Andrew Sinclair (1) (1935–2019)

Death of the aristocracy and the rise of the working class played out against a background of devil worship and subliminated child abuse. The great Oliver Reed is stony-faced as a menacing (possibly Satanic) butler and Derek Jacobi is fey as the debauched Lord of the manor. The story is confused and disconnected which adds to the strange, weird atmosphere. Not a great film, but certainly an engaging one with plenty of political polemic.

Despite being conceived of as a "play for voices" Dylan Thomas' marvellously poetic words still come across wonderfully in this whimsical adaptation of his famous tone poem. The rich language is to the fore as the film spends a day in the small Welsh fishing village of "Llareggub" (read it backwards) where a host of characters move in and out of focus: the blind Captain Tom Cat (Peter O'Toole) transfixed in a dream of his lost love, the beautiful prostitute Rosie Probert (Elizabeth Taylor); show more Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard (Sian Phillips) still abusing her two dead husbands; the wistfully innocent Myfanwy Price (Glynis Johns) and floating above it all, Richard Burton's fabulous pronunciation and poetic cadences as First Voice. Although Dylan Thomas' words and superb language construction will always work best as a spoken word piece, director Andrew Sinclair still manages an excellent stab at bringing the whole thing to wonderful, vibrant and eccentric cinematic life. show less

Hmmm, The Sword and the Grail appears to be an attempt at alternative history, where the author posits that an ancestor, Prince Henry St Clair of Orkney, travelled to North America long before Columbus. The usual suspects make an appearance; The Knights Templar, the Masons and Rosslyn Chapel, amongst others, and a lot of circumstantial evidence at best is deemed fact.

A vast novel with a background of English history/mythology. Not easy reading but very rewarding. Set at the close of WWII we follow the wandering (both physical and mental) of George Griffin (Gog) as he walks from Scotland to London after having been shipwrecked by a torpedo attack. On his way he meets various characters starting with 'M' (Maire, his wife, Magog, Miniver etc) seeming to him the representatives of evil. This book has fascinated me ever since I first read it and I re-read it show more every year. Although the first of a trilogy (the other two parts are 'Magog' and 'King Ludd'), I don't feel the other two volumes came anywhere near matching the eerie fascination of this one. show less