Minimalist décor the only answer. Forget hanging pictures on your walls. At least one of them, or even a mere detail, is sure to offend someone. And you never know who or when. They will suddenly take offence, plead harm is being done, or demand reparations for some long ago act or words. Hardly a day goes by without reports of supposedly damaged persons demanding – they rarely politely ask – immediate action to salve their injured souls. And so a portrait of the Queen has been taken off the walls of the middle common room at Oxford’s Magdalen College. Continue reading

COMPARISONS are inevitable when books are transported from page to screen. Especially between the leading characters as they are read and as they are seen. An author’s descriptions enable us to build our personal bank of images as we move through the chapters. Fleshing out the bare bones we are given at the start until we have a fully formed person in time for the grand finale. But if the character is later viewed in a screen adaptation of the book(s) there can be disappointment if their looks and mannerisms fail to match that mental picture we have created. Which… Continue reading