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My Week with Marilyn
Marilyn Monroe visited the UK only once. In 1956, the world’s most famous movie star boarded a plane with her new husband, playwright Arthur Miller. Monroe came to England to make The Prince and the Showgirl with acclaimed actor and director Lawrence Olivier. It was her first film as both producer and star and crucially, a chance to prove herself as a serious actress. But while the film was a commercial success, the shoot itself was troubled, as Monroe relied more and more heavily on drink and drugs. My Week with Marilyn is based on the memoir of director Colin Clark, whose first job in the movies was as an assistant director on the film, and who developed an intense relationship with Monroe on set.
My Week with Marilyn
My Week with Marilyn is released on 25 November. -
Black Mirror: The National Anthem
Scriptwriter, columnist and broadcaster Charlie Brooker is renowned for his acerbic commentary on contemporary culture, and with 400,000 followers, he's also one of Britain's best-loved Tweeters. So it's no surprise that the social media revolution has inspired his new satirical series for Channel 4, Black Mirror. In the first of three films, The National Anthem, Prime Minister Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear) is charged with securing the release of a kidnapped member of the British Royal Family. But the hostage-takers have made something of an unorthodox ransom demand - which could see him humiliated live on TV networks and social networks around the country. It's described as a 'twisted parable for the Twitter age', but does Black Mirror have anything new to say about about how the media shape the news and how we consume it?
Black Mirror
Black Mirror: The National Anthem airs on Channel 4 on Sunday 4 December at 9pm. -
Jack Kerouac - The Sea is My Brother
Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel On The Road has acquired iconic status as its pages encapsulate the 1950s literary movement that Kerouac himself christened the Beat Generation. But years before Jack Kerouac went on the road across America, he took to sea. In 1942, having dropped out of Columbia University, Kerouac completed his first tour in the United States Merchant Marine. The trip fed his love for adventure and inspired him to keep a journal detailing the daily routine of life at sea and the characters of his fellow shipmates. These journal entries later formed the basis of his first novel. Now, The Sea is My Brother has been published in its entirety for the first time.
The Sea is My Brother -
World Book Night
Ahead of World Book Night on 23 April 2012, a celebration of reading which will see a million books given away across the country, find out how you can apply to be one of the 'givers' who gifts books, from a list that includes Jane Austen, Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy.
World Book Night -
Beerjacket
Glasgow-based alt-folk songwriter and musician Beerjacket - whose influences include Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen and Simon & Garfunkel, and who has shared a stage with The National, Kristin Hersh, Sons & Daughters and Joan As Police Woman - performs the track Cave, from his new album The White Feather Trail.
Beerjacket -
New Egyptian and Nubian Galleries at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Mummy Boy (from 3 angles)
Ashmolean Museum
Angela Palmer
copyright Richard Holttum
At the UK's oldest public museum, £5 million has been spent on new galleries and state-of-the-art display cases to house iconic objects from the Nile Valley, many of which have been under wraps in storage for decades. Drawing on one of the finest collections outside Cairo, the mummies, coffins, shrines and wallpaintings on show take visitors 3,000 years of history, but how do these new displays add to our understanding of some of the world's great civilisations?
The Ashmolean's new galleries open on 26 November.
Credits
- Presenter
- Martha Kearney
- Participant
- Maureen Lipman
- Participant
- Paul Morley
- Executive Producer
- Andrew Lockyer
