2014 in Review: Best Dressed of the Year

Somehow it's nearly 2015. I have literally no idea how that happened. Terrifying.

Anyhoo, the end of another year means it's time for the annual 'best of' blog posts to be dusted off and I'm starting mine with a run down of my top 10 best dressed of the year. I've set myself a golden rule for this one: each person can only appear once. This is harder than you might think.

Here, in a rough order of preference, are my picks:

Angelina Jolie in Saint Laurent

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The best tailoring of the year, and I'm still majorly crushing on that bow tie, but mostly I'm in love with her 'yeah I'm a girl wearing a suit on the red carpet, what of it?' attitude. Few people, of any gender, have warn a suit so well this year. Major moment.

Blake Lively in Gucci Premiere

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Picking just one Blake Lively look from this year was very hard, but in the end this one pipped her Cannes double for me because she just looks that bit more perfect. Plus the cape is super awesome.

Elizabeth Banks in Elie Saab Couture

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A proper princess moment. I love the dreamy print - florals don't have to be boring - and it's so refreshing to see an Elie Saab gown without a sequin or a bit of lace in sight. And another awesome cape. Love a cape.

Rihanna in Zac Posen

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I am unrepentant in my love for Rihanna's edgy, punky style but this old school glam look just blew me away. The colour is divine on her, the draping is beautiful and don't even get me started on that necklace. Perfection.

Lupita Nyongo in Ralph Lauren

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Lupita + colour, any colour =winner. I have just loved her style this year and this caped (have I mentioned I love capes?) beauty from Ralph Lauren is the pick of the crop. I'm a sucker for a red dress. 

Lily Collins in Elie Saab Couture

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Another non-sequin Elie Saab creation, I'm obsessed with the stunning, dramatic ombre effect on this beauty. And her styling? Top notch - I love the faux bob.

Kate Hudson in Atlelier Versace 

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Capes. Have I mentioned capes yet? Seriously, I love this. It's old school Hollywood via the 1980s, which is to say it's perfection.

Amy Adams in Antonio Berardi

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Two things: cut (outs) and colour. Red hair plus blue dress is always a lush combo and this is no exception. And another top faux bob. 

Keira Knightley in Valentino Couture

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Almost everything that Keira Knightley's worn this year is worthy of a best dressed mention but this is my favourite. The dress is self evidently exquisite and the styling is perfect. I especially love the unexpected raspberry pumps.

Emma Watson in Ralph Lauren Collection

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Again, someone who could've made up the entirety of this list. I love this look in particular because it's so simple and so sophisticated. And I do love a crisp white shirt. Beautiful updo/berry lip combo too.

Ooh I enjoyed that. Aren't they all fabulous? Here's to an equally fabulous 2015.

Theatre Review: Treasure Island

Dullsville, snoozefest and megayawn aren’t words I would usually associate with a trip to the theatre. I mean obviously they’re not words I particularly associate with anything because they’re not actually words, but you get my point.

They’re also not words I would tend to associate with Treasure Island, that classic of the swashbuckling, Boy’s Own Adventure genre. Treasure Island is a fun, exciting story. It’s got sword fights, buried treasure, mystery upon mystery and the archetypal pirate in its iconic anti-hero Long John Silver. It’s also my third favourite* Muppets movie, but that’s probably not that important right now.

It’s a real shame, and an almost impressive feat, then that the one word that best sums up the National Theatre’s new production of Treasure Island is: boring.

Adapted from Robert Louis Stephenson’s original text with no particular flair by Bryony Lavery, the production is so flat you could use it as a coffee table and it’s difficult to explain precisely why. For me, probably the biggest problem is one of scale. The production feels like it’s designed to be intimate in some respects, but any impact that this may have had is lost on the cavernous Olivier theatre stage. In the big set piece sequences, such as Long John Silver's mutiny, the lighting, sound effects and set (of which more later) are epic and huge; the on-stage action tiny and safe. It’s jarring and instantly sucks the life out of the story as you sit and wonder what these huge effects are introducing, then realise sadly that whatever was supposed to have happened already has.

A major contributor to this sense of smallness is the cast. Now I loved Rory off of Doctor Who as much as anyone else, but Arthur Darvill is woefully miscast as Long John Silver. Having neither the presence to play a traditional buccaneer pirate nor the swagger to play a more modern Jack Sparrow type (which I think is what he was going for), his Silver just sort of disappears into the scenery, instantly robbing the play of its narrative force. I'm not sure what having a female Jim Hawkins (or a female Doctor Livesey for that matter) is supposed to add to the story but Patsy Ferran is by no means strong enough to carry the show either. Everyone else in the company is fine, but it’s difficult for a supporting cast who don’t really have anything to support! As a result, there's very much a sense of 'going through the motions' in places where there really needs to be high drama. The mutiny is again a prime example of this, and contains some of the least exciting sword fighting you'll ever see. In Act 2, Joshua James offers a glimpse of life as a pleasingly mad and antsy Ben Gunn and there’s a nice turn from Lena Kaur as Silent Sue who gives her one line some real emotional force. Other than that, it's slim pickings for anyone looking for the kind of great acting that usually graces the Olivier stage.

The tweaks made to the text, such as they are, don’t add anything at all to the story. As mentioned, the changing of gender of several key characters is an uninteresting distraction, as is the occasional knowing and unsubtle joke about pensions or some other contemporary issue, presumably inserted to give the grown ups in the audience a chuckle that their kids don’t understand. If they were funny I wouldn't mind, but…

The one bright spot in the production is the incredible set. I've never seen the Olivier stage’s huge revolve used to such fantastic effect as it is in this show. It transforms from Jim’s country inn, to the docks, to a two tier Hispaniola complete with sails and rigging, to a two tier island complete with caves and tunnels. It’s stunning to watch and it’s stunning to think of the technical expertise that must go on behind the scenes. It really does need to be seen rather than described to appreciate, and is probably the only reason I'd recommend anyone going out of their way to see this show. There are some extremely effective sound and lighting effects too - especially during the Act 1 storm sequence - and a very clever use of light bulbs suspended over the audience to portray the night sky. Also worth mentioning is Captain Flint, Silver’s ever present parrot, who is either a puppet or an animatronic (I couldn't work out which) but either way the most fun performance of the piece.

So there we go, a production at the National that I didn’t like. I suppose it had to happen eventually. It is probably worth saying, though, that this is one of the NT’s famous family shows and as such I'm probably about twenty years older than the target audience; certainly the kids in the audience seemed to be enjoying it more than me. Perhaps the conclusion is go and see this should if you're eight.

Treasure Island opens on December 10th and runs until April - in rep - in the Olivier theatre at the NT.

*My favourite Muppet film is obviously A Muppet Christmas Carol, followed by The Muppets (from 2011).

Theatre Review: Off The Page

My relationship with the Guardian newspaper is tricky. On the one hand, their factual news coverage is great and I love their culture section. When I’m looking for a theatre review, I always look for theirs first (Michael Billington is my homeboy). On the other hand, I almost exclusively hate their self righteous, indulgent, lefty nonsense comment pieces with a passion. I’m middle class and pretentious but don’t vote Labour or Green. The Guardian and I will never completely get on.

It was for this reason I had distinctly mixed feeling about their collaboration with the Royal Court theatre (also pretentious, middle class, lefty) on the Off The Page project. The idea behind Off The Page was to team up some of the Royal Court’s best talent with Guardian writers to create short, around four-to-nine minute, microplays on some key topics - music, education, fashion, food, sport and politics - essentially creating dramatised versions of Guardian comment pieces.

Alarm bells ringing? Yep, me too. My first reaction to Off The Page was to recall this Russell Howard bit and I can’t say, having watched all six plays, I’ve ever been able to lose that cynicism. Four-to-nine minutes is really not a long time to make a point, certainly not with any subtlety (and let’s be honest Guardian writers are hardly known for their subtlety at the best of times). The experience of watching some of these plays is akin to someone hitting you repeatedly in the face with the Guardian for four-to-nine minutes. Certainly almost none of them have anything particularly interesting to say about their topic and in a few cases the thing they try and say is achingly banal.

Four-to-nine minutes is also not a huge amount of time to do anything interesting performance or production-wise either, though the plays have attracted an impressive line up of (presumably Guardian reading) acting talent. Just a shame that, with a couple of exceptions, they weren’t given anything interesting to do or say.

Below are six short reviews - microreviews? - of the individual pieces ranked in my order of preference.

PPE
You know that thing they about jokes that if you have to explain it then it’s not funny? I think the only interesting thing about this piece is that it proves the same is true of microplays. This few minutes of nonsense is literally impenetrable if you’ve not read the accompanying blurb. According to said blurb, it’s a musing on politics which shows how politicians have lost touch with the public after the global recession. It shows this through the medium of dance. Yes, really. The most Guardian thing that’s ever happened? Possibly. A worthwhile endeavour? No.

School GateThe education piece features Anna Maxwell Martin as an awful middle class pushy mother who’s worried about the free school that’s opened next door to her (presumably) awful middle class child’s traditional school because the free school is run by an Islamic organisation. Her slightly less awful middle class friend isn’t worried about this and sends her daughter there, who then duly emerges from her after school club dressed in a hijab. The fact that there are some people who don’t like anything to do with Islam in their backyard is sadly not a revelation worthy of a play, however micro.

Britain Isn’t EatingThe food microplay (sick of that word yet? Yep, me too). A politician says something stupid about foodbanks, attempts to prove that they’re unnecessary by cooking a meal with only the supplies that someone using foodbanks might have (including no gas or electricity), fails, goes on another rant about foodbanks. Another uninteresting plot - and the one that tries to ram the Guardian the furthest down your throat. A nice performance by Katherine Parkinson as the politician though.

Devil in the DetailHere’s another earth shattering revelation - some fashion designers won’t lend a dress to a reality TV star going to the Pride of Britain awards but will lend to an up and coming actress off to her first BAFTAs, despite the fact that the former knows more about fashion and the latter doesn’t actually want to wear one of that designers dresses anyway. To be fair, I guess if you’re not interested in fashion then this might be an earth shattering revelation and, in that case, the fashion microplay might be an interesting illustration of the politics of fashion. And it is a well constructed and sweetly acted little thing too. Not bad.

Death of EnglandA stereotypical, prejudiced England football fan goes off on an epic rant at his dad’s funeral in the sport microplay. The rant takes in the state of the England football team and English identity more generally, ending up in a massive brawl. I liked this one quite a bit, not because it had anything hugely interesting to say, but because Rafe Spall’s performance as the central character is fantastic, if quite a difficult watch. The whole piece, more or less, is his monologue and he imbues it with real emotional depth and a sense of being wounded on oh so many levels - pretty impressive given the time he’s on screen. Worth watching.

Groove is in the HeartBy miles, the music microplay is my favourite and the only one that has anything genuinely interesting to say about it’s subject. This one takes on ideas of memory, love and grief and the way we associate them with music. Almost scriptless, and with a lovely performance from Tobias Menzies, this one genuinely moved me and is the only one I’ve watched repeatedly. Especially recommended for people who have made a mixtape on an actual tape, but generally recommended for everyone.


Overall Off The Page was an interesting experiment, but not one I’d like to see repeated. All of the microplays (if it’s the last time I ever have to see that word I would be so happy) along with interviews and other background content are available on the Guardian website for your viewing pleasure. Or otherwise as the case may be.

Theatre review: Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Are you bored of my blog posts extolling the virtues of every play the National Theatre ever stage? Then move along, there’s nothing for you here.

This weekend I headed to my beloved concrete block with stages in it to check out one of their new season plays, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. The play is based on the award winning non-fiction book of the same name by journalist Katherine Boo. It’s not an obvious choice to be adapted for the stage - an intimate account of the lives of the families living in Mumbai slum Annawadi, built on land owned by and in the shadow of Mumbai’s multi-million pound international airport, where Boo lived for three years to gather the material for her book. The implications on this for the play are clear: the characters it portrays are real, ordinary people, the events really happened and all of this only a few years old (Boo lived in Annawadi between 2007 and 2011). As I say, not an obvious choice and one that needed great sensitivity and skill to stage effectively.

The play (and book) follow the trials and tribulations of the Hussain family, kingpins of the local rubbish sorting business who are keen to get on, improve their home and eventually move to a new one where people won’t regard them as “shitty Muslims”. Matriarch Zehrunisa (Meera Syal) and eldest son Abdul (Shane Zaza) are the driving heart of the family; Zehrunisa for her take-no-prisoners business dealings and Abdul as the most skilled rubbish sorter in the district. Their lives are affected by their interactions with two other families in Annawadi. Jealous neighbour Fatima (Thusitha Jayasundera), AKA One Leg (for obvious reasons), renowned as the village whore, hates Zehrunisa and is determined to bring down her and her family. And ambitious local fixer Asha (Stephanie Street) is using every tool at her disposal to become a “first class person”, regardless of what corruption that might entail. The three families’ worlds collide dramatically when Fatima’s jealousy of the Hussains adding a shelf to their kitchen leads her to set herself on fire and blame it on the family. Abdul and two other members of his family are arrested for inciting her suicide and Zehrunisa refuses Asha’s offer to fix the situation before it becomes, well, a situation - for a fee, of course. The resulting court case threatens (and nearly succeeds) to ruin the Hussains and lays bare the hypocrisy, corruption and paradoxes of modern Mumbai.

As a story, it feels huge, epic. And the fact that it’s a true story just gives it more power. I really loved this play for a whole host of reasons, but the dramatic sweep of its truelife narrative is definitely one of the biggest. It’s a great, tragic, thought provoking story and the stakes are so much higher because it’s all true.

Unusually for me, another huge reason why I loved this play is the production, in particular the sound and lighting effects. Directed with verve and pace by Rufus Norris (incoming Director of the National of course, so no pressure) this is a loud play, both in its incidental music and soundtrack - banging bhangra - and its effects. It looks loud too. The Mumbai bit of the set occupies the back of the stage and intrudes into Annawadi (the front of the stage) via a huge, ever present neon billboard, looming luxury tower blocks and the imposing fence that separates the slum from the airport beyond. Annawadi itself is stark and simple, strewn with plastic bottles and the occasional muted burst of colour (which sets off the beautiful jewel coloured costumes perfectly).

Now, if you’re planning on seeing the play yourself please do not read the next paragraph. It contains spoilers for a couple of serious production pieces that will lose their impact for you if you're expecting them. Ok? See you at the paragraph after next.

The fact that the play is set next to an airport is something that the designers really have fun with. They create a lighting/sound/video effect that has a jumbo jet coming into land across the ceiling of the theatre. It is visually stunning, so loud it made my seat shake and, frankly, terrifying when you’re not ready for it. This happens twice - I was glad, as the second time I definitely appreciate the artistry more - and the first time is made all the more spectacular and disorientating by the fact that as soon as the plane has ‘landed’ hundreds of plastic bottles are dropped onto the stage from the ceiling above. It’s noisy and chaotic and perfectly creates a sense of what life in Annawadi must be like. The final scenes of the play see half of the revolve retracted leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the stage into which one key character jumps in search of his next big rubbish picking opportunity. Epic staging for an epic story.

Hi people who are going to see the play - welcome back!

There are two other reasons to love this play, and ones that put me back on more comfortable territory. David Hare’s writing is, in short, excellent. The play is structured as a series of monologues (which I guess are verbatim passages from the book, or at least very closely adapted) joined up by punchy, fast paced, sweary dialogue. The use of the monologues to make and emphasise major points and themes could feel clunky or preachy in a lesser writer’s hands but here they seem natural, give a rhythm to the play and allow insight into the huge cast of characters that we otherwise just wouldn’t get.

Moreover the acting, from the National’s first ever all Asian company, is pretty much faultless. For obvious reasons, Meera Syal is being billed as the star of the show and she is fantastic; her monologues in particular are incredibly strong. For me though the real stars of the show performance-wise are Shane Zaza as Abdul and Anjana Vasan as Manju (Asha’s daughter, on course to be Annawadi’s first college graduate and passionate about the right of everyone, girls in particular, to an education). Both deliver fantastically nuanced performances, pitched and paced exactly right, with real emotional strength (translation: they both made me cry). It is a universally strong cast though, there isn’t a weak link beyond the occasional dropped accent.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a play that I think will stay with me for some time (and if its quality is indicative of what Rufus Norris’ tenure as the NT’s Director will be like then bring him on). It’s themes of what does it take to get on in life, what happens when everyone is trying to get on in life in the same finite space and how you be a good person in terrible circumstances all invite one question: if it were you, what would you do? We might not approve of Asha’s corruption or Abdul’s decision to stop handling stolen material even though it generates a lot of his family's income, but in the same situation why would we act any differently? Why would our way be better? And there’s no easy answer to that.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers opens at the National on 18th November and runs all the way through to April. No excuse, then, for you to not go and see it.  

Review: The James Plays

I spent eleven hours in the theatre on Saturday.

Eleven.

It was bliss.

But why, I hear you ask? Surely you have better things to do with you life! Well a) no, I really don't and b) it's not every day you get to see three sequential history plays in order on the same day, especially when those plays are the critically lauded James Plays at my beloved National Theatre.

The James Plays, the first ever collaboration between the National Theatre of Scotland and the National Theatre (of everywhere else), premièred to rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival. They tell the story of the first three Stewart Kings of Scotland and, more fundamentally, of the formation of Scotland as the country we recognise today.

The NT is showing the plays individually in rep and also held a limited number of trilogy days, the last one of which is where I found myself on Saturday. As an aside, I loved the experience of seeing al three plays on the same day (as I did seeing Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies on the same day a few months ago) and highly recommend this sort of thing if you ever get to do it. But I digress. Here's some brief (as I could make them) thoughts on all three plays.

(Spoiler: I loved them.)

James I: The Key Will Keep the Lock
Poor old James I had a bit of a rough start in life. Specifically, he was captured by those pesky English at age 13 and held prisoner for 18 years, including a long spell as prisoner of Henry V (whose brief cameos in this play are significantly less flattering than other accounts of his life). James is restored to his throne by Henry as a ploy to stop the wayward Scots from fighting with the French against Henry's army and tasked with repaying Henry's 'kindness' with a hefty ransom to be paid in Scottish gold. He's also married to an English bride, Henry's cousin Joan Beaufort, to further secure his loyalty. Mistrusted by Scottish nobles who don't know or especially care who their young King is, James makes it his mission to deliver peace to Scotland and enforce the law of the land, even against the noble families who have seen their power grow exponentially in his absence. Suffice to say said nobles are not universally behind his plans...

It's a cracking, busy story which I found the most compelling of the three, narratively speaking. It's also unexpectedly funny, almost a comedy of manners, as James struggles to fit in with both his English Queen and his Scottish subjects. The scenes with Joan are some of the most enjoyable, especially their fantastically awkward marriage scene which contains some of the most delicious extended silences I've seen on the London stage. The production beautifully evokes a Scottish medievalness (clearly not a word) too, all wild Celts, chanting, booze and complaints about the weather. It's certainly the play of the three that felt the most Scottish to this outsider.

Performance-wise, it's top notch. James McArdle is hard not to warm to as a strong, stoic and principled King James. His performance does take some adjusting to - his stumbling over words and taking long pauses mid-sentence initially came across to me as someone struggling to remember their lines - but ultimately he gives James a nervousness and a sense of outsiderness which makes him a more believable character. He is also phenomenally good looking. Shallow, but true.

The strongest acting of the trilogy comes from Blythe Duff and Gordon Kennedy. They play several parts each across the three plays but are introduced in James I as Isabella and Murdac Stewart, the chief rivals to James' throne. Kennedy's Murdac is an unsentimental pragmatist whilst Duff's Isabella is a dangerous she-wolf. They're a fantastic couple and their performances provide much of the comedy and much of the sense of danger throughout the play. Credit also to Peter Forbes' Balvenie, a nervous minor noble in this play who is loyal to James as long as he can help elevate his status, intelligently played in James I as a real, desperate nonentity.

It's a great start to the trilogy and sets the ground nicely for...

James II: Day of the Innocents
We next pick up the story after James I has been assassinated, with his son and heir James II suffering terrible nightmares about his childhood. Abandoned by Queen Joan as a boy, he is 'cared for' by the warring whims of noble families desperately vying to control him and his throne. Amidst this chaos and danger he makes one friend, William Douglas (Balvenie's son and heir), and the two dream of the day they can rule Scotland together. As they grow up, this picture becomes more complicated and James and his demons must fight to hold on to his crown.

This play is an entirely different kettle of fish. It's use of nightmare sequences, puppetry and, for want of a better word, spooky lighting gives an altogether more otherworldly atmosphere. It's notably more serious and with a much smaller plot. It feels less Scottish somehow and much darker, which I suppose is appropriate for a play which deals extensively with ideas of madness and what affect it can have. And, contrary to the generally accepted critical view that it's the weakest of the three, it was actually my favourite part of the trilogy, if I was forced to choose.

The acting is universally great again, as you'd expect given it's the same cast. Blythe Duff and Peter Forbes both return in the same roles they had in James I, although both characters are so changed that you could argue it's only the name that's the same. Duff's Isabella now has much more of a supernatural role, almost like one of the witches in Macbeth, telling the young King how evil his family is and how awful he's destined to be. Forbes' Balvenie is transformed into the great noble he wanted to be and, as a result, is a bit of a shit; violent to his son and awful to basically everyone else. (I kind of loved him.) Gordon Kennedy returns too, this tine as scheming chief noble Livingston whose control and manipulation of the child King ultimately quickens his downfall. Murdac is a more sympathetic character, but Kennedy is excellent again and does snakelike very well.

Andrew Rothney is a really sympathetic James II. Given the amount of this part that is spent in nightmare sequences and flashbacks, it would be easy for him to become a completely unbelievable character but Rothney manages to avoid this. I found the nightmare scenes amongst the most effective in the whole trilogy and this is in large part due to his utterly believable sense of terror. The final nightmare where - spoiler alert - he brutally murders longtime friend William Douglas is genuinely quite scary, but also very touching. Mark Rowley is an excellent Douglas too; by degrees sweet and caring, funny and swaggering, arrogant and dangerous and carrying all off with a lightness of touch which makes his development and ultimate downfall thrilling to watch.

Ok, keeping up? Good. Onwards...

James III: The True Mirror
Generally agreed by critics to be the highlight of the trilogy, James III is actually more concerned with the women of the Stewart court. It follows our third James - a camp, charismatic, cultured non-conformist intent on spending money that his nation can ill afford and shagging anything with a pulse - and his intelligent, politic and loyal Queen, Margaret of Denmark, as she attempts to hold his country together.

As my flippancy there may suggest, I don't agree with the critics that this is the best of the trilogy. In fact I found it the most tedious. This is not to say it's a bad play in any way, shape or form (it isn't) but it is the most overtly political and the one that seeks to tap into the pre-referendum introspection in Scotland the most. In a post-referendum world (remember those three weeks where we all cared about the referendum?) it's a less interesting, less insightful prospect and in places I found the lack of subtlety - 'hey, this could still apply today!!!!!' - irritating at times. This wasn't helped by the sudden and jarring leap to the cast being in modern dress after two plays in period costume.

I also found James III by some distance the least sympathetic James. He is essentially just unpleasant; a sort of Gilderoy-Lockhart-meets-Mercutio-in-Baz-Luhrman's-Romeo-and-Juliet preening peacock with very few redeeming features. It's not that the acting was bad, it really wasn't, but the character is just an arse. It was frankly a relief when - spoiler alert again - he was stabbed to death by his much maligned son James IV.

The person who's generated the most buzz and comment around this play is Sofie Grabol, of The Killing fame, who plays Margaret. And credit where credit's due she is magnificent, an instantly likeable and kick ass foil to her husband who gets most of the best written dialogue in the trilogy. She is an arch bitch - the way she destroys one of James' more inconvenient mistresses by simply pointing out that she's not as pretty as he says she is is just perfection - but also a fantastic, principled and funny leader. It's a great performance which really lifts the play. Blythe Duff and Gordon Kennedy return for a third run, as a funny and wise court aunt and an ambitious courtier/potential lover for Margaret respectively - and are excellent again, as are the rest of this ensemble cast who really must've earned their money on three show days!

Special mention also to the music used in this play. If you feel like a folksy version of Don't You Want Me Baby and/or Born This Way is something you'd enjoy - and it damn well should be - then go and check out James III and make sure you're in your seats in good time for both acts.

Overall, the James Plays are just brilliant. Any one of them taken on its own is a fantastic work of drama but taken together they're a thrilling, fascinating thing. There are just a couple of shows left now - and only of II and III - but if you can get your hands on a last minute ticket you definitely, definitely should.

Book Review: Mary Boleyn - Alison Weir

If I say the name Mary Boleyn to you, what instantly comes to mind?

I'll give you a minute.

If anything, I'm guessing you got as far as Anne Boleyn's sister? Henry VIII's mistress? Francois I's mistress? Well done, because that's about as much as anyone knows about her.

She's also a really interesting and sympathetic character in Wolf Hall which is why I decided I wanted to devote my precious free time to reading a whole book about her. Plus I really enjoyed Alison Weir's Six Wives of Henry VIII (featuring, of course, a Mary Boleyn cameo). An Alison Weir biography of Mary Boleyn seemed right up my street.

And it was, to a very large extent. Weir's book - Mary Boleyn: 'the Great and Infamous Whore' - is extremely compelling and immaculately researched. The writing is, as Weir's books always seem to be, some of the best in popular history; accessible, intensely readable and assuming only the most basic prior knowledge. Drawing on contemporary sources, and often discrediting later ones, the book paints a much fuller picture of 'the other Boleyn girl' than you'll get from any fictional account. She's not just Anne's sister or Henry's mistress, she's an interesting character in her own right who Weir clearly feels affection for.

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the book is its comprehensive debunking of many of the accepted facts about Mary and her life. Did Francois I ever called Mary 'the great and infamous whore'? Nope, there's no credible evidence for that. Think her son, Henry Carey, was Henry VIII's bastard? Sorry, wrong again. Despite a lot of academics, contemporary and modern, suggesting that he was there's no credible evidence for that either. (Interestingly, Weir builds a very credible case that Mary's daughter, Catherine, is a much more credible potential Royal bastard.)

How about Mary herself, was she stupid and unimpressive? Well, she clearly had some questionable taste in men in her early years but the idea that she was the slack jawed yokel of the Boleyn clan is a gross oversimplification. And she was the last of the Boleyn siblings to die, happily married and in obscurity, so she can't have been that stupid now, can she?

The examination of contemporary sources to provide the evidence for all of this debunking is incredibly impressive, almost forensic. It's difficult to argue with any of Weir's conclusions without doing some serious research yourself. Who has time for that, really?

I suppose the only thing that spoiled my enjoyment of this book is that the contemporary sources on Mary are so few and as a result there are so many things that we will just never know about her. I'm no historian - this much is probably apparent - and I like my pop-history books to be able to give me some definitive facts. There are just so few of these about Mary Boleyn. After a while, I found the constant uncertainty frustrating. This isn't Weir's fault, clearly, but I just found it annoying that there's no way to prove all of her excellently constructed arguments right or wrong. I dropped history at AS level for a reason, I suppose.

Weir has written extensively on the Tudor period and, since I'm still going through my Tudor phase (though how long that will last since I've just picked up Hilary Mantel's French revolution set A Place of Greater Safety remains to be seen), I intend to read more. I'd certainly highly recommend Mary Boleyn to anyone interested in learning more about its much maligned subject, the Boleyn family generally and Henry VIII's court.

10 Books that have stayed with me

Have you seen the '10 books that stayed with me' Facebook meme? You know, the one where - funnily enough - you name ten books that have stayed with you in some way and explain why. I mean, the clue's in the name really.

Anyway, I got tagged in it and as an avowed bookworm of 28 years standing I thought I'd give it a bash. I cannot abide long Facebook posts though - they make my page look messy and upset my OCD - so I've decided to do it as a blog post instead. I'm a rebel like that.

So here are my ten, in some kind of rough chronological order sort of:

1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle
The first book I ever remember reading by myself. It's not big and it's not clever, but my god did I love it. If you're unaware of the highly complex plot, a caterpillar is born and proceeds to eat a lot until it turns into a butterfly. On the way, your author (aged approximately three at the time) learned numbers, days of the week and different fruit. The collage style illustrations are gorgeous too. Apparently this is also George W Bush's favourite book. Make of that what you will.

2. Sam's Sandwich - David Pelham
Another high brow option, Sam's Sandwich is about a boy making a sandwich for his sister and putting lots of bugs and gross stuff in it in the process. This one has stayed with me because I strongly remember my mum reading it to me and I know it's one of her favourite kids books that she's always used in her teaching career, which makes it doubly special because I know what an amazing teacher my mum is and how many other kids loved hearing her read my copy of this book as much as I did.

3. The Jolly Christmas Postman - Janet and Alan Ahlberg
I swear we get out of kids books in a while. Another one that I remember reading with my parents and I loved it because it was reading but it also had little surprises and games in it (I remember a jigsaw in particular) which I thought was basically magic at the time.

4. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
I think this is the first 'grown up' book I read by myself. I read all of Roald Dahl's books when I was growing up - either for school or for pleasure - and it was hard to pick just one for this list. The Twits, Matilda and The BFG could easily be on here too. I went with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the end because it was the first one I read and I can still remember exactly what my copy looked like (hardback with a purple and orange striped spine if you were wondering). Plus it's just such a lovely story. I think it should be mandatory that everyone read it at least once before the age of 18.

5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J K Rowling
My relationship with Harry Potter got off to a slow start. I didn't read any of the books and was initially fairly ambivalent to the films (apart from the second one, because Lockhart). Then when the final book was released my dad bought it for me for me basically as a joke (and because it was only £5 at Asda). I reluctantly sat down to have a read through...and from about page 7 was completely hooked. I've subsequently read all the books several times and become obsessed with the series and the world around it. Thanks dad (and Asda).

6. The Liar - Stephen Fry
I read this by the pool on holiday in Greece (Zante, because I am a deeply classy person) and loved it. Stephen Fry's novels are fantastic and this was my gateway into them. It's a fantastically written, fantastically weird story (no spoilers - you should read it yourself) with fantastically realised characters that I think I read in two days, if that. This one isn't included for any sentimental reason or anything, just because it's one of the books I've most enjoyed reading.

7. Beginning - Kenneth Branagh
I love autobiographies so there had to be a couple on this list. I've reviewed this on the blog recently and I just love it. I'm not much of a re-reader but this is one I've read all the way through a couple of times and dip into whenever I need a bit of a motivational shot in the arm. As I've said, it's such an inspirational book (KenBran is my hero on so many levels) and it also contains the following epic quote about being 28 that I just adore: "at twenty-eight, the chances of really knowing something are slim, and the possibility of losing what grasp you do have, great". Preach. 

8. Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins - Rupert Everett
Another autobiography, another book I've reread and another I'm including just because it's so enjoyable. I dip into this one whenever I need a pick me up or am in the mood for some grade A bitchiness. The follow up, The Vanished Years, is also utterly fabulous.

9. Bread - Paul Hollywood
Do cookbooks count? I'm going to say that they do. I mean, it's a book right? Arguably, this book is the one on the list that's had the most impact on me as a person. See, I had a long period of unemployment in 2012/3 and I did not care for it. Which is to say I utterly, utterly hated it and spent a huge amount of tine feeling completely miserable and useless. One of the things that really helped me get through was learning to make my own bread and this was the book that inspired - and taught - me to do that. I've made loads of the recipes from this book and they're all super easy to follow and basically idiot proof. And much cheaper than therapy.

10. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
The best book I've ever read, full stop. Pretty easy really.

Now I know I have some bookworms amongst my readers, so step up people. You know who you are...