22/10/2008

Terence Davies

Anne McElvoy talks to the director Terence Davies, whose highly personal documentary about growing up in Liverpool was a hit at the Cannes Film Festival. Of Time and the City is made of archive footage of the post-war years and life on Liverpool council estates, with a voice-over in which Davies speaks passionately about his strict Catholic upbringing and struggle with homosexuality.

Of Time and the City, certificate 12A opens on 31 October

Little Dorrit

The novelist A S Byatt reviews the BBC series Little Dorrit, the latest period adaptation by screenwriter Andrew Davies, whose previous credits include another Dickens classic Bleak House, and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Little Dorrit begins on Sunday 26 October at 9.00pm on BBC1

The Welsh Language

There’s a debate about the place of the Welsh language in Welsh culture, with the film-maker Karl Francis arguing that far too much importance is placed on being bilingual in Wales, to the detriment of the non-Welsh speaking majority. He is joined by Professor Deian Hopkin from South Bank University, London.

Public Apologies

A decade after President Clinton said sorry, the American writer Susan Wise Bauer explores the public apologies that have become central to American political culture.

The Art of the Public Grovel by Susan Wise Bauer is published by Princeton University Press