All posts by admin

Brief Encounter

At New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme, until Saturday 10 September

My only cavil at Brief Encounter, playing at the New Vic for four nights, is that the run is too brief. The rest is all superlatives.

From the original play by Noel Coward via the 1946 film by David Lean to the musical stage adaptation by Emma Rice and now this version of it in the round directed by Paul Robinson, the story becomes more engaging with every new incarnation.

Housewife Laura and GP Alec – both respectable, married, with children – meet by chance in a train station canteen. With a few slow-motion gestures of connection, something unusual and unexpected is sown between them and over a series of brief encounters they fall in love.

With minimal conversation, mostly in a public space, this is achieved utterly convincingly by lead actors Anne-Marie Piazza and Pete Ashmore. It’s sheer delight to witness. But our enchantment is tempered, like theirs, by the knowledge that the course of this love cannot carry us away like the express trains that periodically whoosh by in a cloud of smoke making the crockery rattle.

“Do you feel guilty? Laura asks Alec. “As if we’re letting something happen that we shouldn’t?” And when it is almost too late, “We are neither of us free to love each other.” The  moral challenge they face is as ordinary today as has ever been, but it is played out exquisitely. Short scenes – over lunch in a hotel restaurant, at a cinema matinee, in a hired row boat – stretch ever closer to breaking point.

The tension that envelops the fledgling relationship of Laura and Alec is counterbalanced by two other relationships. Ticket Inspector Albert flirts cheekily with canteen manager Myrtle, their cheerful dalliance providing much physical humour – never more so than when Albert demonstrates his unbridled passion on a saxophone and Myrtle whips out a trombone to get back at him.

The attraction between young waitress Beryl and snack-seller Stanley is even more innocent. After GP Alec has sensitively removed a painful grit from Laura’s eye, Stanley is asked if he’s got something in his eye and answers, “Only a twinkle every once in a while.”

Coward’s songs enrich the drama throughout. The opening number, ‘Any Little Fish’, is danced with unalloyed joy. ‘Mad About the Boy’, sung by the ensemble as Laura plays it on her gramophone at home, is heart rending. ‘A Room with a View’ almost devastating. But like the story itself, thankfully, only ‘almost’.

Doctor Clegg’s Machete

Based on the work of the American obstetrician Thomas H Brewer.The story of a young female doctor who is confronted by a woman whose baby has died following pre-eclampsia in the pregnancy. Doctor Avril Clegg becomes obsessed by this enigmatic disease. Her emotional involvement inspires brilliant clinical insights and intense professional opposition — and amongst those who l
ove her, both devotion and despair.

An effective and powerful creation. A very moving novel.”  Iain Chajohn's books' covers 002lmers, director, National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit

“It is a deeply moving and terribly accurate indictment of how the medical establishment works.”  Dr Andrew Stanway, bestselling medical writer.

“An extraordinary subject to have written a novel around. Frighteningly real and very convincing.”  Ros Claxton, founder member, London Birth Centre

“Extremely interesting and enjoyable… A great merit of scientific fiction is that you can explore the psychological context in which scientific work is produced.”  Martin Richards, Head of Child Care & Development Group, Cambridge University.

“A fair description of the unacceptable face of socio-medical politics… In fact I found I could not put it down, reading the whole book in one three-hour session.”  Wendy Greenshields, Chair of Resources and Information Group, National Childbirth Trust 

“Unique in the way it brings out the difficult, personal realities of what honesty in science, medicine or advocacy means and takes.”  Lisa Curtice, Maternity Alliance

“I didn’t have to think twice before choosing this little novel for the first book review I’ve written since I discontinued publishing the quarterly magazine Birth Gazette in 2000. First, and in some sense, most important, Doctor Clegg’s Machete is a good read. John Hargreaves has created a cast of believable characters, a credible plot line and a book that is as suspenseful as it is informative.”  Ina May Gaskin  

Harvests and Harvesters

 

Harvests & Harvesters john's books' covers H&H
Gollancz, 1987

A portrait of the men and women who produce Britain’s fruit and vegetables, from raspberries in Blairgowrie to garlic on the Isle of Wight, carrots in East Anglia to courgettes on the Cornish Riviera. Harvests tells the why, where and how of commercial horticulture in this country through the stories of the harvesters. It chronicles enormous changes in the ways fruit and vegetables are produced, highlighting a wide range of attitudes to intensive growing methods and marketing philosophy.

“A fascinating and thoroughly entertaining book. The writing sparkles and the author ladles out a riotously rich collection of facts. A book which will make you croon to your seedlings. Thoroughly recommended.”  Western Morning News

“A really good read. The author writes with enthusiastic fluency.”  Roy Strong in London Daily News

“Underlying Hargreaves’ tolerant, enquiring style, is not rage but a boiling fear that commercial growers, who have a history of leaving the land better than they found it, are now exploiting the soil so that, in the perilously close future, it will be virtually impossible to grow certain traditional British produce.”  Homes and Gardens

“This is a very readable book and full of surprises. Concealed amongst the many recorded conversations is a carefully researched comparison of the methods of today, both production and business, with those of the past. It is this survey which enhances the value of the book from being just a jolly good read to being of considerable value to the serious student.”  Soil Association Review

“Harvests and Harvesters provides not only an excellent insight into the growing of a broad spectrum of crops, it is also a very pleasing experience. Travelling the country to examine individual crops, the author has captured the character of the individual growers themselves. The result is a sympathetic, yet realistic view of the UK producer and his product, warts and all.”  Fruit Trades Journal

“Politics, social history, science, world history, the growth of communications – they hardly sound like the components of market gardening. But they are indeed, and either they are most interesting in this guise or else it is the expertise of John Hargreaves that makes them so.” Shropshire Magazine

“An intriguing book for anyone who has ever tried to grow a vegetable or a fruit.”  East Anglian Daily Times