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Articles by Francesca Shawn

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About Francesca Shawn

A former arts editor of The Independent, over the years Francesca has written for an innumerable list of UK arts and dance magazines. More Posts

The (no so) Good Life – a review

Yesterday I travelled down from London in order to attend a touring performance of a new stage version of the highly-popular BBC (Bob Larbey and John Esmonde-written) television comedy sit-com The Good Life (1975- 1978) at the Chichester Festival Theatre. In all honesty I was not expecting a great [...]

December 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

You win some … and lose some

Listening to the radio overnight I thought I heard that sales of jigsaws – according to one interviewee, a representative of that industry – have soared over 800% since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, particularly among the 24 to 35 age group. This figures, because – if [...]

May 2, 2020 // 0 Comments

A momentary diversion …

For any Rusters unfamiliar with it, Saturday Night Live is a decades-old American broadcasting institution. My half-baked effort at suggesting a British equivalent might be a mix of the very best entertainment segments of the Graham Norton and/or Jonathan Ross chat shows combined with a human [...]

April 27, 2020 // 0 Comments

On the way out, but laughing

Being a Ruster, my relationship with large swathes of the modern world – including technology, a bug-bear mentioned recently by my colleague William Byford – is generally tentative or somewhat hit-and-miss and so I set out to compose my post today with positive intent but also with [...]

January 4, 2020 // 0 Comments

A sense of smug satisfaction …

For my sins one of my minor hobby interests is spotting media howlers and overnight I alighted upon a minor but typical one on the website of the Daily Mail which today I thought I’d share with Rusters. Below is a link to an opinion piece by Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn on the news [...]

November 15, 2019 // 0 Comments

The lady has a point …

For the most part in the social circles I inhabit the subject of gender equality occasionally arises but causes debate less often. Credit where it is due – in more senses than one – for last summer’s revelatory Lyon & Turnbull exhibition Bright Souls: The Forgotten Story of [...]

November 1, 2019 // 0 Comments

You didn’t see it here first

Hard on the heels of our columnist Neil Rosen’s excellent piece on his love of war films, here comes an entry in one of the Rust‘s ongoing series of lists. Graeme Ross offers his selection of the Top Twenty WW2 movies of all time – see here, as appears upon the website today of [...]

June 8, 2019 // 0 Comments

A day in the country

In the art world the nature of the beast means that over the course of time certain styles, movements and breakthroughs weave in and out of fashion and thus it was with some anticipation that yesterday I had accepted an invitation to join two fellow Rusters on a jaunt to view the Harold Gilman: [...]

March 12, 2019 // 0 Comments

The price of something – and then its value

Less than a month ago, at private lunch also attended by both the publisher and the editor of The Rust, I was pleased to learn from them that a recently-conducted survey had revealed our arts coverage had registered the highest ‘quality appreciation’ score of all amongst our readership. Here I [...]

October 15, 2018 // 0 Comments

More PC issues

The heightened PC-driven media frenzy over such issues as transgender rights, the various (some seemingly contradictory) strands of feminism and of course the widening ripples across the pond of male/female relationships prompted by the #MeToo movement – and indeed the backlash thereto – have [...]

September 26, 2018 // 0 Comments

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