When 5-year-old Michael Chaplin landed in a strange city of ships in the late 1950s, he looked in vain for something that would anchor him to it, make him feel at home. Then, one Saturday afternoon, it came: the roar of a crowd, and a football team to support. Young Michael became an avid Newcastle United fan, and has remained one–if sometimes disenchanted–for over sixty years.In this football memoir with a difference, the celebrated playwright and screenwriter tells the story of h...

Charlie Chaplin grew up in and around the music hall. His parents, aunt and their friends all earned their precarious livings on the stage and Chaplin himself started out his career touring music halls with a dance troupe. His experiences of the culture of the music hall were a major influence, shaping his style of acting and the films he made, most famously Limelight, which tells the story of a failing variety performer and which evoked painful memories of his own past. Chaplin was horrif...

When 5-year-old Michael Chaplin landed in a strange city of ships in the late 1950s, he looked in vain for something that would anchor him to it, make him feel at home. Then, one Saturday afternoon, it came: the roar of a crowd, and a football team to support. Young Michael became an avid Newcastle United fan, and has remained one–if sometimes disenchanted–for over sixty years.In this football memoir with a difference, the celebrated playwright and screenwriter tells the story of h...

A major BBC Radio 4 drama series following the lives of those on and behind the battlefront of World War IMeticulously based on unit war diaries and eye-witness accounts, each of these 42 episodes of Tommies traces one real day at war, exactly 100 years ago.We follow the fortunes of Mickey Bliss and his fellow signallers from the Lahore Division of the British Indian Army, as they experience life – and death – on the front line. Me...