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The Plot Against America (in a film context)

The editor also asked me to post a review of The Plot Against America putting it in a film context. The two memorable films on this subject of creeping fascism are It Happened Here (1966) and Vittorio de Sica’s last film The Garden of the Finzi- Continis (1970).  It Happened Here was a black and [...]

July 25, 2020 // 0 Comments

The Plot Against America/Sky Atlantic

I have the advantage over some reviewers as I have read Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America twice. I am now three programmes into the HBO adaptation and enjoying it hugely. I do not find knowing the novel well a hindrance – more a blessing as you wonder how the actor has [...]

July 24, 2020 // 0 Comments

British War Artists / World War Two

A subject often covered on the Rust is World War One so I knew I would be fascinated when our last lesson in our course on Tuesday was on the war artists of  World War Two. War artist is a loose term. The status of war artist was not made official till 1916 and even then the output was subject to [...]

July 20, 2020 // 0 Comments

Underneath the Streets

Underneath the Streets is a political thriller by Adam Macqueen who was for many years a contributor to Private Eye.    The central character is a male prostitute called Tommy Wildeblood who perchance investigates the death of a rent boy in Hampstead Heath. The trail leads him to Devon and to [...]

July 20, 2020 // 0 Comments

Life lessons

One of the things that irritates me about the modern younger generations in the 21st Century is their now almost-universal sense of entitlement. Much of the blame in my view can be laid at the door of the human race’s ever-advancing science and technology and specifically the all-pervasive social [...]

July 16, 2020 // 0 Comments

A moment in time

Like I suspect many Rusters I have spent of the period since the 2020 coronavirus era hit the UK continuing to do that which I did before, viz. tootling around on the internet in search of entertainment and/or enlightenment. This is the first of an occasional series on music-related items that [...]

July 15, 2020 // 0 Comments

Will the real Poirot stand up?

I have now seen all the re-runs of Series one of Poirot. Hugh Fraser plays the dim, bespoke Captain Hastings, Philip Jackman Inspector Japp with trademark flapping raincoat as brilliantly caricatured by Stephen Fry in Gosforth Park and Pauline Moran the bossy secretary Miss Lemon. The second [...]

July 14, 2020 // 0 Comments

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”

Yesterday, John Keats’ poem Endymion came to mind yesterday as I concluded Alice Mansfield’s thoroughly absorbing Rust post on Courbet’s The Origins Of The World [10th July] and thereafter spent many hours contemplating the ideas and issues that it brought to focus. One of the features of [...]

July 11, 2020 // 0 Comments

The Origins of the World/Gustave Courbet 1866

A popular figure in the National Rust is our picture editor Malcolm. One of the joys of us contributors is – after we have completed our post as a draft – seeing what accompanying photos Malcolm has selected for it. He has a totally free hand but if he feels them to be inadequate he [...]

July 10, 2020 // 0 Comments

What’s in a name? Plenty … er, obviously

It’s stating the obvious to mention it, but in a 21st Century dominated as it is in cultural and campaigning circles by themes of equality, diversity, LGBT [and is it Q? – in any event, the acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning rights], anti-colonialist and [...]

July 8, 2020 // 0 Comments

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