dublin City Library microrhodri

Over the next six months the head

went on an unusual journey It wasphotographed on Killiney beach as part

of a fashion shoot for the Evening Pressappeared on stage with the Dublin-

ers and eventually ended up in Lon-don where the antiques dealer Benny

Gray paid the students pound200 a monthto display it in his shop window It1047297nally returned to Dublin that September

Te remains of Nelsonrsquos Pillar in OrsquoConnell Street Dublin

T R I N I T Y M I R R O R A L

A M Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983097

Your new book Do It Like A Woman

includes a female fighter pilot in Afghanistan a Chilean revolutionaryand Pussy Riot among others Did anyof the women in the book jump out andmake you think ldquoyeah you rockrdquoFelicity Aston is probably the one I wasmost blown away by Her research stint

in the Arctic was such an incredible featof endurance for anyone man or woman

Women are often framed culturally asbeing incapable of doing things for our-

selves Also it was psychologically sochallenging having to avoid crevasses

andhellip Irsquom really sorry Irsquom struggling with

words today I went to a gig last night andmy brainrsquos just not on it apparentlyGood gigIt was a friend of mine I ended up drinkinga lot of vodka diet cokes and itrsquos just not

working out well for me today Well on we shall soldier The book hasbeen compared to Sheryl Sandbergrsquos

Lean In but that broadly encouragedwomen to play men by their own rules

What do you make of that ideaFirst I think that Sandbergrsquos book hasbeen unfairly represented in many places

But one of the reasons I chose that title

for my book was to counter the idea thatwomen need to do things like men There

is a way that men are supposed to behaveand a way that women are supposed tobehave which is seen as inferior But

actually many female attributes like

being caring or having emotions aregood positive humanhellip God I canrsquot speaktoday Whatrsquos the word Irsquom looking for

Things that humans haveFaculties CapabilitiesYeah maybe that Human capabilities Idonrsquot know Anyway sohellip fuck Irsquove lost

the thread of what I was saying again Irsquomso sorry this is a car crash

Haha no itrsquos not reallyI think the problem is your questions are

really hard I thought yoursquod ask easy thingslike ldquowhat do you have for breakfastrdquo and

ldquowhorsquos your favourite dogrdquoMoving on whorsquos your favourite dog

Ahaha obviously my dog Poppy Shersquossitting on me right now Shersquos a mongrelKing Charles jack russell chihuahua

Due to your dadrsquos work in the retailindustry you grew up all over the worldHow do you think that shaped youGrowing up I didnrsquot enjoy it I didnrsquot like

having to leave school every three yearsand having to make new friends But look-

ing back I think it was incredibly goodtraining You constantly have to walk into

rooms where you donrsquot know anyone Ithink also itrsquoshellip [long sigh] Irsquove forgotten

what I was going to say Is this the worstinterview yoursquove ever done

No no Irsquom enjoying it Yoursquove becomea public face of feminism Could youhave predicted that 10 years agoIf I went back 10 years I probably wouldhave thought the day before doing an

interview donrsquot go out and get absolutelysmashed But no I de1047297nitely did not plan

any of this Irsquom terrible at planning I tendto do things on emotion and instinct If

I start a campaign itrsquos not because Irsquovethought carefully about it Itrsquos just some-

thing thatrsquos pissed me offDo you feel you had the last laugh on

your Twitter abusers as it ultimatelygranted you a bigger platform

Itrsquos deliciously ironic in that they weretrying to silence me and they ended

up giving me a bigger voice So yeahthanks guys who tried to shut me up by

threatening to rape me ndash that didnrsquot reallywork out very well for you did itSo what do you have for breakfastSeriously I was joking Well thismorning the only thing that got me

out of bed was thinking about having anultimate halloumi roll at my local cafeacute I

had that and a massive cappuccino Itrsquosnot what I have every morning That

would be extravagant wouldnrsquot it micro

BIOGRAPHY

Born in BrazilCaroline Criado-Perez OBE

983091983089 is a Britishfeminist activistand writer who

campaigns amongother things to

improve womenrsquosrepresentation in

the media In 983090983089983091after challenging

the Bank ofEnglandrsquos decisionto replace the only

woman picturedon banknotes

Elizabeth Fry witha man she foundherself subject to

numerous rape anddeath threats onTwitter Her newbook lsquoDo It LikeA Womanhellip and

Change the Worldrsquois published by

Portobello pricedpound983096983097983097

partpart Irsquom terribleat planning

I do things onemotion and

instinct

sumsum

Caroline

Criado-PerezThe campaigner on her peripatetic childhood whywomen donrsquot need to do things like men and how she wishes shersquod taken it a bit easier last night

INTERVIEW BY OSCAR QUINE

PORTRAIT BY CLARE HEWITT

THE CONVERSATION

The Front Pages

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983089983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

WilliamShakespeare

died on 23 April 1616 Four centuries

on hisunderstandingof what it means

to be human

has never beenmore importantto the world

In this special

issue wecelebratehis genius

Professor Ewan Fernie gves a seminar at the Shakespeare Institu

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

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our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

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Simply replaces your existing

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takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

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16 days fromonly pound1969pp

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

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Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Page 4: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983093

Te Front Pages

Meet my mother the internetrefusenik And donrsquot tell me

shersquos got things wrong

THE PRIME OF LIFE

6pm to ri1047298e through the Whoops reduc-

tions on fresh cream cakes Then thereare her weeks in Blackpool playing

dodge-the-mobility-scooter which shebooks from the back of the local paperNo lastminutecom for my mother

So therersquos no point in me littering

social media on Mothering Sunday withphotos of her cuddling me as a podgytwo-year-old as is the modern way

Motherrsquos Day on Instagram is a newfeast day for the gushingly sentimental

and showy A certain oneupmanshipsets in by around 11am You thought I was great people seem to be saying butwait herersquos my mother Itrsquos remarkable

how many peoplersquos mothers ndash accord-ing to Instagram ndash were a heady mix

of Germaine Greer Mother Theresaand Delia Smith or at the very least the

local answer to Brigitte Bardot I save myenergies and my battery life My mother

wouldnrsquot see the photos anywayAnd even if Margaret at No 22 ndash who

has a Dell laptop in order to Skype her

kids in Australia ndash showed my mother myInstagram love-fest she would merely

wonder why Irsquod put a photo of me andher at the 1975 Farnborough Airshow

on to the World Wide Web for any oldweirdo to gawp at Face it if you want to

make women like my mother happy onMotherrsquos Day forget the internet You

get on a train You leave your phone andyour laptop behind You show up and eat

fruit scones with her in person Itrsquos likea text message but better

As my life has gone fully digital andIrsquove become welded to 4G and superfast

wi-1047297 my motherrsquos demands have startedto seem thoroughly unreasonable Shewants me to ring her on a landline at a

prearranged time and spend 45 minuteschatting What ndash on my blistering impor-

tant schedule She wants me to schlepto a Clintons and 1047297nd an actual birthday

card with a ldquonice verserdquo in it and thenwrite inside the card ndash with a pen ndash and

then 1047297nd a stamp and a postbox Whatare we Amish

She wants me to either ldquobe at workrdquo orldquonot be at workrdquo and she doesnrsquot want

me to be in a permanent hinterlandreplying to Twitter direct messages at

quarter past midnight and again at 715in the morning She wants me to see the

whites of my brothersrsquo eyes and not justtheir updates on Facebook She is un-swerving in these opinions She is the

last standing guard of internet refuseniksShe annoys me but I love her And a quiet

voice in my soul knows that shersquos rightand that our real-life time is precious I

should send her a text and tell her this IfIrsquom lucky she might read it by June microgracedent

My mother has never used the

internet Not once Not ever Sheis not available on Facebook Twitter or

Instagram You cannot drop her a quicktext You can try but the mobile phone

that we ndash her children ndash thrust upon herto use in case of emergency lives in the

glove compartment of her Volvo next toa Daniel OrsquoDonnell CD its battery tepid

She has a BT landline with no answermachine and she moans that Irsquom never

in touch It makes me incandescentldquoYou are 79 years oldrdquo I shouted at her

the other week ldquoYoursquore out in your car

every day and yoursquore only just over yourcataract operation Do you not think I

worryrdquo It is part of the cycle of life thatone day you will 1047297nd yourself haranguing

your OAP parents in exactly the samevoice with which they once harangued

you to remember your PE kitldquoIf you donrsquot switch on the phone

how can I keep track of where you arerdquo Ishouted ldquoWell Irsquom either here or Irsquom in

Morrisonsrdquo she said pausing to thinkldquoOr Irsquom down Aztec Soft Play with our

Lola Or Irsquom in Blackpoolrdquo She foldedher arms to indicate her interest in the

discussion ending ldquoWhat morerdquo shesaid ldquodo you need to knowrdquo And at thispoint I gave up my lecture on safety

security and the innate usefulness ofmodern social media

But why would anyone she said wantto carry on like this in public She spoke

with some experience of public embar-rassment In 1957 she was photographed

screaming outside a Frankie Vaughan

concert and the picture was published

in the Cumberland News without herconsent My mother remains to this

day completely livid about itMy motherrsquos off-line presence puts

something of a distance between usShe comes from a time before Facebook

check-ins and Twitter geo-tags Shehas never known the glory of 386 new

updates glowing on her WhatsApp iconShersquos never hate-followed a frenemy on

Instagram just for the sadistic drip-dripthrill Shersquos never ghosted a friend whois past their sell-by date Shersquos never

trolled then regretted trolling She doesnot suffer power-noia or Tumblr-related

FOMO She is perfectly equipped brain-wise to enter the 21st century but shersquos

had a think and shersquos not that fussedBesides venturing forth would get

in the way of her punishing schedule ofwatching episodes of Homes Under the Hammer followed by a trip to Asda at

Grace Dent

I L L U S T R A T I O N B

Y P I N G Z

H U

partpartShe has never

known the glory of 386new updates

glowing on her

WhatsAppicon

sumsum

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983095

Te Front Pages

103

The most famous monument to

Admiral Horatio Nelson is the 169ftcolumn erected in Londonrsquos Trafalgar

Square in 1840 but Dublin had its owncolumn (Nelsonrsquos Pillar) more than 30

years earlier Slightly shorter but noless imposing it stood in the middle of

OrsquoConnell Street and drew its fair shareof controversy particularly after the 1916Easter Rising In 1938 a failed attempt

was made by Irish nationalists to blowit up in 1966 50 years ago this week

another attempt succeededldquoOperation Humpty Dumptyrdquo left

Nelsonrsquos Pillar some 50ft shorter andtwo days later what was left of the

monument was demolished with Nel-son himself placed in a Dublin Corpora-

tion lockup on Clanbrassil Street Buthe didnrsquot stay there for long

Suffused with the spirit of rag week agroup of students at the National College

of Art and Design liberated Nelsonrsquoshead and after sending a few pounds to

the Dublin Corporation to pay for thedamage theyrsquod caused set about usingit to pay off Student Union debts

983089

Which Best PictureOscar winner wassubtitled lsquoor (The

Unexpected Virtueof Ignorance)rsquo

983090

Jackspeak is slangused by whom

983091

Which bandrsquos 1047297rstgig was at

St Martinrsquos Collegein London on

6 November 1975 983092

How was Muslimminister el-HajjMalik el-Shabazzmurdered in 1965

better known 983093

Which item ofclothing drewgasps at Louis

Reacuteardrsquos 1946 Parisfashion show

983094

Which Londonstructure

completed in 1964did not for some

decades appear onOrdnance Survey

maps for securityreasons 983095

Kolven(Netherlands)Chole (Franceand Belgium)

Chuiwan (China)ndash all precursors of

which sport

983096

Which American(1867-1959)

declared himselflsquothe greatest living

architectrsquo

983097

Which aidorganisation was

formed in 1971from two bodies

one created inresponse to theBiafran war the

other to a cyclonein Bangladesh

983089

Whatrsquos the timeon the Doomsday

Clock kept bylsquoBulletin of the

Atomic Scientistsrsquoas of January 2015

(Answers page 38)

TheQuiz

By Chris Maume

RHODRI MARSDENrsquoS

INTERESTING OBJECTS

The headof Nelsonrsquos

Pillar

THE NOVEL CURE

Literary prescriptions formodern ailments

By Ella Berthoud andSusan Elderkin bibliotherapists

at the School of Lifethenovelcurecom

Ailment Wanting to savethe planet

Cure Te Monkey WrenchGang by Edward Abbey

Though we all want to save

the planet recycling the

wage his own type of war Hersquos

joined by a motley crew of fel-low saboteurs ndash a feminist

an outcast Mormon a doc-tor who burns billboards in

his downtime Together theyform the Monkey Wrench

Gang committed to puttingspanners ndash literally ndash into the

developersrsquo machines cuttingwires pouring corn syrup into

fuel tanks and choking en-gines with sand Their goal isto bring down the monstrous

Glen Canyon Dam and bringback the fragile gorges 1047298ooded

by Lake Powell behind itFull of explosions and en-

joyable anarchy there is acertain comic-strip vibe to

this novel which makes the

monkey wrenchersrsquo antics

not quite as shocking as theymight be and also Abbeyrsquos

characters are scrupulousabout not harming anyone

Itrsquos all about the strength offeeling behind the actions

What gives the novel itspower is Abbeyrsquos palpable love

for the natural world ndash fromthe Indian ricegrass and prick-

ly pear by the roadside to thesun1047297red outcrops of red rockFor Hayduke these are places

ldquoso beautiful they can make agrown man break down and

weeprdquo The novel reminds usthat wilderness is ldquonot a luxury

but a necessity of the humanspiritrdquo and if we destroy it we

also destroy ourselves micro

Sunday paper and composting

our coffee granules is reallylittle more than a drop in the

(warming) ocean What wouldmotivate us to take the next

step ndash to offset our CO2 emis-sions each year or even better

persuade a global corporationor two to follow suit

Edward Abbeyrsquos 1975 callto direct action inspired acts

of eco-activism in its day andremains one of the most pas-sionate pleas in literature to

protect our wild placesWhen Vietnam vet George

Washington Hayduke III re-turns from the war to find

bulldozers tearing into hisbeloved stretch of the US

south-west he decides to

when Gray arrived on OrsquoConnell Street

with the headAfter asking the crowd if anyone could

accept it on behalf of the Corporation anofficial eventually came forward ldquoAfter

all the moaningrdquo Gray told the press ldquonoone seemed to want it when we brought

it backrdquo Today the head sits quietly inthe Dublin City Library microrhodri

Over the next six months the head

went on an unusual journey It wasphotographed on Killiney beach as part

of a fashion shoot for the Evening Pressappeared on stage with the Dublin-

ers and eventually ended up in Lon-don where the antiques dealer Benny

Gray paid the students pound200 a monthto display it in his shop window It1047297nally returned to Dublin that September

Te remains of Nelsonrsquos Pillar in OrsquoConnell Street Dublin

T R I N I T Y M I R R O R A L

A M Y

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8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983097

Your new book Do It Like A Woman

includes a female fighter pilot in Afghanistan a Chilean revolutionaryand Pussy Riot among others Did anyof the women in the book jump out andmake you think ldquoyeah you rockrdquoFelicity Aston is probably the one I wasmost blown away by Her research stint

in the Arctic was such an incredible featof endurance for anyone man or woman

Women are often framed culturally asbeing incapable of doing things for our-

selves Also it was psychologically sochallenging having to avoid crevasses

andhellip Irsquom really sorry Irsquom struggling with

words today I went to a gig last night andmy brainrsquos just not on it apparentlyGood gigIt was a friend of mine I ended up drinkinga lot of vodka diet cokes and itrsquos just not

working out well for me today Well on we shall soldier The book hasbeen compared to Sheryl Sandbergrsquos

Lean In but that broadly encouragedwomen to play men by their own rules

What do you make of that ideaFirst I think that Sandbergrsquos book hasbeen unfairly represented in many places

But one of the reasons I chose that title

for my book was to counter the idea thatwomen need to do things like men There

is a way that men are supposed to behaveand a way that women are supposed tobehave which is seen as inferior But

actually many female attributes like

being caring or having emotions aregood positive humanhellip God I canrsquot speaktoday Whatrsquos the word Irsquom looking for

Things that humans haveFaculties CapabilitiesYeah maybe that Human capabilities Idonrsquot know Anyway sohellip fuck Irsquove lost

the thread of what I was saying again Irsquomso sorry this is a car crash

Haha no itrsquos not reallyI think the problem is your questions are

really hard I thought yoursquod ask easy thingslike ldquowhat do you have for breakfastrdquo and

ldquowhorsquos your favourite dogrdquoMoving on whorsquos your favourite dog

Ahaha obviously my dog Poppy Shersquossitting on me right now Shersquos a mongrelKing Charles jack russell chihuahua

Due to your dadrsquos work in the retailindustry you grew up all over the worldHow do you think that shaped youGrowing up I didnrsquot enjoy it I didnrsquot like

having to leave school every three yearsand having to make new friends But look-

ing back I think it was incredibly goodtraining You constantly have to walk into

rooms where you donrsquot know anyone Ithink also itrsquoshellip [long sigh] Irsquove forgotten

what I was going to say Is this the worstinterview yoursquove ever done

No no Irsquom enjoying it Yoursquove becomea public face of feminism Could youhave predicted that 10 years agoIf I went back 10 years I probably wouldhave thought the day before doing an

interview donrsquot go out and get absolutelysmashed But no I de1047297nitely did not plan

any of this Irsquom terrible at planning I tendto do things on emotion and instinct If

I start a campaign itrsquos not because Irsquovethought carefully about it Itrsquos just some-

thing thatrsquos pissed me offDo you feel you had the last laugh on

your Twitter abusers as it ultimatelygranted you a bigger platform

Itrsquos deliciously ironic in that they weretrying to silence me and they ended

up giving me a bigger voice So yeahthanks guys who tried to shut me up by

threatening to rape me ndash that didnrsquot reallywork out very well for you did itSo what do you have for breakfastSeriously I was joking Well thismorning the only thing that got me

out of bed was thinking about having anultimate halloumi roll at my local cafeacute I

had that and a massive cappuccino Itrsquosnot what I have every morning That

would be extravagant wouldnrsquot it micro

BIOGRAPHY

Born in BrazilCaroline Criado-Perez OBE

983091983089 is a Britishfeminist activistand writer who

campaigns amongother things to

improve womenrsquosrepresentation in

the media In 983090983089983091after challenging

the Bank ofEnglandrsquos decisionto replace the only

woman picturedon banknotes

Elizabeth Fry witha man she foundherself subject to

numerous rape anddeath threats onTwitter Her newbook lsquoDo It LikeA Womanhellip and

Change the Worldrsquois published by

Portobello pricedpound983096983097983097

partpart Irsquom terribleat planning

I do things onemotion and

instinct

sumsum

Caroline

Criado-PerezThe campaigner on her peripatetic childhood whywomen donrsquot need to do things like men and how she wishes shersquod taken it a bit easier last night

INTERVIEW BY OSCAR QUINE

PORTRAIT BY CLARE HEWITT

THE CONVERSATION

The Front Pages

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983089983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

WilliamShakespeare

died on 23 April 1616 Four centuries

on hisunderstandingof what it means

to be human

has never beenmore importantto the world

In this special

issue wecelebratehis genius

Professor Ewan Fernie gves a seminar at the Shakespeare Institu

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 1840

KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2040

983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

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Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

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bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

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16 days fromonly pound1969pp

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bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

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No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

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bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

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bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983093

Te Front Pages

Meet my mother the internetrefusenik And donrsquot tell me

shersquos got things wrong

THE PRIME OF LIFE

6pm to ri1047298e through the Whoops reduc-

tions on fresh cream cakes Then thereare her weeks in Blackpool playing

dodge-the-mobility-scooter which shebooks from the back of the local paperNo lastminutecom for my mother

So therersquos no point in me littering

social media on Mothering Sunday withphotos of her cuddling me as a podgytwo-year-old as is the modern way

Motherrsquos Day on Instagram is a newfeast day for the gushingly sentimental

and showy A certain oneupmanshipsets in by around 11am You thought I was great people seem to be saying butwait herersquos my mother Itrsquos remarkable

how many peoplersquos mothers ndash accord-ing to Instagram ndash were a heady mix

of Germaine Greer Mother Theresaand Delia Smith or at the very least the

local answer to Brigitte Bardot I save myenergies and my battery life My mother

wouldnrsquot see the photos anywayAnd even if Margaret at No 22 ndash who

has a Dell laptop in order to Skype her

kids in Australia ndash showed my mother myInstagram love-fest she would merely

wonder why Irsquod put a photo of me andher at the 1975 Farnborough Airshow

on to the World Wide Web for any oldweirdo to gawp at Face it if you want to

make women like my mother happy onMotherrsquos Day forget the internet You

get on a train You leave your phone andyour laptop behind You show up and eat

fruit scones with her in person Itrsquos likea text message but better

As my life has gone fully digital andIrsquove become welded to 4G and superfast

wi-1047297 my motherrsquos demands have startedto seem thoroughly unreasonable Shewants me to ring her on a landline at a

prearranged time and spend 45 minuteschatting What ndash on my blistering impor-

tant schedule She wants me to schlepto a Clintons and 1047297nd an actual birthday

card with a ldquonice verserdquo in it and thenwrite inside the card ndash with a pen ndash and

then 1047297nd a stamp and a postbox Whatare we Amish

She wants me to either ldquobe at workrdquo orldquonot be at workrdquo and she doesnrsquot want

me to be in a permanent hinterlandreplying to Twitter direct messages at

quarter past midnight and again at 715in the morning She wants me to see the

whites of my brothersrsquo eyes and not justtheir updates on Facebook She is un-swerving in these opinions She is the

last standing guard of internet refuseniksShe annoys me but I love her And a quiet

voice in my soul knows that shersquos rightand that our real-life time is precious I

should send her a text and tell her this IfIrsquom lucky she might read it by June microgracedent

My mother has never used the

internet Not once Not ever Sheis not available on Facebook Twitter or

Instagram You cannot drop her a quicktext You can try but the mobile phone

that we ndash her children ndash thrust upon herto use in case of emergency lives in the

glove compartment of her Volvo next toa Daniel OrsquoDonnell CD its battery tepid

She has a BT landline with no answermachine and she moans that Irsquom never

in touch It makes me incandescentldquoYou are 79 years oldrdquo I shouted at her

the other week ldquoYoursquore out in your car

every day and yoursquore only just over yourcataract operation Do you not think I

worryrdquo It is part of the cycle of life thatone day you will 1047297nd yourself haranguing

your OAP parents in exactly the samevoice with which they once harangued

you to remember your PE kitldquoIf you donrsquot switch on the phone

how can I keep track of where you arerdquo Ishouted ldquoWell Irsquom either here or Irsquom in

Morrisonsrdquo she said pausing to thinkldquoOr Irsquom down Aztec Soft Play with our

Lola Or Irsquom in Blackpoolrdquo She foldedher arms to indicate her interest in the

discussion ending ldquoWhat morerdquo shesaid ldquodo you need to knowrdquo And at thispoint I gave up my lecture on safety

security and the innate usefulness ofmodern social media

But why would anyone she said wantto carry on like this in public She spoke

with some experience of public embar-rassment In 1957 she was photographed

screaming outside a Frankie Vaughan

concert and the picture was published

in the Cumberland News without herconsent My mother remains to this

day completely livid about itMy motherrsquos off-line presence puts

something of a distance between usShe comes from a time before Facebook

check-ins and Twitter geo-tags Shehas never known the glory of 386 new

updates glowing on her WhatsApp iconShersquos never hate-followed a frenemy on

Instagram just for the sadistic drip-dripthrill Shersquos never ghosted a friend whois past their sell-by date Shersquos never

trolled then regretted trolling She doesnot suffer power-noia or Tumblr-related

FOMO She is perfectly equipped brain-wise to enter the 21st century but shersquos

had a think and shersquos not that fussedBesides venturing forth would get

in the way of her punishing schedule ofwatching episodes of Homes Under the Hammer followed by a trip to Asda at

Grace Dent

I L L U S T R A T I O N B

Y P I N G Z

H U

partpartShe has never

known the glory of 386new updates

glowing on her

WhatsAppicon

sumsum

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983095

Te Front Pages

103

The most famous monument to

Admiral Horatio Nelson is the 169ftcolumn erected in Londonrsquos Trafalgar

Square in 1840 but Dublin had its owncolumn (Nelsonrsquos Pillar) more than 30

years earlier Slightly shorter but noless imposing it stood in the middle of

OrsquoConnell Street and drew its fair shareof controversy particularly after the 1916Easter Rising In 1938 a failed attempt

was made by Irish nationalists to blowit up in 1966 50 years ago this week

another attempt succeededldquoOperation Humpty Dumptyrdquo left

Nelsonrsquos Pillar some 50ft shorter andtwo days later what was left of the

monument was demolished with Nel-son himself placed in a Dublin Corpora-

tion lockup on Clanbrassil Street Buthe didnrsquot stay there for long

Suffused with the spirit of rag week agroup of students at the National College

of Art and Design liberated Nelsonrsquoshead and after sending a few pounds to

the Dublin Corporation to pay for thedamage theyrsquod caused set about usingit to pay off Student Union debts

983089

Which Best PictureOscar winner wassubtitled lsquoor (The

Unexpected Virtueof Ignorance)rsquo

983090

Jackspeak is slangused by whom

983091

Which bandrsquos 1047297rstgig was at

St Martinrsquos Collegein London on

6 November 1975 983092

How was Muslimminister el-HajjMalik el-Shabazzmurdered in 1965

better known 983093

Which item ofclothing drewgasps at Louis

Reacuteardrsquos 1946 Parisfashion show

983094

Which Londonstructure

completed in 1964did not for some

decades appear onOrdnance Survey

maps for securityreasons 983095

Kolven(Netherlands)Chole (Franceand Belgium)

Chuiwan (China)ndash all precursors of

which sport

983096

Which American(1867-1959)

declared himselflsquothe greatest living

architectrsquo

983097

Which aidorganisation was

formed in 1971from two bodies

one created inresponse to theBiafran war the

other to a cyclonein Bangladesh

983089

Whatrsquos the timeon the Doomsday

Clock kept bylsquoBulletin of the

Atomic Scientistsrsquoas of January 2015

(Answers page 38)

TheQuiz

By Chris Maume

RHODRI MARSDENrsquoS

INTERESTING OBJECTS

The headof Nelsonrsquos

Pillar

THE NOVEL CURE

Literary prescriptions formodern ailments

By Ella Berthoud andSusan Elderkin bibliotherapists

at the School of Lifethenovelcurecom

Ailment Wanting to savethe planet

Cure Te Monkey WrenchGang by Edward Abbey

Though we all want to save

the planet recycling the

wage his own type of war Hersquos

joined by a motley crew of fel-low saboteurs ndash a feminist

an outcast Mormon a doc-tor who burns billboards in

his downtime Together theyform the Monkey Wrench

Gang committed to puttingspanners ndash literally ndash into the

developersrsquo machines cuttingwires pouring corn syrup into

fuel tanks and choking en-gines with sand Their goal isto bring down the monstrous

Glen Canyon Dam and bringback the fragile gorges 1047298ooded

by Lake Powell behind itFull of explosions and en-

joyable anarchy there is acertain comic-strip vibe to

this novel which makes the

monkey wrenchersrsquo antics

not quite as shocking as theymight be and also Abbeyrsquos

characters are scrupulousabout not harming anyone

Itrsquos all about the strength offeeling behind the actions

What gives the novel itspower is Abbeyrsquos palpable love

for the natural world ndash fromthe Indian ricegrass and prick-

ly pear by the roadside to thesun1047297red outcrops of red rockFor Hayduke these are places

ldquoso beautiful they can make agrown man break down and

weeprdquo The novel reminds usthat wilderness is ldquonot a luxury

but a necessity of the humanspiritrdquo and if we destroy it we

also destroy ourselves micro

Sunday paper and composting

our coffee granules is reallylittle more than a drop in the

(warming) ocean What wouldmotivate us to take the next

step ndash to offset our CO2 emis-sions each year or even better

persuade a global corporationor two to follow suit

Edward Abbeyrsquos 1975 callto direct action inspired acts

of eco-activism in its day andremains one of the most pas-sionate pleas in literature to

protect our wild placesWhen Vietnam vet George

Washington Hayduke III re-turns from the war to find

bulldozers tearing into hisbeloved stretch of the US

south-west he decides to

when Gray arrived on OrsquoConnell Street

with the headAfter asking the crowd if anyone could

accept it on behalf of the Corporation anofficial eventually came forward ldquoAfter

all the moaningrdquo Gray told the press ldquonoone seemed to want it when we brought

it backrdquo Today the head sits quietly inthe Dublin City Library microrhodri

Over the next six months the head

went on an unusual journey It wasphotographed on Killiney beach as part

of a fashion shoot for the Evening Pressappeared on stage with the Dublin-

ers and eventually ended up in Lon-don where the antiques dealer Benny

Gray paid the students pound200 a monthto display it in his shop window It1047297nally returned to Dublin that September

Te remains of Nelsonrsquos Pillar in OrsquoConnell Street Dublin

T R I N I T Y M I R R O R A L

A M Y

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983097

Your new book Do It Like A Woman

includes a female fighter pilot in Afghanistan a Chilean revolutionaryand Pussy Riot among others Did anyof the women in the book jump out andmake you think ldquoyeah you rockrdquoFelicity Aston is probably the one I wasmost blown away by Her research stint

in the Arctic was such an incredible featof endurance for anyone man or woman

Women are often framed culturally asbeing incapable of doing things for our-

selves Also it was psychologically sochallenging having to avoid crevasses

andhellip Irsquom really sorry Irsquom struggling with

words today I went to a gig last night andmy brainrsquos just not on it apparentlyGood gigIt was a friend of mine I ended up drinkinga lot of vodka diet cokes and itrsquos just not

working out well for me today Well on we shall soldier The book hasbeen compared to Sheryl Sandbergrsquos

Lean In but that broadly encouragedwomen to play men by their own rules

What do you make of that ideaFirst I think that Sandbergrsquos book hasbeen unfairly represented in many places

But one of the reasons I chose that title

for my book was to counter the idea thatwomen need to do things like men There

is a way that men are supposed to behaveand a way that women are supposed tobehave which is seen as inferior But

actually many female attributes like

being caring or having emotions aregood positive humanhellip God I canrsquot speaktoday Whatrsquos the word Irsquom looking for

Things that humans haveFaculties CapabilitiesYeah maybe that Human capabilities Idonrsquot know Anyway sohellip fuck Irsquove lost

the thread of what I was saying again Irsquomso sorry this is a car crash

Haha no itrsquos not reallyI think the problem is your questions are

really hard I thought yoursquod ask easy thingslike ldquowhat do you have for breakfastrdquo and

ldquowhorsquos your favourite dogrdquoMoving on whorsquos your favourite dog

Ahaha obviously my dog Poppy Shersquossitting on me right now Shersquos a mongrelKing Charles jack russell chihuahua

Due to your dadrsquos work in the retailindustry you grew up all over the worldHow do you think that shaped youGrowing up I didnrsquot enjoy it I didnrsquot like

having to leave school every three yearsand having to make new friends But look-

ing back I think it was incredibly goodtraining You constantly have to walk into

rooms where you donrsquot know anyone Ithink also itrsquoshellip [long sigh] Irsquove forgotten

what I was going to say Is this the worstinterview yoursquove ever done

No no Irsquom enjoying it Yoursquove becomea public face of feminism Could youhave predicted that 10 years agoIf I went back 10 years I probably wouldhave thought the day before doing an

interview donrsquot go out and get absolutelysmashed But no I de1047297nitely did not plan

any of this Irsquom terrible at planning I tendto do things on emotion and instinct If

I start a campaign itrsquos not because Irsquovethought carefully about it Itrsquos just some-

thing thatrsquos pissed me offDo you feel you had the last laugh on

your Twitter abusers as it ultimatelygranted you a bigger platform

Itrsquos deliciously ironic in that they weretrying to silence me and they ended

up giving me a bigger voice So yeahthanks guys who tried to shut me up by

threatening to rape me ndash that didnrsquot reallywork out very well for you did itSo what do you have for breakfastSeriously I was joking Well thismorning the only thing that got me

out of bed was thinking about having anultimate halloumi roll at my local cafeacute I

had that and a massive cappuccino Itrsquosnot what I have every morning That

would be extravagant wouldnrsquot it micro

BIOGRAPHY

Born in BrazilCaroline Criado-Perez OBE

983091983089 is a Britishfeminist activistand writer who

campaigns amongother things to

improve womenrsquosrepresentation in

the media In 983090983089983091after challenging

the Bank ofEnglandrsquos decisionto replace the only

woman picturedon banknotes

Elizabeth Fry witha man she foundherself subject to

numerous rape anddeath threats onTwitter Her newbook lsquoDo It LikeA Womanhellip and

Change the Worldrsquois published by

Portobello pricedpound983096983097983097

partpart Irsquom terribleat planning

I do things onemotion and

instinct

sumsum

Caroline

Criado-PerezThe campaigner on her peripatetic childhood whywomen donrsquot need to do things like men and how she wishes shersquod taken it a bit easier last night

INTERVIEW BY OSCAR QUINE

PORTRAIT BY CLARE HEWITT

THE CONVERSATION

The Front Pages

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983089983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

WilliamShakespeare

died on 23 April 1616 Four centuries

on hisunderstandingof what it means

to be human

has never beenmore importantto the world

In this special

issue wecelebratehis genius

Professor Ewan Fernie gves a seminar at the Shakespeare Institu

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

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you back crystal clear clarity

Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

the purity of light and as our name implies we take it

rather seriously So much so we design and build ourreading and task lights like no other Whilst other lightsrely on aesthetics for their appeal rather than light output

our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

of light in their reading lights and itrsquos this that gives themtheir incredible clarity and brightness So much so theyrsquore

used by surgeons forensic scientists and fine art restorersndash in fact anyone who needs to see clearly and accurately

The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

read Fine detail is more defined and colour has a new vibrancy and richness If yoursquore an avid reader or have a

hobby that requires close work a Serious Readers lightwill completely transform your enjoyment in a way younever thought possible

Unique Daylight Wavelength

Technology projects all of the

light onto the page

Words are crisp and clear

Delivered fully assembled

Reading is easier faster

and more enjoyable

Recommended

by over 400independent

qualified

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5 year

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See thedifferencefor yourself

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Model shown forillustrative purposes only

Purchase a Serious Light by 020416 and get a FREE portable reading light and cable tidy worth over pound100

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For advice or to request a brochure

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

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When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

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~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

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ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

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Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

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Going green without compromise

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A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

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ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

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The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

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Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Page 6: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 640

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983095

Te Front Pages

103

The most famous monument to

Admiral Horatio Nelson is the 169ftcolumn erected in Londonrsquos Trafalgar

Square in 1840 but Dublin had its owncolumn (Nelsonrsquos Pillar) more than 30

years earlier Slightly shorter but noless imposing it stood in the middle of

OrsquoConnell Street and drew its fair shareof controversy particularly after the 1916Easter Rising In 1938 a failed attempt

was made by Irish nationalists to blowit up in 1966 50 years ago this week

another attempt succeededldquoOperation Humpty Dumptyrdquo left

Nelsonrsquos Pillar some 50ft shorter andtwo days later what was left of the

monument was demolished with Nel-son himself placed in a Dublin Corpora-

tion lockup on Clanbrassil Street Buthe didnrsquot stay there for long

Suffused with the spirit of rag week agroup of students at the National College

of Art and Design liberated Nelsonrsquoshead and after sending a few pounds to

the Dublin Corporation to pay for thedamage theyrsquod caused set about usingit to pay off Student Union debts

983089

Which Best PictureOscar winner wassubtitled lsquoor (The

Unexpected Virtueof Ignorance)rsquo

983090

Jackspeak is slangused by whom

983091

Which bandrsquos 1047297rstgig was at

St Martinrsquos Collegein London on

6 November 1975 983092

How was Muslimminister el-HajjMalik el-Shabazzmurdered in 1965

better known 983093

Which item ofclothing drewgasps at Louis

Reacuteardrsquos 1946 Parisfashion show

983094

Which Londonstructure

completed in 1964did not for some

decades appear onOrdnance Survey

maps for securityreasons 983095

Kolven(Netherlands)Chole (Franceand Belgium)

Chuiwan (China)ndash all precursors of

which sport

983096

Which American(1867-1959)

declared himselflsquothe greatest living

architectrsquo

983097

Which aidorganisation was

formed in 1971from two bodies

one created inresponse to theBiafran war the

other to a cyclonein Bangladesh

983089

Whatrsquos the timeon the Doomsday

Clock kept bylsquoBulletin of the

Atomic Scientistsrsquoas of January 2015

(Answers page 38)

TheQuiz

By Chris Maume

RHODRI MARSDENrsquoS

INTERESTING OBJECTS

The headof Nelsonrsquos

Pillar

THE NOVEL CURE

Literary prescriptions formodern ailments

By Ella Berthoud andSusan Elderkin bibliotherapists

at the School of Lifethenovelcurecom

Ailment Wanting to savethe planet

Cure Te Monkey WrenchGang by Edward Abbey

Though we all want to save

the planet recycling the

wage his own type of war Hersquos

joined by a motley crew of fel-low saboteurs ndash a feminist

an outcast Mormon a doc-tor who burns billboards in

his downtime Together theyform the Monkey Wrench

Gang committed to puttingspanners ndash literally ndash into the

developersrsquo machines cuttingwires pouring corn syrup into

fuel tanks and choking en-gines with sand Their goal isto bring down the monstrous

Glen Canyon Dam and bringback the fragile gorges 1047298ooded

by Lake Powell behind itFull of explosions and en-

joyable anarchy there is acertain comic-strip vibe to

this novel which makes the

monkey wrenchersrsquo antics

not quite as shocking as theymight be and also Abbeyrsquos

characters are scrupulousabout not harming anyone

Itrsquos all about the strength offeeling behind the actions

What gives the novel itspower is Abbeyrsquos palpable love

for the natural world ndash fromthe Indian ricegrass and prick-

ly pear by the roadside to thesun1047297red outcrops of red rockFor Hayduke these are places

ldquoso beautiful they can make agrown man break down and

weeprdquo The novel reminds usthat wilderness is ldquonot a luxury

but a necessity of the humanspiritrdquo and if we destroy it we

also destroy ourselves micro

Sunday paper and composting

our coffee granules is reallylittle more than a drop in the

(warming) ocean What wouldmotivate us to take the next

step ndash to offset our CO2 emis-sions each year or even better

persuade a global corporationor two to follow suit

Edward Abbeyrsquos 1975 callto direct action inspired acts

of eco-activism in its day andremains one of the most pas-sionate pleas in literature to

protect our wild placesWhen Vietnam vet George

Washington Hayduke III re-turns from the war to find

bulldozers tearing into hisbeloved stretch of the US

south-west he decides to

when Gray arrived on OrsquoConnell Street

with the headAfter asking the crowd if anyone could

accept it on behalf of the Corporation anofficial eventually came forward ldquoAfter

all the moaningrdquo Gray told the press ldquonoone seemed to want it when we brought

it backrdquo Today the head sits quietly inthe Dublin City Library microrhodri

Over the next six months the head

went on an unusual journey It wasphotographed on Killiney beach as part

of a fashion shoot for the Evening Pressappeared on stage with the Dublin-

ers and eventually ended up in Lon-don where the antiques dealer Benny

Gray paid the students pound200 a monthto display it in his shop window It1047297nally returned to Dublin that September

Te remains of Nelsonrsquos Pillar in OrsquoConnell Street Dublin

T R I N I T Y M I R R O R A L

A M Y

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983097

Your new book Do It Like A Woman

includes a female fighter pilot in Afghanistan a Chilean revolutionaryand Pussy Riot among others Did anyof the women in the book jump out andmake you think ldquoyeah you rockrdquoFelicity Aston is probably the one I wasmost blown away by Her research stint

in the Arctic was such an incredible featof endurance for anyone man or woman

Women are often framed culturally asbeing incapable of doing things for our-

selves Also it was psychologically sochallenging having to avoid crevasses

andhellip Irsquom really sorry Irsquom struggling with

words today I went to a gig last night andmy brainrsquos just not on it apparentlyGood gigIt was a friend of mine I ended up drinkinga lot of vodka diet cokes and itrsquos just not

working out well for me today Well on we shall soldier The book hasbeen compared to Sheryl Sandbergrsquos

Lean In but that broadly encouragedwomen to play men by their own rules

What do you make of that ideaFirst I think that Sandbergrsquos book hasbeen unfairly represented in many places

But one of the reasons I chose that title

for my book was to counter the idea thatwomen need to do things like men There

is a way that men are supposed to behaveand a way that women are supposed tobehave which is seen as inferior But

actually many female attributes like

being caring or having emotions aregood positive humanhellip God I canrsquot speaktoday Whatrsquos the word Irsquom looking for

Things that humans haveFaculties CapabilitiesYeah maybe that Human capabilities Idonrsquot know Anyway sohellip fuck Irsquove lost

the thread of what I was saying again Irsquomso sorry this is a car crash

Haha no itrsquos not reallyI think the problem is your questions are

really hard I thought yoursquod ask easy thingslike ldquowhat do you have for breakfastrdquo and

ldquowhorsquos your favourite dogrdquoMoving on whorsquos your favourite dog

Ahaha obviously my dog Poppy Shersquossitting on me right now Shersquos a mongrelKing Charles jack russell chihuahua

Due to your dadrsquos work in the retailindustry you grew up all over the worldHow do you think that shaped youGrowing up I didnrsquot enjoy it I didnrsquot like

having to leave school every three yearsand having to make new friends But look-

ing back I think it was incredibly goodtraining You constantly have to walk into

rooms where you donrsquot know anyone Ithink also itrsquoshellip [long sigh] Irsquove forgotten

what I was going to say Is this the worstinterview yoursquove ever done

No no Irsquom enjoying it Yoursquove becomea public face of feminism Could youhave predicted that 10 years agoIf I went back 10 years I probably wouldhave thought the day before doing an

interview donrsquot go out and get absolutelysmashed But no I de1047297nitely did not plan

any of this Irsquom terrible at planning I tendto do things on emotion and instinct If

I start a campaign itrsquos not because Irsquovethought carefully about it Itrsquos just some-

thing thatrsquos pissed me offDo you feel you had the last laugh on

your Twitter abusers as it ultimatelygranted you a bigger platform

Itrsquos deliciously ironic in that they weretrying to silence me and they ended

up giving me a bigger voice So yeahthanks guys who tried to shut me up by

threatening to rape me ndash that didnrsquot reallywork out very well for you did itSo what do you have for breakfastSeriously I was joking Well thismorning the only thing that got me

out of bed was thinking about having anultimate halloumi roll at my local cafeacute I

had that and a massive cappuccino Itrsquosnot what I have every morning That

would be extravagant wouldnrsquot it micro

BIOGRAPHY

Born in BrazilCaroline Criado-Perez OBE

983091983089 is a Britishfeminist activistand writer who

campaigns amongother things to

improve womenrsquosrepresentation in

the media In 983090983089983091after challenging

the Bank ofEnglandrsquos decisionto replace the only

woman picturedon banknotes

Elizabeth Fry witha man she foundherself subject to

numerous rape anddeath threats onTwitter Her newbook lsquoDo It LikeA Womanhellip and

Change the Worldrsquois published by

Portobello pricedpound983096983097983097

partpart Irsquom terribleat planning

I do things onemotion and

instinct

sumsum

Caroline

Criado-PerezThe campaigner on her peripatetic childhood whywomen donrsquot need to do things like men and how she wishes shersquod taken it a bit easier last night

INTERVIEW BY OSCAR QUINE

PORTRAIT BY CLARE HEWITT

THE CONVERSATION

The Front Pages

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983089983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

WilliamShakespeare

died on 23 April 1616 Four centuries

on hisunderstandingof what it means

to be human

has never beenmore importantto the world

In this special

issue wecelebratehis genius

Professor Ewan Fernie gves a seminar at the Shakespeare Institu

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

ldquo Itrsquos like having a

brand new pair of eyes rdquo Ms Sherliker Surrey

Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

you back crystal clear clarity

Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

the purity of light and as our name implies we take it

rather seriously So much so we design and build ourreading and task lights like no other Whilst other lightsrely on aesthetics for their appeal rather than light output

our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

of light in their reading lights and itrsquos this that gives themtheir incredible clarity and brightness So much so theyrsquore

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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Purchase a Serious Light by 020416 and get a FREE portable reading light and cable tidy worth over pound100

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Boosts the

power of yourshower andsaves money too

Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

BUY 1 bull GET 1

FREEFOR INDEPENDENT

MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 7: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983095

Te Front Pages

103

The most famous monument to

Admiral Horatio Nelson is the 169ftcolumn erected in Londonrsquos Trafalgar

Square in 1840 but Dublin had its owncolumn (Nelsonrsquos Pillar) more than 30

years earlier Slightly shorter but noless imposing it stood in the middle of

OrsquoConnell Street and drew its fair shareof controversy particularly after the 1916Easter Rising In 1938 a failed attempt

was made by Irish nationalists to blowit up in 1966 50 years ago this week

another attempt succeededldquoOperation Humpty Dumptyrdquo left

Nelsonrsquos Pillar some 50ft shorter andtwo days later what was left of the

monument was demolished with Nel-son himself placed in a Dublin Corpora-

tion lockup on Clanbrassil Street Buthe didnrsquot stay there for long

Suffused with the spirit of rag week agroup of students at the National College

of Art and Design liberated Nelsonrsquoshead and after sending a few pounds to

the Dublin Corporation to pay for thedamage theyrsquod caused set about usingit to pay off Student Union debts

983089

Which Best PictureOscar winner wassubtitled lsquoor (The

Unexpected Virtueof Ignorance)rsquo

983090

Jackspeak is slangused by whom

983091

Which bandrsquos 1047297rstgig was at

St Martinrsquos Collegein London on

6 November 1975 983092

How was Muslimminister el-HajjMalik el-Shabazzmurdered in 1965

better known 983093

Which item ofclothing drewgasps at Louis

Reacuteardrsquos 1946 Parisfashion show

983094

Which Londonstructure

completed in 1964did not for some

decades appear onOrdnance Survey

maps for securityreasons 983095

Kolven(Netherlands)Chole (Franceand Belgium)

Chuiwan (China)ndash all precursors of

which sport

983096

Which American(1867-1959)

declared himselflsquothe greatest living

architectrsquo

983097

Which aidorganisation was

formed in 1971from two bodies

one created inresponse to theBiafran war the

other to a cyclonein Bangladesh

983089

Whatrsquos the timeon the Doomsday

Clock kept bylsquoBulletin of the

Atomic Scientistsrsquoas of January 2015

(Answers page 38)

TheQuiz

By Chris Maume

RHODRI MARSDENrsquoS

INTERESTING OBJECTS

The headof Nelsonrsquos

Pillar

THE NOVEL CURE

Literary prescriptions formodern ailments

By Ella Berthoud andSusan Elderkin bibliotherapists

at the School of Lifethenovelcurecom

Ailment Wanting to savethe planet

Cure Te Monkey WrenchGang by Edward Abbey

Though we all want to save

the planet recycling the

wage his own type of war Hersquos

joined by a motley crew of fel-low saboteurs ndash a feminist

an outcast Mormon a doc-tor who burns billboards in

his downtime Together theyform the Monkey Wrench

Gang committed to puttingspanners ndash literally ndash into the

developersrsquo machines cuttingwires pouring corn syrup into

fuel tanks and choking en-gines with sand Their goal isto bring down the monstrous

Glen Canyon Dam and bringback the fragile gorges 1047298ooded

by Lake Powell behind itFull of explosions and en-

joyable anarchy there is acertain comic-strip vibe to

this novel which makes the

monkey wrenchersrsquo antics

not quite as shocking as theymight be and also Abbeyrsquos

characters are scrupulousabout not harming anyone

Itrsquos all about the strength offeeling behind the actions

What gives the novel itspower is Abbeyrsquos palpable love

for the natural world ndash fromthe Indian ricegrass and prick-

ly pear by the roadside to thesun1047297red outcrops of red rockFor Hayduke these are places

ldquoso beautiful they can make agrown man break down and

weeprdquo The novel reminds usthat wilderness is ldquonot a luxury

but a necessity of the humanspiritrdquo and if we destroy it we

also destroy ourselves micro

Sunday paper and composting

our coffee granules is reallylittle more than a drop in the

(warming) ocean What wouldmotivate us to take the next

step ndash to offset our CO2 emis-sions each year or even better

persuade a global corporationor two to follow suit

Edward Abbeyrsquos 1975 callto direct action inspired acts

of eco-activism in its day andremains one of the most pas-sionate pleas in literature to

protect our wild placesWhen Vietnam vet George

Washington Hayduke III re-turns from the war to find

bulldozers tearing into hisbeloved stretch of the US

south-west he decides to

when Gray arrived on OrsquoConnell Street

with the headAfter asking the crowd if anyone could

accept it on behalf of the Corporation anofficial eventually came forward ldquoAfter

all the moaningrdquo Gray told the press ldquonoone seemed to want it when we brought

it backrdquo Today the head sits quietly inthe Dublin City Library microrhodri

Over the next six months the head

went on an unusual journey It wasphotographed on Killiney beach as part

of a fashion shoot for the Evening Pressappeared on stage with the Dublin-

ers and eventually ended up in Lon-don where the antiques dealer Benny

Gray paid the students pound200 a monthto display it in his shop window It1047297nally returned to Dublin that September

Te remains of Nelsonrsquos Pillar in OrsquoConnell Street Dublin

T R I N I T Y M I R R O R A L

A M Y

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983097

Your new book Do It Like A Woman

includes a female fighter pilot in Afghanistan a Chilean revolutionaryand Pussy Riot among others Did anyof the women in the book jump out andmake you think ldquoyeah you rockrdquoFelicity Aston is probably the one I wasmost blown away by Her research stint

in the Arctic was such an incredible featof endurance for anyone man or woman

Women are often framed culturally asbeing incapable of doing things for our-

selves Also it was psychologically sochallenging having to avoid crevasses

andhellip Irsquom really sorry Irsquom struggling with

words today I went to a gig last night andmy brainrsquos just not on it apparentlyGood gigIt was a friend of mine I ended up drinkinga lot of vodka diet cokes and itrsquos just not

working out well for me today Well on we shall soldier The book hasbeen compared to Sheryl Sandbergrsquos

Lean In but that broadly encouragedwomen to play men by their own rules

What do you make of that ideaFirst I think that Sandbergrsquos book hasbeen unfairly represented in many places

But one of the reasons I chose that title

for my book was to counter the idea thatwomen need to do things like men There

is a way that men are supposed to behaveand a way that women are supposed tobehave which is seen as inferior But

actually many female attributes like

being caring or having emotions aregood positive humanhellip God I canrsquot speaktoday Whatrsquos the word Irsquom looking for

Things that humans haveFaculties CapabilitiesYeah maybe that Human capabilities Idonrsquot know Anyway sohellip fuck Irsquove lost

the thread of what I was saying again Irsquomso sorry this is a car crash

Haha no itrsquos not reallyI think the problem is your questions are

really hard I thought yoursquod ask easy thingslike ldquowhat do you have for breakfastrdquo and

ldquowhorsquos your favourite dogrdquoMoving on whorsquos your favourite dog

Ahaha obviously my dog Poppy Shersquossitting on me right now Shersquos a mongrelKing Charles jack russell chihuahua

Due to your dadrsquos work in the retailindustry you grew up all over the worldHow do you think that shaped youGrowing up I didnrsquot enjoy it I didnrsquot like

having to leave school every three yearsand having to make new friends But look-

ing back I think it was incredibly goodtraining You constantly have to walk into

rooms where you donrsquot know anyone Ithink also itrsquoshellip [long sigh] Irsquove forgotten

what I was going to say Is this the worstinterview yoursquove ever done

No no Irsquom enjoying it Yoursquove becomea public face of feminism Could youhave predicted that 10 years agoIf I went back 10 years I probably wouldhave thought the day before doing an

interview donrsquot go out and get absolutelysmashed But no I de1047297nitely did not plan

any of this Irsquom terrible at planning I tendto do things on emotion and instinct If

I start a campaign itrsquos not because Irsquovethought carefully about it Itrsquos just some-

thing thatrsquos pissed me offDo you feel you had the last laugh on

your Twitter abusers as it ultimatelygranted you a bigger platform

Itrsquos deliciously ironic in that they weretrying to silence me and they ended

up giving me a bigger voice So yeahthanks guys who tried to shut me up by

threatening to rape me ndash that didnrsquot reallywork out very well for you did itSo what do you have for breakfastSeriously I was joking Well thismorning the only thing that got me

out of bed was thinking about having anultimate halloumi roll at my local cafeacute I

had that and a massive cappuccino Itrsquosnot what I have every morning That

would be extravagant wouldnrsquot it micro

BIOGRAPHY

Born in BrazilCaroline Criado-Perez OBE

983091983089 is a Britishfeminist activistand writer who

campaigns amongother things to

improve womenrsquosrepresentation in

the media In 983090983089983091after challenging

the Bank ofEnglandrsquos decisionto replace the only

woman picturedon banknotes

Elizabeth Fry witha man she foundherself subject to

numerous rape anddeath threats onTwitter Her newbook lsquoDo It LikeA Womanhellip and

Change the Worldrsquois published by

Portobello pricedpound983096983097983097

partpart Irsquom terribleat planning

I do things onemotion and

instinct

sumsum

Caroline

Criado-PerezThe campaigner on her peripatetic childhood whywomen donrsquot need to do things like men and how she wishes shersquod taken it a bit easier last night

INTERVIEW BY OSCAR QUINE

PORTRAIT BY CLARE HEWITT

THE CONVERSATION

The Front Pages

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983089983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

WilliamShakespeare

died on 23 April 1616 Four centuries

on hisunderstandingof what it means

to be human

has never beenmore importantto the world

In this special

issue wecelebratehis genius

Professor Ewan Fernie gves a seminar at the Shakespeare Institu

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 1840

KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2040

983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3440

Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

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Simply replaces your existing

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Eco-Friendly Lower your

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

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THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

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IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

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Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

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1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

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Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 8: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983097

Your new book Do It Like A Woman

includes a female fighter pilot in Afghanistan a Chilean revolutionaryand Pussy Riot among others Did anyof the women in the book jump out andmake you think ldquoyeah you rockrdquoFelicity Aston is probably the one I wasmost blown away by Her research stint

in the Arctic was such an incredible featof endurance for anyone man or woman

Women are often framed culturally asbeing incapable of doing things for our-

selves Also it was psychologically sochallenging having to avoid crevasses

andhellip Irsquom really sorry Irsquom struggling with

words today I went to a gig last night andmy brainrsquos just not on it apparentlyGood gigIt was a friend of mine I ended up drinkinga lot of vodka diet cokes and itrsquos just not

working out well for me today Well on we shall soldier The book hasbeen compared to Sheryl Sandbergrsquos

Lean In but that broadly encouragedwomen to play men by their own rules

What do you make of that ideaFirst I think that Sandbergrsquos book hasbeen unfairly represented in many places

But one of the reasons I chose that title

for my book was to counter the idea thatwomen need to do things like men There

is a way that men are supposed to behaveand a way that women are supposed tobehave which is seen as inferior But

actually many female attributes like

being caring or having emotions aregood positive humanhellip God I canrsquot speaktoday Whatrsquos the word Irsquom looking for

Things that humans haveFaculties CapabilitiesYeah maybe that Human capabilities Idonrsquot know Anyway sohellip fuck Irsquove lost

the thread of what I was saying again Irsquomso sorry this is a car crash

Haha no itrsquos not reallyI think the problem is your questions are

really hard I thought yoursquod ask easy thingslike ldquowhat do you have for breakfastrdquo and

ldquowhorsquos your favourite dogrdquoMoving on whorsquos your favourite dog

Ahaha obviously my dog Poppy Shersquossitting on me right now Shersquos a mongrelKing Charles jack russell chihuahua

Due to your dadrsquos work in the retailindustry you grew up all over the worldHow do you think that shaped youGrowing up I didnrsquot enjoy it I didnrsquot like

having to leave school every three yearsand having to make new friends But look-

ing back I think it was incredibly goodtraining You constantly have to walk into

rooms where you donrsquot know anyone Ithink also itrsquoshellip [long sigh] Irsquove forgotten

what I was going to say Is this the worstinterview yoursquove ever done

No no Irsquom enjoying it Yoursquove becomea public face of feminism Could youhave predicted that 10 years agoIf I went back 10 years I probably wouldhave thought the day before doing an

interview donrsquot go out and get absolutelysmashed But no I de1047297nitely did not plan

any of this Irsquom terrible at planning I tendto do things on emotion and instinct If

I start a campaign itrsquos not because Irsquovethought carefully about it Itrsquos just some-

thing thatrsquos pissed me offDo you feel you had the last laugh on

your Twitter abusers as it ultimatelygranted you a bigger platform

Itrsquos deliciously ironic in that they weretrying to silence me and they ended

up giving me a bigger voice So yeahthanks guys who tried to shut me up by

threatening to rape me ndash that didnrsquot reallywork out very well for you did itSo what do you have for breakfastSeriously I was joking Well thismorning the only thing that got me

out of bed was thinking about having anultimate halloumi roll at my local cafeacute I

had that and a massive cappuccino Itrsquosnot what I have every morning That

would be extravagant wouldnrsquot it micro

BIOGRAPHY

Born in BrazilCaroline Criado-Perez OBE

983091983089 is a Britishfeminist activistand writer who

campaigns amongother things to

improve womenrsquosrepresentation in

the media In 983090983089983091after challenging

the Bank ofEnglandrsquos decisionto replace the only

woman picturedon banknotes

Elizabeth Fry witha man she foundherself subject to

numerous rape anddeath threats onTwitter Her newbook lsquoDo It LikeA Womanhellip and

Change the Worldrsquois published by

Portobello pricedpound983096983097983097

partpart Irsquom terribleat planning

I do things onemotion and

instinct

sumsum

Caroline

Criado-PerezThe campaigner on her peripatetic childhood whywomen donrsquot need to do things like men and how she wishes shersquod taken it a bit easier last night

INTERVIEW BY OSCAR QUINE

PORTRAIT BY CLARE HEWITT

THE CONVERSATION

The Front Pages

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983089983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

WilliamShakespeare

died on 23 April 1616 Four centuries

on hisunderstandingof what it means

to be human

has never beenmore importantto the world

In this special

issue wecelebratehis genius

Professor Ewan Fernie gves a seminar at the Shakespeare Institu

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 1840

KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

ldquo Itrsquos like having a

brand new pair of eyes rdquo Ms Sherliker Surrey

Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

you back crystal clear clarity

Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

the purity of light and as our name implies we take it

rather seriously So much so we design and build ourreading and task lights like no other Whilst other lightsrely on aesthetics for their appeal rather than light output

our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

of light in their reading lights and itrsquos this that gives themtheir incredible clarity and brightness So much so theyrsquore

used by surgeons forensic scientists and fine art restorersndash in fact anyone who needs to see clearly and accurately

The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Boosts the

power of yourshower andsaves money too

Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

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Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Page 9: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983097

Your new book Do It Like A Woman

includes a female fighter pilot in Afghanistan a Chilean revolutionaryand Pussy Riot among others Did anyof the women in the book jump out andmake you think ldquoyeah you rockrdquoFelicity Aston is probably the one I wasmost blown away by Her research stint

in the Arctic was such an incredible featof endurance for anyone man or woman

Women are often framed culturally asbeing incapable of doing things for our-

selves Also it was psychologically sochallenging having to avoid crevasses

andhellip Irsquom really sorry Irsquom struggling with

words today I went to a gig last night andmy brainrsquos just not on it apparentlyGood gigIt was a friend of mine I ended up drinkinga lot of vodka diet cokes and itrsquos just not

working out well for me today Well on we shall soldier The book hasbeen compared to Sheryl Sandbergrsquos

Lean In but that broadly encouragedwomen to play men by their own rules

What do you make of that ideaFirst I think that Sandbergrsquos book hasbeen unfairly represented in many places

But one of the reasons I chose that title

for my book was to counter the idea thatwomen need to do things like men There

is a way that men are supposed to behaveand a way that women are supposed tobehave which is seen as inferior But

actually many female attributes like

being caring or having emotions aregood positive humanhellip God I canrsquot speaktoday Whatrsquos the word Irsquom looking for

Things that humans haveFaculties CapabilitiesYeah maybe that Human capabilities Idonrsquot know Anyway sohellip fuck Irsquove lost

the thread of what I was saying again Irsquomso sorry this is a car crash

Haha no itrsquos not reallyI think the problem is your questions are

really hard I thought yoursquod ask easy thingslike ldquowhat do you have for breakfastrdquo and

ldquowhorsquos your favourite dogrdquoMoving on whorsquos your favourite dog

Ahaha obviously my dog Poppy Shersquossitting on me right now Shersquos a mongrelKing Charles jack russell chihuahua

Due to your dadrsquos work in the retailindustry you grew up all over the worldHow do you think that shaped youGrowing up I didnrsquot enjoy it I didnrsquot like

having to leave school every three yearsand having to make new friends But look-

ing back I think it was incredibly goodtraining You constantly have to walk into

rooms where you donrsquot know anyone Ithink also itrsquoshellip [long sigh] Irsquove forgotten

what I was going to say Is this the worstinterview yoursquove ever done

No no Irsquom enjoying it Yoursquove becomea public face of feminism Could youhave predicted that 10 years agoIf I went back 10 years I probably wouldhave thought the day before doing an

interview donrsquot go out and get absolutelysmashed But no I de1047297nitely did not plan

any of this Irsquom terrible at planning I tendto do things on emotion and instinct If

I start a campaign itrsquos not because Irsquovethought carefully about it Itrsquos just some-

thing thatrsquos pissed me offDo you feel you had the last laugh on

your Twitter abusers as it ultimatelygranted you a bigger platform

Itrsquos deliciously ironic in that they weretrying to silence me and they ended

up giving me a bigger voice So yeahthanks guys who tried to shut me up by

threatening to rape me ndash that didnrsquot reallywork out very well for you did itSo what do you have for breakfastSeriously I was joking Well thismorning the only thing that got me

out of bed was thinking about having anultimate halloumi roll at my local cafeacute I

had that and a massive cappuccino Itrsquosnot what I have every morning That

would be extravagant wouldnrsquot it micro

BIOGRAPHY

Born in BrazilCaroline Criado-Perez OBE

983091983089 is a Britishfeminist activistand writer who

campaigns amongother things to

improve womenrsquosrepresentation in

the media In 983090983089983091after challenging

the Bank ofEnglandrsquos decisionto replace the only

woman picturedon banknotes

Elizabeth Fry witha man she foundherself subject to

numerous rape anddeath threats onTwitter Her newbook lsquoDo It LikeA Womanhellip and

Change the Worldrsquois published by

Portobello pricedpound983096983097983097

partpart Irsquom terribleat planning

I do things onemotion and

instinct

sumsum

Caroline

Criado-PerezThe campaigner on her peripatetic childhood whywomen donrsquot need to do things like men and how she wishes shersquod taken it a bit easier last night

INTERVIEW BY OSCAR QUINE

PORTRAIT BY CLARE HEWITT

THE CONVERSATION

The Front Pages

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983089983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

WilliamShakespeare

died on 23 April 1616 Four centuries

on hisunderstandingof what it means

to be human

has never beenmore importantto the world

In this special

issue wecelebratehis genius

Professor Ewan Fernie gves a seminar at the Shakespeare Institu

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

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httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

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The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Page 10: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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983089983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

WilliamShakespeare

died on 23 April 1616 Four centuries

on hisunderstandingof what it means

to be human

has never beenmore importantto the world

In this special

issue wecelebratehis genius

Professor Ewan Fernie gves a seminar at the Shakespeare Institu

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2040

983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3440

Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

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Simply replaces your existing

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Eco-Friendly Lower your

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

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THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

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Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

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1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Page 11: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983089

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW FOX

KEEPERS

OF THE

NAME Nobody lives and breathesShakesepeare quitelike the scholars of theShakespeare Institute inStratford-upon-Avon

But what do they actuallydo Thea Lenarduzzi

pays them a visit

Ahush descends on the room as

it awaits the results of a hotlyanticipated ballot and a middle-aged

man in a black shirt and grey trouserssteps up to the lectern to address the

hundred or so people gathered in front ofhim He clears his throat Someone drops

a notepad A shoe squeaks against thepolished parquet 1047298oor Beneath the hallrsquos

dark oak gables the tension mountsLet America keep its gaudy primaries

this is Stratford-upon-Avon and Dr Mar-tin Wiggins senior lecturer and fellow of

the University of Birminghamrsquos Shake-speare Institute is about to reveal the

names of 1047297ve people who will each takea place in the Bardrsquos birthday processionaround the town next month

Wiggins who is 55 is joined at thefront by an ldquoultra-glamorous assistantrdquo

Professor Ewan Fernie one of the in-stitutersquos newer recruits headhunted

in 2011 (ldquoThough lsquoheadhuntedrsquo mightsound unusually contemporary in the

contextrdquo he concedes) Every inch themodern Shakespearean in leather jacket

jeans and a Renaissance-inspired goateeFernie who is 44 plucks pieces of paper

from glass bowls and reads names aloudto the accompaniment of whoops and

cheers conjuring images of FA Cupdraws and small-town tombolas

The audience ndash a hotchpotch of scholarsand members of the public ndash is right tobe excited This yearrsquos celebration will

be the grandest yet marking 400 yearssince the playwrightrsquos death in the par-

ish on 23 April (also his estimated dateof birth in 1564) There will be concerts

at the Barbican a new poem by the PoetLaureate and the 1047297rst performance in

more than 200 years of David Garrickrsquos gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 1840

KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2040

983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

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Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

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No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

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bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

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Page 12: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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983089983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

still has an office at the trust in which

he can be found writing most of the timewhen he isnrsquot lecturing somewhererdquo

says Dobson For many Wells embod-ies the kind of generous and benevolent

elder statesman who might have madeall the difference in one of Shakespearersquos

tragedies ndash one might compare him to

the grey-haired Lafeu in Allrsquos Well Tat Ends Well an unwavering proponent ofhonour and charity He still gives at least

one guest class every academic year andis often consulted by the institutersquos stu-

dents about their research projectsThe Shakespeare Institute was found-

ed 65 years ago by the theatre historian

Allardyce Nicoll with the intention ofcreating a ldquoShakespeare universityrdquo for

students and the public which woulddraw together the resources of the local

Royal Shakespeare Company theatreand the libraries at the University of

Birmingham and the Birthplace TrustThankfully Mason Croft had already

been bequeathed to the townspeoplein 1924 ldquofor the promotion of science

literature and musicrdquo by resident ec-centric Marie Corelli a popular novelist

and failed performer (The latter mayhave something to do with her caveat

that ldquoall persons connected with thestagerdquo be excluded a condition happilynot met today) Nicoll secured 1047297nance

from a local businessman an heir to theMcVitiersquos biscuit empire ndash because the

institute then as now received no directgovernment funding

ldquoSince the beginning itrsquos been a ques-tion of public campaigningrdquo says Dob-

son ldquoI spend a lot of time worrying overbudgets rather than textsrdquo he adds ab-

sentmindedly stroking a statuette just inreach (ldquosold to my father as Shakespeare

although it turned out to be the Italianpoet Tasso ndash whorsquos got better hairrdquo)

The institute is part of the Universityof Birmingham he explains so it doesnrsquot

have trustees or an independent budgetldquoI get wheeled out to show potentialdonors to the university how valuable

and expensive the institute is but if theydo cough up their donations go into a

central university fundrdquoA purpose-built research library came

in 1996 the result of a campaign led by Judi Dench who cut the ribbon The

modern building juts out of the back of gt

partpartTe other day I was asked

how one might go aboutsetting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

all-s inging al l-dancing Ode toShakespeare with readings by the actorSamuel West broadcast live on Radio 3

And the Shakespeare Institute is atthe heart of it all feeding an eclectic

hydra-like body of events including amajor art exhibition (at Compton Ver-

ney gallery in Warwickshire) the BritishFilm Institutersquos Indian Shakespeare onScreen season (featuring director Vishal

Bhardwaj ldquothe Indian Spielbergrdquo) andthe long-awaited unveiling just down the

road of The Other Place a 200-seat stu-dio theatre that originally opened in 1974

and has been undergoing renovationNot to mention the World Shakespeare

Congress in July ndash a week-long programmesplit between Stratford and London

ndash which as Professor Michael Dobsondirector of the institute (or in his words

ldquotheatre-goer and failed actorrdquo) explainspresents the ldquowonderful logistical chal-

lenge of getting 800 academics on buseson timerdquo Itrsquos a real worry he half jokes inhis sun-drenched office at Mason Croft

the 18th-century townhouse where theinstitute is headquartered ldquoBut thatrsquos

one of the great things about my job Irsquomperpetually doing things for which I am

absolutely not trained I get the mostextraordinary emails Just the other day I

was asked how one might go about settingthe sonnets to Brazilian drummingrdquo

Dobson whorsquos 55 leans forward hold-ing up his hands in a gesture somewhere

between that of a saintly supplicant andone carrying a loaded tea tray ldquoPeople

see the word Shakespeare by your nameand presume you must have the answerrdquo

Which is fair enough really because ndash be-tween the institutersquos seven professorsand fellows two full-time librarians as-

sociated academics and honorary fellowsndash every trust with the word Shakespeare

in it can be traced to this unimposing ter-race on Church Street about halfway be-

tween the house where the Bard was bornand the church where he is buried

No other body in the world representsquite such a concentration of Shakespeare

thinking as this institute Nowhere elsewill you 1047297nd a group of people who live

and breathe Shakespeare to such an all-consuming extent Former directors in-

clude esteemed academics such as Profes-sors Kate McLuskie and Russell Jackson

(among other things textual adviser toKenneth Branagh who is an honoraryfellow) and Professor Stanley Wells

who retired in 1998 but stayed nearbybecoming president and then honorary

president of the Birthplace Trust (Shake-spearersquos 1047297rst home where three of his

earliest printed texts are held)Now 86 Wells shows no signs of

swapping the stage for the stalls ldquoHe

ABOVE Michael Dobson thedirector of theShakespeare Institute inhis office BELOW MasonCroft theinstitutersquosStratfordheadquarters

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 1840

KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

ldquo Itrsquos like having a

brand new pair of eyes rdquo Ms Sherliker Surrey

Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

you back crystal clear clarity

Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

the purity of light and as our name implies we take it

rather seriously So much so we design and build ourreading and task lights like no other Whilst other lightsrely on aesthetics for their appeal rather than light output

our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

of light in their reading lights and itrsquos this that gives themtheir incredible clarity and brightness So much so theyrsquore

used by surgeons forensic scientists and fine art restorersndash in fact anyone who needs to see clearly and accurately

The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Boosts the

power of yourshower andsaves money too

Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Page 13: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

ldquo Itrsquos like having a

brand new pair of eyes rdquo Ms Sherliker Surrey

Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

you back crystal clear clarity

Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

the purity of light and as our name implies we take it

rather seriously So much so we design and build ourreading and task lights like no other Whilst other lightsrely on aesthetics for their appeal rather than light output

our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

of light in their reading lights and itrsquos this that gives themtheir incredible clarity and brightness So much so theyrsquore

used by surgeons forensic scientists and fine art restorersndash in fact anyone who needs to see clearly and accurately

The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Boosts the

power of yourshower andsaves money too

Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

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bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

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bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

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Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Page 14: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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983089983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

the old house into a garden now carpeted

with lilac crocuses They do well to seizetheir chance ndash in the summer these

lawns will be trampled by the InstitutePlayers whose outdoor performancesof the works of Shakespeare as well as

other Renaissance playwrights never

fail to draw crowdsThe library now holds a collection of

about 60000 volumes (including 3000

early 17th-century printed and rare books)newspaper clippings manuscripts and

recordings ldquoWhen you add our library tothose at the university and the Birthplace

Trustrdquo explains Karin Brown who hasmanaged the library for 10 years ldquowersquore

the second biggest Shakespeare libraryin the worldrdquo (The Folger in Washington

DC comes top ndash ldquobecause theyrsquove gotmoneyrdquo she says)

For Brown whorsquos 45 with brown curlsfalling around her shoulders the per-

formance archive is ldquoone of our greatesttreasuresrdquo In a cramped attic room arebox after box of annotated film scripts

assistant directorsrsquo prompt books andnotebooks ldquoWe have an early draft of

Baz Luhrmannrsquos Romeo + Juliet andscripts from Michael Powellrsquos never-

realised film of he empest rdquo Th atproject dates from the 1970s and would

have starred James MasonYou might also browse ndash members

of the public are granted access toondash scripts and storyboards for Branaghrsquos

1996 film of Hamlet which you couldcontrast with Samuel Westrsquos 2001 note-

books and theatre scripts for the samerole Between the unassuming covers

of Westrsquos notebook are pasted cartoonclippings of Batmanrsquos Joker (ldquoDonrsquot getee-ee-even get madrdquo) while his script

is criss-crossed with insights In Act 3 just before ldquoTo be or not to be that is

the questionrdquo West has jotted in heavypencil ldquoAnswer the question NEEDrdquo

and ldquoI canrsquot carry on the play until I sortthis outrdquo There are plenty of expletives

too ldquoHe uses the word lsquofuckrsquo a lot whichrdquosays Brown with a wry smile ldquoshows the

um passionate nature of his HamletrdquoldquoI want this to be the IMDB equiva-

lent for performancerdquo Brown explainsldquowith the whole thing digitised so that

everyone can share itrdquo But funding isscarce And donations of a non-mon-

etary sort remain essential West and theactor Jasper Britton are ldquoour great livingcontributorsrdquo Often she adds actors

donrsquot feel comfortable sharing the sortof soul-searching that goes into a role

ldquoNormally we have to wait until theyrsquoredead to get that kind of accessrdquo

ldquoWersquore all part of a communityrdquoWiggins emphasises sitting in an attic

study lined with books (A cake knife sits

on top of a copy of Tomas Middletonin Context ldquostill waiting to be claimedrdquoafter his Christmas dinner with stu-

dents) ldquoTherersquos a certain amount ofhelliprdquoIncubation ldquoYes but itrsquos not a hothouseand certainly not a sweat shop This is

the place where knowledge is made

That is our lsquoproductrsquordquo he explains withthe mischievous air of one all too awareof the increasing encroachment of busi-

ness into academiaShakespeare who rose to the top

of Londonrsquos thriving and potentiallylucrative theatre scene would surely

have empathised In those days thoughthe ldquoproductrdquo was drama and there was

a lot of it about ldquoItrsquos simply not a caseof one majestic river surrounded by

mudrdquo says Wiggins whose research

is concerned with the period from the

Reformation to the Revolution ndash ldquoabout110 years which produced around 2800

known plays of which Shakespearersquoswork represents less than 2 per cent

A very rewarding 2 per cent but 2 percent nonethelessrdquo

So how will Wiggins be markingShakespearersquos 400th ldquoEvery year we

perform the entire corpus of one personand this yearrdquo ndash he pauses briefly ndash ldquowersquoredoing Thomas Dekkerrdquo a lesser-known

contemporary of Shakespeare most ofwhose work has been lost ldquoFour hun-

dredhellip itrsquos just a numberrdquoItrsquos a sentiment that Dobson echoes

ndash to a degree ldquoThe 400 is importantbecause of what it enablesrdquo ndash in short

a network of ldquogigsrdquo around the worldldquoWeirdly Shakespeare doesnrsquot count as

foreign in other countries He was the

writer you couldnrsquot be seen to ban ndash sohe belongs to everybodyrdquo And how does

that shape the institutersquos remit ldquoWersquorean ideas lab a databaserdquo and long-distance learning is an ever greater part

of the day-to-day Seminars are now live-

streamed so that registered students cantake part wherever they are

Rather different then to the place

that Wells found when he arrived as astudent in 1958 ndash ldquothe whole place was

just crammed with booksrdquo (To be fairit still is) It was during Wellsrsquos 10-year

reign as director that the new librarycame about as well as the creation of the

chair of Shakespeare studies positionToday Wells and Do bson sit like

bookends to the institutersquos work pastand present ndash the one clean-shaven

the other grizzly-bearded both fans ofthe polo-neck in black and off-white

respectively As Wiggins says of theinstitutersquos own evolution ldquodifferentand yet the samerdquo

Wells had popped in for the Thursdayseminar ldquothe thrilling highlight of our

weekrdquo announces Dobson But now backin the main hall applause dispels any hint

of irony Ego too is left at the door and asFernie transitions from assistant ballotist

to leading man (ldquoPlease help yourselvesto the most off-putting handout ever

producedrdquo) esteemed former directorsand high-flying scholars sit alongside

students with pink hair and pensionerswith blue rinses In a lecture replete with

quips pop-culture references and evena tongue-twister (ldquoHegel-Garrick-Her-

rickrdquo) Fernie extols the radical inclu-sive ldquofreshnessrdquo of the Bardrsquos politicscelebrating his characters as proof of ldquothe

power in ourselves to be usedrdquo There isafter all he adds an established bond

between Shakespeare and democraticrevolutionaries just down the road at

their Stratford HQ the Suffragettes oncehung a banner above the entrance reading

ldquoTo Be or Not to Berdquo ndash what elseAnd it does feel decidedly democratic

as we move on to questions from theaudience (many being lecturers in their

own right) and finally drift out for re-freshments in Corellirsquos once-verdant

winter-garden now a simple commonroom Therersquos a cake sale to raise funds

one flapjack at a time for the Playersrsquosummer performances ldquoI did say wewere built on baked goods didnrsquot Irdquo

says Dobson Itrsquos democracy with a sweetslice of free-market capitalism then

ldquoThrough efforts to high thingsrdquo goesthe institutersquos motto and you could add

to that Friar Laurencersquos advice to theyoung upstart Romeo ldquoWisely and slow

They stumble that run fastrdquo 983221

partpartTe Suffragettes oncehung a banner at theirStratford HQ reading

lsquoo Be or Not to Bersquo

sumsum

Shakespeare Institute

Librarian Karin Brown in theattic archives ofthe Institute

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

ldquo Itrsquos like having a

brand new pair of eyes rdquo Ms Sherliker Surrey

Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

you back crystal clear clarity

Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

the purity of light and as our name implies we take it

rather seriously So much so we design and build ourreading and task lights like no other Whilst other lightsrely on aesthetics for their appeal rather than light output

our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

of light in their reading lights and itrsquos this that gives themtheir incredible clarity and brightness So much so theyrsquore

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Boosts the

power of yourshower andsaves money too

Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 15: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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brand new pair of eyes rdquo Ms Sherliker Surrey

Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

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TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Page 16: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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983089983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

From tryin to impress the grls as Kin Learto false beards that are just not up to the jobtherersquos no Shakespeare like a school Shakespeare

Actors and lsquoIndependentrsquo contributors look back

lsquoThe knifeflew out of itssheath Therewas a terrifiedgasp fromthe audiencersquoSAMANTHA BOND

PLAY MUCH ADO

AB OU T N OT HI NG

PART BEATRICE

This was the

late 1970s Iwas in my final

year and my westLondon gi r l s rsquoschool did Much Ado jointly with

the nearby boysrsquo school It had an

amazing teacher called Colin Turner whodirected all its plays ndash Hugh Grant Alan

Rickman and Mel Smith were among theboys who were directed by him

The Benedick who played opposite myBeatrice was a boy called Ed Pilkington

He went on to be a journalist We were agood match We were young and fearless

Itrsquos when yoursquore older that you start toworry about forgetting your lines

My parents were actors and my cos-tume had been worn by my mother in rep

before the war I remember her pulling itout of a trunk It was high-necked a rusty-gold colour and it had built-in bones so

you didnrsquot have to wear a corsetThe thing about Much Ado is that

therersquos hardly any verse so there wasnrsquotthat problem to overcome But I have this

theory that there is a Shakespeare side tothe brain He writes such glorious words

that they never leave you and when you

do the same play again even after many

years the words are still all thereSamantha Bondrsquos V film and staecareer includes playin Miss Moneypennyin four James Bond movies She stars in

the IV drama lsquoHome Firesrsquo the secondseries of which begns next month

JERE MY H ARDY

PLAY THE WINTERrsquoS TALE

PART MAMILLIUS

Iwas 14 and at

Farnham Col-lege in Surrey

What was weirdabout this produc-

tion was that it wasa joint pupils-staff

one Mamillius isa young prince the son of Leontes and

Hermione who were both played byteachers That made the whole thing

quite awkward I remember how an-other teacher ndash who wersquod nicknamed

ldquoPlugrdquo after the character in the BashStreet Kids ndash spent an entire perform-ance with his hand over his face because

his beard had fallen offI think I was suited to the role I was

small and quite precocious I was happyto have a go at acting but the lines were

confusing Te Winterrsquos ale is partly acomedy but like all Shakespearersquos com-

edies itrsquos not funny Still being in school Joan Bakewell (centre) as Hermia lsquoI wanted instantly to become a

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 1840

KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2040

983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2240

983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2540

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

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Jetstorm can save

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of litres of

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Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

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When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

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ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

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Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

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Going green without compromise

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A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

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Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

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The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

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bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

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Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 17: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983095

plays was quite cool and allowed you toshow off Later on we started putting onmusicals Michael Ball was in the yearbelow me which might have had some-thing to do with it But it wasnrsquot muchgood for me because I couldnrsquot singJeremy Hardyrsquos latest one-man showtours the country from next month

JOA N BA KE WE LL

PLAY A MIDS UMME R

NIGHTrsquoS DREAM

PART HERMIA

Hermia lovesL y s a n d e r

and by a trick of theplot is betrayed byhim I rememberthose early pangsof feigned unhap-

py love I must have been about 14 Iwas at Stockport High School for Girlsand the production was in the garden ofthe school annexe Our backdrop was awall of rhododendrons we waited in theshrubbery for our entrances

It was soon after the war and therewas no fancy fabric for our costumes Sothe maths teacher Miss Nichols paintedelaborate coloured designs on to black-out material At the dress rehearsal Iaccidentally spilled a jar of water on mycostume and the pattern ran I was mor-tified But Miss Nichols did some swiftrepairs and saved the day

I loved the play though I knew little ofdramatic convention I simply acceptedits convoluted story Hermia is small darkand passionate She refers to herself asldquodwarfishrdquo Her rival is Helena who istall and blonde When their rivalry is at

its height Hermia threatens ldquoI am notyet so low But that my nails can reachunto thine eyesrdquo Helena sums her upldquoOh when she is angry she is keen andshrewd She was a vixen when she wentto schoolrdquo The line always got a laugh

I loved the whole thing and wanted in-stantly to become an actress Later in thesixth form I played Malvolio in Twelfth Night It wasnrsquot such good castingJoan Bakewell is an author broadcasterand Labour peer Her latest book lsquoStopthe Clocksrsquo has just been published by Little Brown

IAN MACMILLANPLAY KING LEAR

PART KING LEAR

We were talk-ing about

repetition in liter-ature about how itworked for effectand Mr Brownm a g i s t e r i a l l y

bohemian in his green corduroy suit (do Irecall epaulettes I think I do) threw mea battered copy of King Lear and askedme to read the speech in which Lear gt

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2040

983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

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Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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Choose from

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3440

Save water energy and

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Jetstorm can save

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~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

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ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

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Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

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96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

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L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 18: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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KINDNESS

T H E T O U C H O F

Cloud Nine will donate pound10 plus VAT from the sale of each White Touch Iron to

Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrenrsquos Charity (registered charity no 1160024)

cloudninehaircom

AVAILABLE ONLINE

AND IN ALL GOOD SALONS

pound10

WILL BE DONATED

TO GOSH WITH

EVERY PURCHASE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2240

983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2540

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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brand new pair of eyes rdquo Ms Sherliker Surrey

Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

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Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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3430

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Page 19: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983089983097

School Shakespeare

famously utters the word ldquoNeverrdquo five

times like a hammer on the audiencersquosthin collective skull

This was 1971 and I was in the fifth format Wath Grammar School in South York-shire ndash motto Meliora Spectare (ldquoLook to

better thingsrdquo) I saw the reading as my

chance to impress the girls who were scat-tered around the room they saw me assomebody who was a bit daft a bit chub-

by a bit tousle-haired A bit of a nobodyIrsquod show them I held the book up in the

air looking briefly like the Statue of Lib-erty in a blazer I took a deep theatrical

breath Someone giggled I began I didthe five ldquoNeversrdquo each one like the beat

of a drum and then I carried on I just car-ried on I stomped up and down the room

saying the word ldquoNeverrdquo over and overagain I was looking to better things to a

life where girls would admire and fancyme for my daring and rebelliousness My

ldquoNeversrdquo piled up on the floorThe bell went I carried on Nevering

Everybody filed out past me the girls

avoiding my gaze Mr Brown applaudedslowly I finished with a flourish gave

the book back to Mr Brown and wentto the library

Ian McMillan is a poet and broadcaster

AR AB EL LA WE IR

PLAY MACBETH

PART A WITCH

It might be dif-

ferent thesedays but if you

were at school inthe 1970s and har-

boured ambitionsto be an actor then

you had to get ldquogood at Shakespearerdquo

Never mind if you were naturally at easeon stage or had a gift for comedy If you

couldnrsquot convey the Bardrsquos words then itfollowed that you just couldnrsquot act

Well guess what Turns out Shake-speare is not that easy to act believably

least of all if yoursquore 15 and have boysparties and the rest to think about Plus

Shakespeare isnrsquot written like most peo-ple talk so that makes it extra difficult

And then yoursquove got some poncey dramateacher getting all sarky when you canrsquot

stick to the iambic pentameter and youdonrsquot even know what it is anyway And

then they decide to mount the play yoursquoredoing for O-level Like Macbeth was anideal fit for a bunch of teenagers

I was at an all-girls school so again abit odd Frankly there is nothing more

likely to make a bunch of schoolgirls fallabout laughing than pretending to be

men especially soldiers I at least had afemale part ndash one of the three witches

One problem when yoursquore ldquodoing

Shakespearerdquo is that his words being

tricky somehow make you want to moveyour arms about And no one ever gives

you ldquoarm directionrdquo So you can quiteinstinctively gesticulate with one of

them and then itrsquoll be up there and youwonrsquot know how to get it back down

Never mind arcane text ndash limbs are

a whole other minefield to negotiateI opted for wrapping my arms around

myself in the hope of conveying brood-ing evil But in reality I just didnrsquot know

what else to do with them Clever ehNow thatrsquos doing Shakespeare

Arabella Weir is an author and actressShe stars in the upcoming BBC2 sitcomlsquoTwo Doors Downrsquo

TIM KEY

PLAY A MIDSU MMER

NIGHTrsquoS DREAMPART BOTTOM

My me mo -ries of play-

ing Bottom are

sketchy I was 17and thin I donned

a yellow GoldenWonder T-shirt

walking bootsand some kind of long brown coat for

the job The cool crowd got busy as thelovers while me and some other out-

casts took care of the funnies I hadnrsquotdone much before then so fair to say

it was out of Shakespearersquos pencil thatI got my first laughs on stage Is it a cli-

cheacute when a 17-year-old twonk cast asBottom is playing opposite the

17-year-old he fancies as Titania I assume it

must be Anyway I enjoyed those eveningsreclining on a cargo net with Annie Kelly

(we went for quite a grungy set withthings like tyres and ropes dotted about)And I enjoyed bouncing up and stamping

my Timberlands and doing the ldquoI have

had a most rare visionrdquo speechMy best friend was playing Lysander

and making the girls swoon He was

majestic in those days UnfortunatelyIrsquom about to go to his stag weekend in

Bucherest where Irsquom told I have to bringa shirt and proper shoes to get into the

ldquosuperclubsrdquo But back then he was nail-ing it Hopefully no footage will emerge

to disprove my theory that we were bothexcellent at Shakespeare and that the

show as a whole had the 142-strong homecrowd rolling in the Robinson Theatrersquos

two 10 metre-long aislesTim Key is an actor writer and poet

VIR GINI A I RO NS ID E

PLAY JULIUS CAESAR

PART BRUTUS

Iwas 13 when I

played half ofBrutus Angela

played the otherhalf And since

we were only per-forming half the

play anyway it wasnrsquot much of a partBut I still remember being wrapped in a

sheet (painstakingly draped with the aidof diagrams from a chapter in a history

book called ldquoHow to Wear a Togardquo )I was also issued with a knife to flourish

at the point when I had to declare ldquoWiththis I depart that as I slew my best loverfor the good of Rome I have the same

dagger for myself when it shall please mycountry to need my deathrdquo I produced

the dagger having been warned that Imust keep it in its sheath at all times even

when flourishing it I remember my alarmwhen it flew out of its sheath and I was left

brandishing the glittering thing above myhead There was a terrified gasp from the

audience of behatted mothers and evenI Brutus went a bit wobbly

Since thenhellip hmm I love readingShakespeare but performances are an-

other matter Itrsquos those pompous actorsrsquoreverential Shakespearean voices that

get me down I was tickled recently tohear that Tolstoy having read all the playsseveral times felt not only ldquono delight

but an irresistible repulsion and tediumrdquoAnd he concluded that Shakespearersquos

words had ldquonothing whatever in commonwith art and poetryrdquo and to top it all he

was ldquono artistrdquo Well itrsquos a view 983221Virginia Ironside is an author andlsquoIndependentrsquo columnist

partpart I enjoyed

stamping myTimberlandsand doing the

lsquoI have hada most rare

visionrsquo speech

sumsum

ABOVE Arabella Weir inher school

productionof lsquoMacbethrsquolsquoI wrapped my arms

round myself in thehope of conveyingbrooding evilrsquo

BELOWTim Key (on theright) as BottomlsquoMe and some otheroutcasts looked afterthe funniesrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2040

983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2540

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

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bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

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only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Do you find yourself

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3440

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Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

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takes under a minute with no

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Eco-Friendly Lower your

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

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delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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FREEFOR INDEPENDENT

MAGAZINE

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IN OUR FANTASTIC

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SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

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Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

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bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

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bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

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bull Escorted by an

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Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Page 20: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2040

983090983088 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

In Germany they claim him as one of theirown In Russia hersquos raw politics And missingthe jokes doesnrsquot seem to stop the Frenchloving him Our correspondents lift thecurtain on Shakespeare the global citizen

ALL THE

WORLDrsquoS

A STAGE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2240

983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3440

Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

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~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

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Simply replaces your existing

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Eco-Friendly Lower your

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

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THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

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NEW YEAR

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Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

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1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

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bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

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bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

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16 days fromonly pound1969pp

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bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 4040

Page 21: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983089

Moscow by Nadia Beard

In a small basement theatre in central

Moscow a group of casually dressedmen and women shuffle out in front of a

quiet audience Staring into the crowdthe actors spend the next hour and a

half in complete silence moving nowand again with choreographed purposewhile a script is projected on to a screen

behind them The play is a favourite among

Russians Hamlet As the scenes reach their climax the

actors remain expressionless changing

their postures only slightly as the scriptrolls on behind them Performed by one

of Russiarsquos most radical theatre groupsTeatrdoc this experimental version of

the play was created ldquoin reaction to ageneral fatigue from all sorts of interpre-

tationsrdquo the director says Hamlet like many of Shakespearersquos

plays has enjoyed countless stagings andmemorable film adaptations in Russia

since the works began being performedin the country in the 19th century But

the Bardrsquos work in Russia has chartedno ordinary course Performances ofShakespeare in Moscow in recent years

reveal a growing tendency among direc-tors to shun purist readings of the work

in favour of something more in the realmof the imagination

In the same week as Teatrdocrsquos stag-ing another Shakespeare performance

took place across town in Moscowrsquos SADtheatre Te Night of Shakespeare was a

new take on the playwrightrsquos work Thedirector having spent weeks carefully

selecting disparate scenes from a numberof Shakespearersquos plays had stitched them

together into one singular performanceThe result was a bizarre smattering of

Shakespearean themes performed byactors in animal masks under a dizzy-ing light It was another example of the

radical new take on Shakespeare thatMoscowrsquos theatre scene has to offer

Reimagining Shakespeare in Russiais a trend that goes back to the most

repressive era of Russiarsquos modern his-tory In the 1940s dogged by Stalinrsquos

devastating stranglehold on whatSoviet writers were allowed to produce

the writer Boris Pasternak was bannedfrom publishing his own work In what

became a creative lifeline that many saysaved him Pasternak turned to translat-

ing works of Shakespeare into Russianpouring his own creative flair into plays

and sonnets that some bilingual read-ers say surpass the original Far from aword-for-word rendering of the works

Pasternakrsquos translations of Shakespearewere flooded with the political mood of

the time They took on a context of theirown They became Russian

Shakespearersquos ldquoRussificationrdquo hasstrayed into film too Still considered

one of the best film adaptations of King

Lear Grigori Kozintsevrsquos 1971 black andwhite version is presented as a tale aboutthe ultimate vulnerability of a people to

the whim of their mad leader whichrecounted with Pasternakrsquos script and

Shostakovichrsquos score chimed with lifein Stalin-era Soviet Union

A Russian-British co-production of Measure for Measure performed last year

in Moscow carried similar resonanceonly this time it was with life in todayrsquos

Russia The production was imbued withso many Putin-era parallels that a morebiting portrait of contemporary Russia

would be difficult to imagine It showedthat Shakespearersquos use as a vehicle for

critiquing Russia lives onWhether itrsquos a translation of Hamlet

a music score for King Lear or a politi-cally minded performance of one of the

ldquoproblem playsrdquo Shakespearersquos workscontinue to be woven with the political

and cultural strands of contemporary lifeperformed with their essence still intact

but in a new Russian incarnation

Paris by John Lichfield

In 1792 as the post-revolutionary Terror

ragedOthello was booed in Paris Theaudience was shocked because Desde-mona had been murdered on stage in

defiance of classical dramatic decorumSixteen years earlier the French writer

and dramatist Voltaire dismissed Shake-spearersquos work as an ldquoenormous dung-

heaprdquo containing ldquoa few pearlsrdquoUntil the early 20th century Shake-

speare was mostly performed in Francein gallicised and classicised versions In

the standard Hamlet ndashversion franccedilaise ndash the Prince survived the mass killing in

the final act Shakespeare was regardedas compelling but uncouth He ignored

the classical dramatic unities of time andplace he muddled the tragic and comic

he included extravagant absurdities suchas ghosts and bears and handkerchiefs

Cross-Channel Bard-bashing is now a

thing of the past In terms of the numberof professional productions each year

Shakespeare is the most popular play-wright in France You might even say

that Shakespeare has become the mostpopular French dramatist

In 2014 a touring production of all gt

partpartTe productionrsquos many

Putin-era parallels makeit a biting portrait of

contemporary Russia

sumsum

FAR LEFJeremy Lopezas Romeo andSuliane Brahim

as Juliet duringrehearsals atthe Comeacutedie Franccedilaise 2015 ABOVE Akira KurosawarsquoslsquoTrone of Bloodrsquohis reworking oflsquoMacbethrsquo LEFYuri Yarvetstars in Grigori Kozintsevrsquos filmlsquoKing Learrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2540

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

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our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

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Simply replaces your existing

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takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 22: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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983090983090 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

three parts of Henry VI achieved hugecritical and popular success in theFrench provinces ndash despite lasting for

18 hoursEric Ruf is the head of the Comeacutedie

Franccedilaise Francersquos pre-eminentnational theatre company founded in

1680 in order to perform the great Frenchclassical drama of the 17th century He

is also the director of an excellent andimaginative production of Romeo andJuliet which is appearing at the ComeacutedieFranccedilaise until the end of May ldquoTo

play Shakespeare in French remains anenormous challengerdquo Ruf says ldquoWe

inevitably miss the full complexity of theoriginal language ndash and a great deal of

the humour All the same Shakespeareis now as much a part of the canon ofclassical drama in France as Corneille

or Racine or MoliegravererdquoIn the mid-19th century Franccedilois-

Victor Hugo the son of the Frenchwriter Victor Hugo translated all of

Shakespearersquos plays into French prose(while himself learning English in exile

in Guernsey) His work was intended tobe read not performed but it is used in

many Shakespeare productions in Francetoday In recent years the first success-

ful French blank-verse translations ofShakespeare plays have been written by

the scholar Jean-Michel DeacutepratsldquoYou have two choices when trans-

lating Shakespeare into Frenchrdquo Rufexplains ldquoYou can try to make the lan-guage as dense and many-layered as the

original or you can make it simple Thereare arguments for both but the complex

versions are sometimes so complex thatthe translators cannot always explain

what their texts meanrdquoRufrsquos production of Romeo and Juliet

set in 1930s Italy is based on the Franccedilois-

partpart For the 400th

anniversarythere are

events rightacross Italy

sumsum

World stage

have wooed Juliet by a little balcony inthe exquisite northern city of Verona

For the 400th anniversary there areevents and celebrations across Italy

including a series of lectures in the cityof Pesaro that concluded in February

with a look at Shakespeare adaptationson film Rome recently staged Ariel andCaliban an offbeat reimagining of Teempest in the underground HulaHooparts club in the capitalrsquos hip and grungy

Pigneto districtThatrsquos not to say that Italian fans of the

Bard such as Bruschetta wouldnrsquot like tosee Shakespeare read and seen by more

compatriots ldquoI got into Shakespeare 33years ago because I happened to be at the

Taormina film festival when it had its firstShakespeare conventionrdquo he says ldquoWe

donrsquot study it at school perhaps becausewe have Dante Alighieri But still Dante

couldnrsquot have been a playwrightrdquo

Berlin by ony Paterson

For the capital of a nation which claims

to have been the first to have reallyunderstood William Shakespeare Berlindoes not disappoint ndash even 400 years on

from the death of the BardThis month a star-studded production

of Macbeth opens at the cityrsquos acclaimedDeutsches theatre Just a few hundred

yards down the road at the Maxim Gorkitheatre a production of Othello is defy-

ing a withering thumbs-down from the

Victor Hugo translation ldquoWe are lucky

that Shakespeare was not just a great poetbut also a great dramatist and storytellerrdquo

Ruf says ldquoPatrice Cheacutereau [an acclaimedFrench director who died in 2013] toldme that to substitute for the music and

depth of Shakespearersquos English you

must emphasise the construction of hischaracters and their interaction I try tofollow that advicerdquo

Rome by Michael Day

TS Eliot said that ldquoDante andShakespeare divide the modern

world between them there is no thirdrdquoBut while in Britain Dante remains an

exotic mystery to all but the mostdedicated Italophiles the works of

Shakespeare regularly pop up in thea-tres around Italy

It may help that the Bardrsquos plays areconstantly being adapted for the screen

with famous actors and modern inter-pretations enabling people to connectwith the stories and characters as the

Oxford University Dante expert PeterHainsworth recently observed But

therersquos something else at work Dantersquosgreat poemTe Divine Comedy about the

authorrsquos trip through Hell Purgatory andParadise in Easter 1300 accompanied by

a dead poet Virgil while no less extraor-dinary than Shakespearersquos tales does

appear more arcane and dare we say it ina more atheist society less relevant

Italian artists and directors will how-ever with no prodding wax lyrical about

Shakespearersquos universal appeal Thisability to draw crowds in Italy was shown

by the successful adaptation of Hamlet in Milanrsquos Tieffe theatre which endedin February ldquoThis was a visually modern

and minimalist Hamlet rdquo the 54-year-olddirector Ninni Bruschetta tells me on the

eve of the final performance ldquoThe storyis everything It doesnrsquot need embellish-

ment Thatrsquos why Shakespeare remainspopular because the themes issues and

observations are central to all of usrdquoItalyrsquos continuing interest in Shake-

speare is one half of a reciprocatedfascination which saw the Bard set plays

in Ancient Rome Venice and Veronandash and led to the much discussed but

never substantiated idea that the Britishplaywright spent time in the bel paese

We do know that Elizabethan Englandregarded Italy both as the cradle of artmusic and literature and a hotbed of

political religious and sexual corrup-tion so itrsquos hardly surprising that Shake-

spearersquos interest was piquedBruschettarsquos first Shakespeare adapta-

tion was Julius Caesar And millions ofItalians and foreigners stop each year at

the spot where Romeo is designated to

ABOVE Tebalcony in Veronadesignated as theone where Julietwas wooed by Romeo

ABOVE LEF Eric Ruf headof the Comeacutedie Franccedilaise

A L A M Y G E T T Y A F P F A L K E N S T E I N F O T O

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 2640

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

ldquo Itrsquos like having a

brand new pair of eyes rdquo Ms Sherliker Surrey

Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

you back crystal clear clarity

Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

the purity of light and as our name implies we take it

rather seriously So much so we design and build ourreading and task lights like no other Whilst other lightsrely on aesthetics for their appeal rather than light output

our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

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~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

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Simply replaces your existing

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takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Boosts the

power of yourshower andsaves money too

Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 23: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983091

critics At the cityrsquos Vaganten Buumlhnetheatre a production team is hard at

it staging a 110-minute long comedyversion of the ldquoentire works of Shake-

spearerdquo while the capitalrsquos very ownShakespeare Company is currently

preparing to launch its annual summeroutdoor repertoire in June

London rarely offers such huge dollopsof Shakespeare to its theatre-going pub-lic Yet there are many more Shakespeare

plays staged in provincial theatres andby rep companies across Germany ldquoIn

German theatres every year is a Shake-speare yearrdquo is how the German Shake-

speare expert Tobias Doumlring puts itFamously generous state funding for

the arts only partially explains Germa-nyrsquos extraordinary enthusiasm for Shake-

speare It has been prevalent and unstint-ing for more than 200 years By the end of

the 19th century Germany had alreadyfounded the worldrsquos first Shakespeare

society in Weimar Not without some justification the novelist playwright and

literary critic Friedrich Theodor Vischerclaimed during the late 1880s ldquoWe cansay with pride that it was German intel-

lect which first recognised the nature ofShakespeare more deeplyrdquo

It was the German Enlightenmentchampioned by the nationrsquos literary

genius Goethe among others which setGermanyrsquos Shakespeare cult in motion

ldquoSince the 18th century the Germans

have used Shakespeare to understand

their own historyrdquo says Doumlring who isalso a former president of the German

Shakespeare society ldquoTime and again Hamlet has been used as a vehicle to ex-plain the nationrsquos turning pointsrdquo

The seal on Germanyrsquos longstanding

relationship with Shakespeare was setin 1833 with August Wilhelm Schlegelrsquostranslation of his works in which he took

the liberty of ldquoimprovingrdquo the originaltext with the upshot that ldquoTo be or not

to be that is the questionrdquo translates intoldquoSein oder Nichtsein das ist hier die

Fragerdquo Shakespeare experts on both sidesof the North Sea have long argued about

which version is the more powerfulHamletrsquos famous words (in German)

were even brought to bear during thefall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of

communist East Germany in 1989 TheEast German director Heiner Muumlllerrsquos

production of Hamlet was described as aldquorequiem for a staterdquo when it was staged afew months later in the spring of 1990

It was the celebrated 19th-centuryGerman playwright Gerhard Haupt-

mann who once insisted that ldquoShake-speare may have been born and buried

in England but Germany is the countryin which he truly livesrdquo

Tokyo by David McNeill

If you thought studying the Bard atschool was a struggle imagine trying to

filter his Elizabethan nuances inflectionsand puns though modern Japanese This

month a Tokyo theatre troop will evenperform Te (New) Merchant of Venice

entirely in the local dialect of Tohokuthe north-east coastal region devastatedby a tsunami earthquake and nuclear

accident exactly five years agoShakespeare has sunk deep roots in

Japan Julius Caesar was first trans-lated into Japanese way back in 1884

and Shakespearersquos work has been

performed here since the beginning ofthe last century The best-known troupes

today include the Tokyo ShakespeareCompany and The Shakespeare Com-pany Japan which performs the plays in

local dialect ldquobecause the original sounds

somewhat cold and distantrdquoThe Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

made one of the greatest of all Shakespear-

ean movies withTrone of Blood his takeon Macbeth He later followed it with Ran

based on King Lear Kurosawarsquos attractionto the Bard was not hard to understand

says Roger Pulvers a Japan-based play-wright and director Shakespearersquos world

resembled Japanrsquos Warring States period(1467-1603) ldquowhere internecine battles

ravaged the countryrdquoThose blood-drenched epics aside

Romeo and Juliet remains arguably themost popular Shakespeare play in Japan

says Nobuko Tanaka a Tokyo-based the-atre critic Young actors trying to showoff their talents love the main roles which

call for charisma good looks and theability to swoon and die beautifully

It was perhaps fitting then that whena faltering Shakespearean landmark

Tokyorsquos Globe theatre was saved by atitan of Japanese popular culture the tal-

ent agency Johnny amp Associates in 2002it was Romeo and Juliet that christened

the reopened venueThe agency has spawned a string of

pretty-boy bands since the 1960s andtrue to form the lead roles were played

by a pop star and an actress known main-ly for TV commercials Some especially

the stuffy purists who haunt the Englishdepartments of Japanese universitiesreacted with horror but Japanrsquos ability to

blend and meld Shakespearersquos musingsfor contemporary audiences 6000 miles

away stands out says Tanaka who spent10 years living in London ldquoI think there is

much more variety here than in EnglandTheatre groups often pick up the essence

of plays and adapt them by for examplemaking a dance version Itrsquos a unique

point of Japanese adaptationsrdquoLocal directors have also mixed Shake-

speare with traditional Japanese thea-tre such as Kyogen and Kabuki Tanaka

points out that the Kyogen actor MansaiNomurarsquosTe Comedy of Errors was per-

formed at the Globe in London 2001and Yukio Ninagawa perhaps Japanrsquosmost celebrated contemporary theatre

director created a Kabuki version ofwelfth Night which was performed at

the Barbican in 2009 The bottom linesays Stuart Varnam-Atkin a Tokyo-based

broadcaster and author is that ldquoWill isstill very much alive and well and thriving

in Japanese forms 400 years onrdquo 983221

partpartShakespearersquos

worldresemblesJapanrsquos

Warring States period

sumsum

BELOW August WilhelmSchlegel a 19th-century Germantranslator ofShakespearersquosworks

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

ldquo Itrsquos like having a

brand new pair of eyes rdquo Ms Sherliker Surrey

Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

you back crystal clear clarity

Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

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rather seriously So much so we design and build ourreading and task lights like no other Whilst other lightsrely on aesthetics for their appeal rather than light output

our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

of light in their reading lights and itrsquos this that gives themtheir incredible clarity and brightness So much so theyrsquore

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

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~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

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takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Boosts the

power of yourshower andsaves money too

Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 24: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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983090983092 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Cicely BerrylsquoShakespearesomehow wrote inthe rhythm of how people thinkrsquo

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

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Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Page 25: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983093

When even the greatestactors tackle Shakespearethey have to askthemselves how am I

supposed to speak this stuff Thatrsquos where thelegendary RSC voicecoach Cicely Berry comesin Oscar Quine meets her

Of the backstage cast of charactersin Shakespearean theatre over the

past six decades there are those preced-ed by their reputations ndash and then thereis Cicely Berry

The Royal Shakespeare Companyrsquos

first voice director she held the appoint-ment for an astonishing 45 years ndash from1969 to 2014 but she still contributes her

services ndash during which time she was asmuch feared as she was feted ldquoSo bloody

honest and so bloody demandingrdquo EmilyWatson said of her ldquoStraight out of cen-

tral casting a complete bloody tyrantrdquosaid Neil Kinnock whom she trained in

public speaking Irsquom told not to expectan easy interview a point driven home

when my idea to have Berry demonstratesome of the unconventional techniques

for which she is known is rejected Shersquosdone all that before Irsquom told and does

not wish to ldquoblow her own trumpetrdquoThanks in part to her idiosyncratic

ways Berryrsquos career has been marked

by a near-magical ability to unlock actorsrsquotrue voices One actor was instructed to

kick a beer can around the rehearsal roomwhile reciting his lines another to look

out of the window and draw what he sawas he spoke She has thus helped perfect

the vocal depth breadth and sibilance ofSean Connery Samuel L Jackson Helen

Hunt and many many moreWhile her accomplishments are

grand her physical presence is positivelydiminutive We meet in a very small side

office at The Other Place an RSC blackbox theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that

is currently undergoing renovationShe is sitting in a chair balancing herwalking stick across the cupped palms

of her hands In May she will turn 90As she reaches out a hand to shake mine

her face breaks out into a bright smilethat is most undragonlike

My slight anxiety at sitting face to gt

SOUNDADVICE

PORTRAIT BY ANDREW FOX

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3440

Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

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Simply replaces your existing

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Eco-Friendly Lower your

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

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THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

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Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

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1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 26: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

South Africa

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV474

Bruges by Eurostar Lake Garda Venice and Verona India and Nepal

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stations

bull Return standard classreserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return coach transferto your hotel

bull Three nights withbreakfast at a choice ofquality three four-staror four-star superiorhotels in superblocations in the heart ofthe old preserved town

bull Guided walking tourof historic Brugesarguably Europersquos mostperfectly preservedmedieval town

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Seven nights in achoice of excellentquality threefour and four-starsuperior hotels withbreakfast and dinner

bull Guided sightseeingtour of medievalVerona - the city ofShakespearersquos Romeoand Juliet plus a

wealth of Roman andRenaissance sites

bull Tour of the Dolomitesndash with some ofthe worldrsquos nestalpine scenery

bull Guided sightseeingtour of Venice perhapsthe planetrsquos mostenchanting city

bull Escorted by anexperiencedtour manager

Departing from November 2016 and February toOctober 2017

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Visit the major sightsof Old and New Delhi

bull See the breath-taking Taj Mahal

bull Spend two nightsin the fascinatingcity of Varanasi

bull Take one of the worldrsquosmost exciting ights

ndash to uniquely seeMt Everest and theHimalayas from the air

bull Take a once-in-a-lifetime elephant-backsafari through the lushforests of ChitwanNational Park

bull Visit Kathmandu

bull Stay in Pokhara

bull Escorted by ourexperienced tourmanager

A tour taking you into the very heart of South Africa exploring its unique historyamazing wildlife truly breath-taking scenery and vibrant cities all complementedby its excellent cuisine and wines Departing from May to November 2016 andJanuary to November 2017 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Staying in excellent quality three and four-star hotelswith breakfast two lunches and three dinners

bull Full day guided safari in the Kruger National Park

bull Tour of the legendary Zulu War battleelds of Isandlwana and Rorkersquos Drift

bull Stay in the heart of the Western Capersquos Winelands

bull Visits to the Cape of Good Hope and Johannesburgrsquos Apartheid Museum

bull Escorted by our experienced tour manager

On selected dates experience one of the worldrsquos most luxurious train journeys on Rovos Railrsquos three-day trip from Cape Town to Pretoria

Fully escorted tours

Four days fromonly pound199pp

Eight dayshalf-board from

only pound619pp

15 days fromonly pound2499pp

Sixteen days from only pound1799pp or 18 days from pound3499pp

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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L

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

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Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Page 27: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983095

face with this grande dame is compound-ed by my shaky grasp of the subject

matter courtesy of a largely uninter-

ested overstretched comprehensiveschool English department It seemsbest to address this elephant in the room

So straight off the bat what for Berry isthe big deal with Shakespeare Not to be

facetious ndash obviously there is one ndash but just to hear it in her own words

Berryrsquos response focuses unwaver-ingly on what she knows the component

sounds of Shakespearersquos language ldquoTheextraordinary thing about Shakespeare

is that he somehow wrote in the rhythmof how people thinkrdquo she says in a slow

measured voice ldquoIf you think aboutit the number of phrases in everyday

speech that come from Shakespeare isquite extraordinaryrdquo

This longevity she believes can

be credited to the perfect marriage ofsound and substance in Shakespearersquos

best phrasing ldquoSomehow all the soundsthat Shakespeare uses are integral to the

meaning Thatrsquos why you have to capturethe very sound of Shakespeare to fully

understand the feelings underneathrdquoAt moments when she struggles to

recall lines Berry will chastise herself fornot having brought ldquoher Shakespearerdquo

with her But here a quotation rolls offthe tongue ldquoItrsquos like a line of Opheliarsquos

Shersquos thinking of Hamlet after a dia-logue with him where he has been really

unfeeling to her and she says lsquoOh whata noble mind is here orsquoerthrownrsquo Shersquosabsolutely ravished by what shersquos been

through Those sounds ndash ooohh ndash reflectthat she is keening for him Itrsquos totally

subconsciousrdquoIf anyone knows the power that can

actors would think of the meaning theywere not aware of the sounds that were

being used and how those sounds af-

fect how they feel and how they thinkI began to just out of frustration reallyget actors to work on a speech and walk

around saying the speech meaning itthinking it through and kicking some-

thing or bumping into somebody ormaking things difficult to see how that

releases somehow another understand-ing of the language Because theyrsquore not

making it sound right theyrsquore reactingto what Irsquove asked them to dordquo

So has the sound of Shakespearechanged a great deal in her time ldquoYes

I think sordquo Berry says ldquoWhen I startedworking I think actors felt they had

to make it sound poetic and beautifulall the time Now we donrsquot want thatActors today have a very difficult job We

donrsquot want to hear Shakespeare spokenas it was even 20 years ago we want to

hear it spoken for now so that we canget involved in the stories that are still

happening in their different ways Andyet we still want all those sounds which

are integral to the meaning to comethrough Itrsquos a tricky mixrdquo

Here she defers to Edith Evans ndashone of the theatrical greats of the 20th

century ndash and her theory of poises ldquoShewould say therersquos never a pause in a Shake-

speare speech but there are poisesrdquo Berryexplains Poises are imperceptible

delays added to words to give them alittle more space and imbue them withadded tension It is an approach that sep-

arates rhythm from meter ldquoItrsquos not aboutgetting the sounds over by making them

sound beautifulrdquo Berry explains ldquoItrsquosabout giving them spacerdquo

ldquoWith actors I beat out a speechand see how the underlying meter is

always there Like it is if yoursquore singingreggae therersquos a beat underneath it ndash but

what you do on top of that beat can beanything You could do Shakespeare

reggae reallyrdquoAside from the mischievous notion of

fusing Bob Marley with the Bard Berry ishere breathing life into one of those most

hackneyed of phrases ldquoShakespeareis aliverdquo She is adamant that his playsremain universally relevant ldquoThe more

you work on Shakespeare the more yourealise he expresses very deep feelings

in all of us Itrsquos not to do with being edu-cated or clever or whatever that means

Itrsquos to do with a true understanding ofhow people think and how that makes

them act and do thingsrdquo 983221

be packed into the raw syllables ofShakespeare it is Berry Appointed by

Trevor Nunn she has honed the vocal

delivery of every RSC star going WhenI ask if there is anyone she wishes shehad worked with she replies with a wry

laugh ldquoNo not really I worked withthem allrdquo Despite official retirement

two years ago she says she still comesin to the RSC offices most days

Her extraordinary reputation is built

on an impressive legacy Berry forever

changed the way Shakespeare is spokenon stage Her revolutionary approach

was to teach that Shakespeare comes asmuch from the gut as the head A desire

to disconnect the primacy of the mindover the spoken language she says lies

behind her rehearsal techniquesldquoWhat I feel goes so wrong when peo-

ple are rehearsing anything but particu-larly Shakespeare is that you sit around

and read it as a cast You discuss all themeanings and it is sometimes quite dif-ficult to find the exact meaning But you

are making it literal all the time keepingit at the forefront of your mind

ldquoI began to realise that that had a hugeeffect on the sound itself While the

E L L I E

K U R T T Z

Berry inrehearsals at the RSC in 2008

partpart Actors used to feel they

had to sound poetic

and beautiful Nowwe donrsquot want that

sumsum

Cicely Berry

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

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our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

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takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 28: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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983090983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Imagine a worldwithout alliums

i m a g i n e f o o dprepared without

the sweetly pungentflavours of onions

shal lots leeks chives and garlic Not much fun is it

And luckily you donrsquot have to becausemost of us have an allium of some

description tucked away in the fridgeor larder Slowly cooked these kitchenstaples form the base of many a fine dish

from stews and soups to risottos pastasauces and quiches raw they add zing

and bite to salads and sandwichesIn the cold months onions can make

a comforting meal all on their own Iremember my grandmother boiling

onions straight from the garden in a

Know your onionsThe miraculous allium enhances many dishes and can even be a meal in itself

Food amp Drink

little stock then serving them with asauce made from the cooking liquid an

old ritual she performed to keeps coldsat bay Irsquove made many versions of this

dish over the years and a simple plateof onions grilled roasted or boiled can

be surprisingly delicious

LEEK AND CIDER WELSH RABBIT

SERVES 983092

This is a take on the classic Welsh rabbitndash yes itrsquos correctly spelled ldquorabbitrdquo incase you are wondering as thatrsquos what

it started off as in the early 1700s whenthere was a difference between English

Scottish and Welsh rabbits Maybe therarebit adaptation was a Welsh joke that

caught on or it was thought to soundmore sophisticated Anyway Welsh

rabbit is a refined cheese on toast with

savoury additions and in this case Irsquoveadded leeks and cider instead of stout

A couple of knobs of butter 1 medium leek trimmed halved finely shredded and well washed and dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper80ml cider 80ml double cream150g cheddar cheese grated 2 egg yolks 2tsp Worcester sauce1tsp English mustard 4 slices of bread ndash a small bloomer-styleloaf is ideal

Melt the butter in a heavy-based sauce-

pan and gently cook the leeks for 4-5minutes with a lid on until soft Season

them as they are cooking then drain in

ABOVE alliumbroth withdumplings

RIGHT leekand ciderWelsh rabbit

MARK HIX | FOOD

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

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L

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

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INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

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and energy use saving you

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Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

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Fast and easy universal

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Simply replaces your existing

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

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for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

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IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

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SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

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Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Page 29: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983090983097

DINNER PARTY

THREE TO TRY

NIGHT IN

SPLASH OUT

2014 Trebuchet Red

Western CapeA Bordeaux-style

blend of cabernet andmalbec this showscherryish aromastinged with herbal

notes pound799 or buy 6at pound599 Majestic

2014 Yabby Lake RedClaw Mornington

Peninsula Pinot NoirBright berry fruits andsubtle oak spice with

an elegant cool-climatefreshness

pound14 down from pound18Marks amp Spencer

2014 Sancerre LesBoucauds ClaudeGrapefruit zesty

fish-friendly bone-dryLoire Valley white

pound1649 ndash 1775 TheDrink Shop AG Wines

DVine Cellars

a colander and leave to cool Simmer thecider until it has reduced by half addthe cream and then reduce this by halfagain until it is really thick then leaveto cool Mix this together with the leeksand other ingredients except the breadand season to taste

Toast the bread on both sides thenspread the cheese mixture on top about1cm thick right out to the edges to stopthem burning Grill on a medium heatuntil the cheese is nicely browned

SALT AND VINEGAR ONIONS

SERVES 983092983085983094

These make a great side-order with asteak or burger but are also excellent asa tea-time snack to accompany a beer infront of the TV Itrsquos a way to use up anyonions you have around and the battermade with gluten-free flour really does

give them (and all sorts of other dishes)a crisp light coating

1 medium white onion peeled and cutinto rings 4 spring onions cut into 3-4 pieces1 medium red onion peeled halved withthe root removed and sliced 3-4tbsp malt vinegar 100g gluten-free self-raising flourfrac12tbsp onion or nigella seeds Enough cold water to form a pasteSalt and freshly ground black pepperVegetable or corn oil for deep frying Onion salt to serve

Put all the onions in a non-reactive bowlwith the vinegar cover with clingfilmand leave for a couple hours givingthem the occasional stir Drain well anddiscard the vinegar (or keep for anotherbatch or a dressing)

Next mix the flour and onionseeds with enough cold water to makea thick-ish batter then season and setaside to rest for half an hour

Heat about 8cm of oil to 160-180Cin a large thick-bottomed saucepan orelectric deep-fat fryer Test a piece ofonion in hot fat to ensure that the bat-

ter is the correct thickness and that theonions will cook up crisp and not stodgyAdjust the batter with more water orflour if needed

Cook the onions a handful at a timestirring with a slotted spoon as they arecooking until crisp and golden Whenall the batches are cooked scatter withonion salt and serve immediately

ALLIUM BROTH WITH DUMPLINGS

SERVES 983092

You can use any form of allium you wishfrom shallots to overgrown chives In

fact the more of a selection you put intothe broth the better really You couldeven pop in a clove of smoked garlic to

give it a little edge

For the broth 2-3 baby leeks or spring onions cut into 2-3cm lozenges and washed 1 small red onion peeled halved andthinly sliced A little vegetable or corn oil 15 litres vegetable stock A handful of wild garlic leaves roughlychopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dumplings125g self-raising flour

frac12tsp salt 60g suet 60g freshly grated parmesanWater to mix 2tbsp chopped chives

Cook the baby leeks in boiling saltedwater for a couple of minutes untiltender then drain and put to one sideIn a heavy-based saucepan gently cookthe red onions in a little vegetable oil for2-3 minutes without colouring then addthe stock and garlic leaves season andsimmer gently for 30 minutes

Meanwhile make the dumplings Sievethe flour into a bowl and add the salt Mixin the suet parmesan and chives thenenough water to form a sticky dough

Flour your hands to minimise stickingand roll the dough into 12 little ballsBring a pan of salted water to the boiland cook the dumplings for a minuteuntil just cooked then transfer to a bowlof cold water until required

To serve add the dumplings leeks andwild garlic to the pan of broth and sim-mer for a minute Re-season if necessaryand transfer to serving bowls 983221

On the face of it therersquos little to choosebetween Lidl and Aldi They are

both as German as schwarzbrot both dis-counters place value before beauty andboth represent serious threats to the BigFour Sainsburyrsquos Morrisons Asda andTesco Both have substantially upped thewine ante in the past couple of years withcredible ranges increasingly appreciatedby wine drinkers of all classes

Where they differ however is in theirapproach While Aldi maintains a strongno-frills range headed by its ExquisiteCollection label Lidlrsquos core range is

supplemented by its one-off foire-aux-vins-style seasonal ldquoCollectionsrdquo

Indicating at its most recent presstasting that itrsquos increasing the numberof its seasonal ranges Lidl showed bothits Easter Wine Collection on shelvessince Thursday and its April Wine Cellardue in store on 21 April Whites kickedoff with a fine rose-petal scented 2014Alto Adige Gewurztraminer pound799 anda rich off-dry honeydew melon-like 2013Neszmely Pinot Gris Hungary pound679

Finishing with a crisp dry flourisha rich buttery 2014 Montagny LesCarlins pound1199 is a more than respect-

able dry white burgundy while the Capedelivers an approachably juicy 2015Chenin Blanc-Viognier-RoussanneLa Meacuteridionale pound549 and Australia apleasingly floral citrus-zesty 2015 AxisClare Valley Riesling pound599

While spring may be in the airreds here are broadly speaking betterthan whites starting off with the darkcherry-fruity 2014 Lagrein Alto Adigepound799 an aromatic strawberryish 2014Morgon Vignerons du Vieux Tinaillerpound849 and a bright violet-scented 2012Bodega Tonel pound599 Mendoza

The 2014 Saint Joseph pound899 does

the northern Rhocircne spice and pep-per to perfection while its southernhemisphere counterpart a 2015Foremost Hawkes Bay Syrah pound899is a tad more pungently peppery with afine savoury fruit quality

Pick of the bunch are a stylishStEacutemilion-alike vanilla oaky 2012Lalande de Pomerol Chacircteau Jean deGue pound1499 and an exotic sweetiethe 2013 Tokaji Kesoi Arany Gra ndSelection Hungary pound899 half-litreoozing ginger-spicy pineapple with atoffee-apple richness 983221 F

O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J A S O N L O W E

Just a Lidl bitThe chainrsquos new range offers fine value

ANTHONY ROSE|WINE

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

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Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

fitting no tools required

Simply replaces your existing

showerhead in seconds ndash it

takes under a minute with no

tools and no plumbing required

Eco-Friendly Lower your

homersquos carbon footprint

The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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power of yourshower andsaves money too

Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

ABSOLUTELY FREEWAS pound4995 EACH

NEW YEAR

BUY 1 bull GET 1

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MAGAZINE

READERS

IN OUR FANTASTIC

NEW YEAR

GIVING YOU A TOTAL

SAVING OF pound6995

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

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bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

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Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Page 30: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

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Choose from

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Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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L

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

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When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

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~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

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If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

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Fast and easy universal

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Simply replaces your existing

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Eco-Friendly Lower your

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

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THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Address

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TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

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Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 31: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983089

Restaurants

Eat Me Cafeacute inScarborough

was first broughtto my attention

by a prominents o u t h e r n fo o d

writer who arrivedat our nearby home slightly breathless

and somewhat late for lunch ldquoSorryrdquoXanthe explained ldquoI had to call in to see

Martyn at the Eat Merdquo If itrsquos unusual fora backstreet cafeacute to attract the president

of the Guild of Food Writers the menuwhich incorporates Thai Mexican

Malay Japanese and Shetland elementsis equally exceptional

Winner of The Good Food Guidersquos

Best Cafeacute in the UK award in 2014the Eat Me faces the stage door of the

Stephen Joseph Theatre and displaysan appropriately theatrical eacutelan in its

deacutecor Overlooked by the sultry gaze ofTretchikoffrsquosGreen Lady the dining area

was populated by the customary coffee-bar clientele of mothers with pushchairs

freelancers tapping at Apples tattoo-sleeved hipsters and hangover victims

downing double espressos There werelots of beards The coffee was notably ex-

cellent (ldquoOur own blend You wonrsquot findit anywhere elserdquo declares the menu)

and the teapots were protected fromthe northern chill by colourful cosiesOddly considering the name there was

no sign of Alice in Wonderland The global menu results (in part at

least) from the off-season globetrottingof owners Martyn Hyde and Stephen

Dinardo who happened to be in Thailandat the time of our visit After a brief wait

for a table at lunchtime my wife and Ibegan our culinary circumnavigation in

Mexico At least I think thatrsquos the homeof dirty eggs which turned out to be a

small mountain of scrambled eggs incor-porating potato and chorizo Arriving on

a great doorstep of toast itrsquos the kind ofthing we all could make ndash but itrsquos nice to

have it done for you and in such generousquantities Just the ticket for a morninghead Next we were off to Malaysia for

one of the daily specials a satay burgerin a first-rate brioche bun Fillings were

beef chicken or veggie Chicken provedto be a chunk of breadcrumbed breast

over an inch deep and topped by a gener-ous dollop of peanut sauce

The most unexpected element on the

menu Shetland broch pie was explained

by our waitress Serena ldquoStephen comesfrom thererdquo Presumably named after the

prehistoric towers that it resembles thisproved to be a supercharged cottage pie

The mince contained tasty cubes of swede(or if you prefer neep) while the mash

was bolstered by spring onions like theIrish dish champ Simple enough but mymouth is watering madly as I type these

words The accompanying brown paperbag of chips twice-fried and so sweet

might have been superfluous ndash thoughthey all disappeared ldquoI donrsquot normally

like chips but I canrsquot resist theserdquo saidmy wife popping another away

Amid tough competition a Thai fishcurry pleasingly presented in a little

enamelled rice-pudding tin proved thewinner Made with a close-flaked fish

called pangasius farmed in the rivers ofSouth-east Asia it was the best marine

dish Irsquove had in a long time Seduced byits finesse and subtle prickle of heat my

wife declared ldquoI pronounce that verygood indeedrdquo For once I couldnrsquot objectthat the cafeacute wasnrsquot using local fish Itrsquos

not just me who has a taste for pangasiusAccording to Wikipedia itrsquos the sixth

most consumed seafood in the US The only disappointment at Eat Me

concerned the simplest of dishes Welshrabbit was characterless and unassertive

(a pinch of cayenne would have done it

Scarborough fayre In the shadow of a noted theatre centre stae is taken by gant cakes Shetland pie and Thai curry

the world of good) Even here the ac-

companying salads (potato ldquohomeslawrdquoand carrot and nigella seed) were a

crunchy redemptionDespite wildly over-ordering the

mains we could not ignore the displaythat for many diners is the raison drsquoetre of

Eat Me These are the cakes supplied dailyby ldquoSue the cake ladyrdquo A refrigerated cab-inet was thronged with lemon meringue

blackberry cheesecake Mississippi mudpie cherry and almond tart and banoffee

pie while on the counter stood threecakes of monumental proportions

Victoria sponge coffee and walnut andcarrot Suersquos Victoria sponge was light

and bouncy if an inappropriately tall(fully six inches) tribute to the diminu-

tive monarch while the cheesecake bal-anced lipids and fruit in a very happy final

mouthful (Not quite final to be honestThe Eat Me quantities are so generous

that doggy bags were called for)As the lunchtime crowd was replaced

by the afternoon tea influx the back-ground music (First Aid Kit) gave wayto sounds more familiar to ageing bohos

ldquoTo dance beneath the diamond skywith one hand waving freerdquo wheezed

Bob Dylan Through the condensa-tion-streaked windows Scarboroughrsquos

homely Hanover Street briefly becameBleecker Street in Greenwich Village

around 1965 983221

partpartChips witha cottage pie

may have beensuperfluousndash but they alldisappeared

sumsum

EAT ME CAFEacute

983090 Hanover RoadScarborough

YO983089983089 983089LS(983088983095983092983092983093 983092983095983093983091983090983096)

Around pound6-pound15a head for lunch

(no wine)

Food 983221983221983221983221983221

Ambience

983221983221983221983221983221

Service 983221983221983221983221983221

CHRISTOPHER HIRST

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

any length of time

Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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Choose from

Standard or

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Revolutionary reading light gives

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Serious Readers is a British company totally dedicated to

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our total focus is on performance

TVs arenrsquot the only technology to use high definition

Serious Readers are the only company to use highdefinition light technology to project the whole spectrum

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The smaller the text the greater the clarity

Small text is a test for both light and eye and with aSerious Readers Light this is where yoursquoll really noticethe difference Everything looks sharper clearer easier to

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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L

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3440

Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

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and refreshing spa-like shower

Fast and easy universal

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Simply replaces your existing

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Eco-Friendly Lower your

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

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for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

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Address

Postcode

Email

TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

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bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

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16 days fromonly pound1969pp

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bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

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bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

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bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

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bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

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bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

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Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Page 32: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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Do you find yourself

struggling to read for

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Exclusive offer for readers of The Independent Magazine

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Choose from

Standard or

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T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

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Jetstorm can save

your home

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of litres of

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Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

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When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

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ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

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Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

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The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

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ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

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A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

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The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

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983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

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OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

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Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

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The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

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bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

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Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

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Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

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Page 33: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983091

My hair has always been thickIndeed my sister teases me

about a bob I had when I was younger

that at its bottom was the width of herhand Louise Brooks I am not Once Ihit my teens I learnt a good blow-drying

technique and that skill coupled witha Parlux hairdryer canrsquot be beaten for

tonsorial tamingBut still I would regularly bemoan my

abundance of hair ndash until about a year agowhen I noticed that my hitherto profuse

locks were actually on the wane My scalpwas showing a bit more than Irsquod like An

appointment with a Philip Kingsley tri-chologist later and I had a prescription

that should help stop the hair lossMine is a genetic form of alopecia but

many womenrsquos hair loss is the result ofstress or hormonal imbalance A protein-rich diet is important for hair growth

but good scalp care and the right stylingproducts can help hide any follicular

shortcomings ndash even if only cosmeti-cally ndash and help you feel confident rather

than self-conscious 983221

Beauty

REBECCA GONSALVES

DRESSING TABLE

This week hair thickening

Plumping creampound1850 PK Prep philipkingsleycouk This new lightweightcream is great for hairthat is fine or flyawaybecause it makes hairlook fuller withoutweighing it down

Thickening tonicpound19 avedacouk I use this heat-

activated spray onmy roots where itadds volume to thehair shaft and as if bymagic helps to hidethinning

Hair preservingshampoopound23 bumbleandbumblecouk Irsquom terrible aboutgetting regular trimsbut this range helpskeep my hair lookinghealthy Itrsquos good for

the scalp too

Beauty-Full volumepre-wash conditionerpound499 TRESemmeacutesuperdrugcomThis reverse-washsystem means thatexcess weight iswashed away andvolume styled in willstay put ndash great forfine hair

Volume amp Bouncendash Perfect FinishHairspraypound699 CharlesWorthingtonbootscomHairspray doesnrsquot haveto create a helmet anymore This medium-hold finishing sprayadds body and helpsstop styling falling flat

BEAUTY SPOT

I canrsquot recommend Parlux hairdryers highly enough Theyrsquore professional quality and far more robust than thosecheap brands that burn out in a year I have the 2800 version and would be lost without it (parluxcouk)

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

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Save water energy and

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Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

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year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

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When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

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~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

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If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

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and energy use saving you

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Eco-Friendly Lower your

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

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TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

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Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

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1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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6 1 5 5 2 3 5

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i f e s t y l e

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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3740

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3840

983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3940

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 4040

Page 34: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3440

Save water energy and

money Ecocamelrsquos

Jetstorm can save

your home

thousands

of litres of

water a

year

Boost the power of your shower with Ecocamel Jetstorm and start saving money water and energy instantly

ORDER TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS BUY 1 GET 1 FREE OFFER

To order call 020 8211 3666 or visit ecocamelcomIND5BUY 1 QUOTEGET 1 FREECODE IND5

When ordering by phone quote this discount code to claim your FREE Jetstorm

Or send completed order form toECOCAMEL Ltd

Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue

London N3 2JU

~ 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ~

Try the Jetstorm at home for 30 days

If you are dissatisfied for any reason

return to us for a full refund

ldquoOne of the simplest ways to make savings in your home

without changing your routinerdquo JUSTIN HARPER DAILY MAIL

Aircore technology saveswater by sucking air into theshowerhead and injectingeach droplet of water withmicroscopic air bubbles

JETSTORM from Ecocamelrsquosunique range of advancedshowerheads offers afull flow spa-like shower

by using the latest water- andenergy-saving technology

Going green without compromise

is the Ecocamel mantra and ourlsquonew generationrsquo showerheadsdeliver that promise The Jetstormoffers a refreshing spa-like showersaving water energy and moneyndash a truly innovative eco-device

A Great British InventionEcocamel showerheads deliverreal cost and energy savings TheJetstorm is a marvellous pieceof design Robin Whitfield ourBritish designer combined hisknowledge of carburettors withexisting injet technology to createthe Jetstorm ndash a patented systemof air intakes that make it one ofthe most efficient showerheadsever produced

Ecocamel Saves Energy When you use less water you needless energy to heat it resulting inreal energy bills savings Users are

saving hundreds and thousands oflitres of water each year

Power Shower ExperienceOne of the questions regularlyput to us is ldquoIf I am saving all that water isnrsquot the shower experienceseverely diminishedrdquo No In factthis is one of our greatest triumphsndash you enjoy a powerful refreshingspa-like shower experience And

you donrsquot have to ta ke our wordfor it An article in The SundayTelegraph said this about our

Jetstorm showerhe ad ldquo( Myhusband) grudgingly admits thenew model works better than theconventional showerhead so itrsquosstaying on the shower ndash much tomy and the household pursersquosdelightrdquo

Save Money

Save Water amp Save Energy

The equation is simple Less waterused=less energy to heat=lesscost The Jetstorm showerheadis most efficient at saving costsin homes with a water meter

shower heads examining bothflow rate and overall quality of the

experience GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

INSTITUTE concluded ldquohellipour

favourite is the Ecocamel Jetstorm

it felt powerful and invigoratingrdquo After a three mon th trial A lfa

Leisureplex installed Ecocamel

showerheads in all 1750 hotelrooms across their 20 hotels

ldquoAdding to the commercial ben efit

is the showering experiencehellip Ihighly recommend all hoteliersinvest similarlyrdquo said KarenSawbridge Operations Director

gravity fed systems of 05 bar andabove mains pressure systemsand pumped systems Jetstormis compatible with all showersystems including mains operatedmixers combi boilers powershowers and electric showersRecently featured on BBCs The

Apprentice Ecocamel wa s wellreceived by a leading UK retailer

As one contestant said ldquoThis is ano brainer It saves water energymoney and gives a good showerrdquo

A Great B usiness De cisionldquoI chose Ecocamel for two reasonsFirstly the savings I made Ecocamelshowerheads will save me over

pound4000 on energy and water costsper hotel annually Secondlythe showerhead gave a veryrefreshing experience which is

very important to our guestsrdquo Mr

T G General Manager The DaysInn Hotel Hyde Park

The VerdictFollowing a review of five different

ECOCAMELrsquoS INGENIOUS

JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD Revolutionar y Aircore Technology boosts

performance with lsquoair injectionrsquo

SIMPLY ATTACH AND SAVENO TOOLS NO PLUMBING

UNIVERSAL FITTING

INDEPENDENT TESTING at accreditedUK testing house verified Jetstormrsquosaverage water savings of 40 comparedto standard shower heads This translatesto a saving of around 56000 litres ofwater a year based on a family of fourtaking a daily seven-minute shower

THE JETSTORM BENEFITS SAVE MONEY Fitting a

Jetstorm helps cut your water

and energy use saving you

money on utility bills

Amazing lsquoPower Showerrsquo

Experience Enjoy a powerful

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Fast and easy universal

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takes under a minute with no

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Eco-Friendly Lower your

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The Jetstorm Guarantee

Try at home for 30 days If

you are anything less than

delighted simply return to us

for a full refund

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AIRCORE TECHNOLOGY

IndependentService Rating

96

NEW YEAR BUY 1 JETSTORM SHOWERHEAD amp GET 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

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Get one Jetstorm at the reducedprice of pound2995 and get a second

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TelephoneIf you do not wish to receive further Special Offers from us or from companies werecommend please tick this box

IND5Yes I want to start saving water energy and money instantly

I enclose a ChequePO made payable to Ecocamel Ltd or pay by creditdebit card

Card No |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ | |__ |__ |__ |__ |Start Exp SecurityDate |__ |__ |__ |__ | Date |__ |__ |__ |__ | Code |__ |__ |__ |

Signature|_______________________ |Send to ECOCAMEL Ltd Dephna House 24-26 Arcadia Avenue London N3 2JU

LAST CHANCE TO BUY

OFFER ENDS

30TH APRIL

TICK ALL ECOCAMEL JETSTORM SHOWERHEADS HERE PRICE QTY TOTAL

HERE ARE SUITABLE FOR ALL SHOWER SYSTEMS AMOUNT

1 Jetstorm amp 1 FREE SAVE pound6995

Was pound4995 Now pound2995 + pound495 PampPpound3490

T e l e p h o n e 0 2 0 3

6 1 5 5 2 3 5

L

i f e s t y l e

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3540

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3740

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3840

983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3940

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 4040

Page 35: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3540

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983093

There are twogreat moments

to prune shrubs andone of them is nowPruning is an art andit is one that is worthlearning The first

lesson is that pruning means more than just cutting back Cutting back is whatyou do when something in the garden isgetting in the way You arenrsquot thinkingabout the essential nature of the thingyou are attacking You just want certainbits of it gone

Pruning is a way of persuading theplants we have to perform even better(in our eyes) than they would if left aloneIt may also cut down the space that theplant takes up but that shouldnrsquot bethe first reason to do it When you putin a tree or a shrub itrsquos only fair that itrsquosgiven the space it needs to express itselfin its true form

First ndash pruning clematis because thatseems to be the thing that gardenersespecially new ones worry about mostDonrsquot waste time on worrying Thereare roughly three groups of clematisearly flowering big-flowered mid-season

ones and late clematis Of these onlythe last group needs regular pruningAnd when I say ldquoneedsrdquo I donrsquot mean thatit will die if it is not pruned It just wonrsquotdisplay itself as well as it could Flowerswill appear in a bundle of growth highup leaving you to look into a birdrsquos nesttangle of bare stems

The late-flowering group includesclematis of the Viticella kind and a guidesuch as Te Plant Finder will helpfullytell you which group is which ldquoEtoileVioletterdquo ldquoRoyal Veloursrdquo and ldquoVenosaViolaceardquo are all members of the Viticellagang which is perhaps the most use-

ful kind of clematis to combine with anearlier flowering shrub or to accompanya rose If the clematis does well it maytry to completely obliterate its host Byclearing out the clematis growth eachseason you give the supporting shruba breathing space It can get on with itsown performance before the clingingclematis smothers it again

So you need to track back to the pointwhere the clematis starts and cut backall the stems coming from this point toabout 45cm18in off the ground Thenpull away all the top growth You feel bad

The kindest cut

Plants need to be lopped back in order to flourish ndash and now is the time to do it

doing this if the clematis has already burstinto fat bud on these stems but it will budup again and you will then have a chanceto train the growths in the direction inwhich you want them to grow

If you have planted a clematis to growwith a rose on a pergola or against a wallthe rose itself will probably need pruningnow So that means you also have to dosomething about the clematis Irsquove beenthinking about a ldquoConstance Spryrdquorose that needs dealing with Althoughdescribed as a shrub rose it can easily getto 7m20ft if it has support Itrsquos a modernrose bred by David Austin in 1961 but it

looks like an old one with big cabbageyflowers of a not too sick-making pinkItrsquos beautifully scented

Itrsquos been flowering though atbedroom-window height and neededattention In this situation the best thingto do is to pull down the stems archingthem against the wall or support as nearhorizontal as they will go This brings thebulk of the rose down to eye level It alsopersuades it to flower more freely than itwould if the stems were left in the uprightposition Not all roses are amenable tothis pulling down ldquoConstance Spryrdquo

has quite pliable stems A rose such asldquoCompassionrdquo does not

The clematis growing with ldquoConstanceSpryrdquo was ldquoVenosa Violaceardquo a Viti-cella So that meant it was easy to dealwith both at once If Cmacropetala orCalpina had been its partner it wouldhave been almost impossible to prunethe rose without temporarily ruiningthe clematis Those kinds both flowerearly in April and May and are alreadybursting with growth Cutting them backnow would not have killed them but itwould have ruined the chances of themflowering later this spring

Rules are made to be broken thoughIf an early-flowering Clematis montana gets out of hand as they often do youcan prune it immediately after flow-ering to reduce its bulk Converselyif I always followed the rules I wouldprune our yellow September-floweringCorientalis every year but I donrsquot Itdoes a good job covering a trellis in frontof a laurel hedge and does not get in theway of any other plants So I sometimesleave it for five or six years before tacklingit Itrsquos the first pruning job on my list thismonth If it ever stops raining 983221

Te Back Pages

ANNA PAVORD|LAND LINES

I M A G E S O U R C E P L U S A L A M Y

partpart Pruningis a way of

persuading plants to

perform better(in our eyes)

sumsum

Rose stems pulleddown to archagainst walls or supports will flower more freely

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3740

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3840

983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3940

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 4040

Page 36: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3640

983091983094 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Te Back Pages

This is a time ofloss and grief

in my area but the

thing that makesme angriest is the

pub at the end ofthe road To see it

closed and neglected isnrsquot like losing afamily member as one of my neighbours

suggested Itrsquos more like having a familymember locked up in a basement by a

lunatic for several years Someone shouldmake a film about it The entire area is in

suspended mourning You want to tellpeople look after your local pub give it

a substantial proportion of your incomebecause if you donrsquot some shit of a prop-erty developer will buy it and wreck it

I started going to the Winchester inthe early 1980s mainly because it was my

friend Patrickrsquos local and partly becauseit was called the Winchester although

it pre-dated the seedy little boozer in Minder by several decades It was owned

and run by a fearsome Irishwoman witha voice like a punch in the guts and a

personality only marginally less intimi-dating Elderly befuddled Irishmen

were its main clientele and old Irishtunes dominated its jukebox

But what particularly characterisedthe Winchester was its vastness The

ceilings were high enough to giveyou vertigo and the science-fictionlandscapes on the wall purchased in bulk

Irsquove thought about

this question alot over the years

and Irsquove finally ar-rived at a defini-

tive answer no youdonrsquot There I said

it Of course every scenario is differentand there are degrees of fancying some-body But if yoursquove been on a couple of

dates and yoursquore not sure you fancy himenough then Irsquod say give it some time

Irsquom not talking about months ofholding back vomit and praying that

his strange body odour will suddenlyturn into an irresistible pheromone but

if you rule someone out on the basis of a

lack of instant physical attraction alone

you could be missing outI have a friend who is madly in love

and about to move in with her adorablechap Their first date A disaster He

turned up late and she told me wasldquosweaty bumbling through conversa-

tion and nearly knocked a glass of wineover me I just didnrsquot fancy him at allrdquo

As fate would have it she bumped into

him a second time at a party with mutualfriends and saw him in a completely new

light She wasnrsquot necessarily fully sold onhis virtues but when he called to ask her

out on a second date she said yesFor me I had an instant attraction

to my boyfriend but then it definitely

wavered as a result of events that occurred

between dates two and three When hetold me he didnrsquot want to come to a gig

because his boots were hurting his feettoo much I thought how unsexy

But then he turned up on a motorbikeon the next date and I said hello to a full-

on macho fantasy I didnrsquot even know Ihad Then I saw him with his mates andhow much they laughed together Then

he cooked a mind-blowing Mexicanfeast and thenhellip So by date four or five

Irsquod given him the chance to be an actualthree-dimensional person

So yeah give it time Unless hersquos anidiot In which case move right along 983221

lovefoolforever

it as an escape from the pressures of lifesomewhere to sit peacefully while MTVor Sky Sports blared away in the back-

ground and the elderly Irishmen yelledat each other trying to be heard Every

so often one of them would die and hisphotograph would be displayed behind

the bar where the cheese rolls used tobe It seemed only appropriate

And in all those years I exchangedmaybe 30 words with the landlord Pat

which suited us both fine Sometimestherersquos too much conversation in the

world The first time we had a really goodchat was at their farewell party They had

sold up for trillions and were going backto Ireland for a long rest They deservedit But the purchasers have since turned

this huge building into flats which no oneseems to live in If they remain empty

rumours that they have been bought byforeign criminals for money-launder-

ing purposes like much of the rest ofLondon will no doubt circulate

In January we heard that the develop-ers had applied to turn part of the bar

area into two more flats which wouldhave been the end of the pub but the

council has turned them down Theywill surely appeal Their entire business

model rests on there never being a pubthere ever again I hate these people

They deserve pain disease and agonisingdeath Minersquos a pint of lager with twopackets of cheese and onion crisps 983221

partparthere were

two lagers ontap and one ofthem was Skol

It was paradise

sumsum

from Woolworths gave you a headacheFor the hungry two clingfilmed cheeserolls of uncertain age were displayed

behind the bar Very few people werethat hungry Instead most of us ate our

own bodyweight in dry-roasted peanutsThere were two lagers on tap and one of

them was Skol It was paradiseIn time the terrifying Irishwoman died

and the pub was inherited by her son Patand his wife Val Irsquom not sure Irsquove ever

seen two people work harder for longerThey redecorated They started to offer

proper food Younger people started toshow up They included Simon Pegg and

Nick Frost who lived nearby and wouldlater name the pub in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchesterrsquos honour Not that I

knew them or would have recognisedthem for as I say it was a big pub

I met my friends there most Fridayevenings for 20 years Otherwise I used

Closing time

Look and learn

Do you have to fancy somebody

straightaway

THIS WEEK

ALISON TAYLOR| RELATIONSHIP DILEMMAS

MARCUS BERKMANN|LIFE LINES

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3740

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3840

983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3940

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 4040

Page 37: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3740

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 983091983095

Get the Picture Annalee Mather Find the well-known word n ame or phrase made by each group of pictures an d the theme that unites them all An swers on page 38

A L A M Y R E U T E R S G E T T Y I M A G E S

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3840

983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3940

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 4040

Page 38: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3840

983091983096 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

Quiz Answers ( from Page 7) 1 Birdman 2 Sailors in the Royal Navy 3 The Sex Pistols4 Malcolm X 5 The bikini 6 The GPO Tower now known as the BT Tower 7 Golf8 Frank Lloyd Wright 9 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres 10 Three minutes to midnight

Get The Picture Answers (from page 37) Theme Characters from A Midsummer Nightrsquos Dream Top row Demetrius Peaseblossom Second row Hippolyta

Theseus Third row Puck Titania Fourth row Helena Cobweb Lysander Oberon

Te Back Pages

To be hired by Mark E Smith hasnever been a guarantee of long-term

employment As founding genius of themighty Fall he has gone through dozens

of musicians over the past four decadesAnd itrsquos not just band members who

have to watch themselves he once fireda sound man for ordering a salad

The Fall formed after Smith saw theSex Pistols play in his home town of Man-

chester have been both immovable objectand unstoppable force in popular musictheir relentless driving beat the perfect

vehicle for Smithrsquos extraordinary lyricspart surreal sci-fi part sardonic observa-

tion delivered with rockrsquos best-lovedsnarl Smith himself has become a strange

kind of antimatter national treasureHis face which looks as if itrsquos spent

the past 40 years in a pub snug seemsto be moving through its Johnny Cash

phase on its way to WH Auden Hersquos pos-sibly the best-read rock star ndash he named

his band after a Camus novel after allndash and his occasional interviews reference

the likes of HP Lovecraft MR JamesThomas Hardy Hunter S Thompson

Philip K Dick and Edgar Allan PoeThe Fall have released more than

100 albums if you take in live sets and

compilations and have had more than 60members during a career rocket-fuelled

by creative tension When the authorDave Simpson tracked down more than

50 of them for his book Te Fallen therewere stories of flying chairs ferocious

dressings-down drummers fined pound5for hitting the tom-tom But they all

admitted that it had made them bettermusicians ldquoI like to push people till I get

the truth out of themrdquo says SmithWhen John Peel died in 2004 Smith

appeared on Newsnight supposedly topay tribute to The Fallrsquos most enthusiastic

champion Curmudgeonly even by thestandards of pop musicrsquos greatest grumpit confirmed Peelrsquos view of the man ldquoYou

can never be certain what yoursquore goingto getrdquo the DJ warned ldquoSometimes it

may not be what you wantrdquo 983221

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

M983137rk E SmithChris Maume on the curmudgeonly musical genius behind The Fall 983093983097 today

Mark E Smith in 1980 P A U L S L A T T E R Y

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3940

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 4040

Page 39: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 3940

OFFERS

Independent travel oers

Nice Monaco andthe Cote drsquoAzur

Terms amp Conditions Prices are per person based on two sharing and subject to availability Prices correct as of 260216 at 0900 and based on a telephone booking Additional entrance costs may apply Operated by and subject to booking conditionsof Riviera Travel Abta V4744 Atol 3430 a company independent of Independent Print Ltd Riviera Travel New Manor 328 Wetmore Rd Burton upon Trent Stas DE14 1SP Fax 01283 742301 Image used in conjunction with Riviera Travel V4744

Brochure Line 01283 742 376 or visit independentcouktraveloers

3430

ABTA NoV4744

Stockholm and Copenhagen Barcelona and the highlights of Catalonia Paris by Eurostar

Departing from June to September 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Five nights centrallylocated four-staraccommodationwith breakfast

bull Sightseeing tourof Stockholm andCopenhagen

bull Tour of SwedenrsquosRoyal Palace

bull High speed trainfrom Stockholmto Copenhagen

bull Visit to RoskildeDenmarkrsquos rst capital

bull Visit to RoskildeCathedral

bull Visit to FredericksborgSlot

bull Escorted by anexperienced

tour manager

16 days fromonly pound1969pp

15 days fromonly pound1799pp

Departing from April to October 2016

The price includes

bull Return ights taxesand transfers

bull Six nights bed andbreakfast in centrallylocated excellent qualityfour-star hotels withdinner on rst evening

bull Two dinners in localrestaurants highlightingCataloniarsquos trulyoriginal cuisine

bull Timed and guided tourof Gaudirsquos masterpiecethe basilica ofSagrada Familia

bull Visit to the beautifulmedieval city of Girona

bull Walking tour ofTarragona

bull Visit to Montserratrsquosworld famousBenedictine monastery

bull Visit to Cava vineyard

bull Tour of Poblet anamazingly preservedCistercian monastery

bull Escorted by an

experienced tourmanager

Departing up to November 2016

The price includes

bull Return rail connectionsavailable on selecteddates from over ftyregional stationsand return standardclass reserved seat onEurostar from LondonSt Pancras International

bull Return transfersto your hotel

bull Three nightsrsquo withbreakfast in excellentquality three or four-

star hotels locatedapproximately twomiles from Notre

Dame the geographicalcentre of Paris

bull Paris lsquoBy Nightrsquotour experiencingsome of the worldrsquosmost tastefullyilluminated buildings

bull Visit to Versailles withits astonishing Chacircteaugrandiose home of theFrench monarchy

bull Services of anexperienced tourmanager

No French region res the imagination like the Cote drsquoAzur with its unique blend of naturalbeauty hilltop medieval villages and sophisticated resorts The Mediterranean coast is at itsmost magnicent with blood-red rocky coves and sweeping bays of shimmering azure bluewater Selected departures from April to October 2016 the price includes

bull Return ights taxes and transfers

bull Seven nights in four-star or four-starsuperior accommodation with breakfast

bull Two dinners in your selected hotel plustwo in carefully selected restaurantsshowcasing French ne dining

bull Guided walk of Nice with its neart Italianate n de siegravecle buildingsand rabbit warren of atmosphericmedieval streets and alleys

bull Tour of some of Francersquos mostoutstanding mountain scenerythe remote Gorges du Loup

bull Guided tour of the spectacular Villa

Ephrussi once home to the Rothschildbanking dynasty crammed withamazing art works and surroundedby nine pristine gardens

bull Tour of Menton with its honey-coloured shuttered buildings Cocteaumuseum and grave of William WebbEllis ndash the lsquoinventorrsquo of Rugby

bull Tour the traditional perfumeries inGrasse discovering how some of theworldrsquos nest fragrances are blended

bull Escorted by an experienced tour manager

Fully escorted tours

Six days fromonly pound909pp

Seven days fromonly pound699pp

Four daysfrom pound199pp

Eight days from only pound849pp

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 4040

Page 40: TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagaz.com

8192019 TheIndependentMagazine5March2016 Downmagazcom

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltheindependentmagazine5march2016-downmagazcom 4040


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