The rural terrain of John Challis’s second collection provides a new lens for exploring history, class and work, our relationship to the natural world, and cycles of growth and decay.Much of his debut collection The Resurrectionists concerned working lives in the city: his father a London cabbie, his grandfather a market porter. Here his focus shifts to a crumbling stately home in Northumberland brought to life through the voices of the grounds as well as ...

The living and the dead are working side by side in John Challis’s dramatic debut collection, The Resurrectionists. Whether in London’s veg and meat markets, far below the Dartford Crossing, or on the edge of the Western world, these poems journey into a buried and sometimes violent landscape to locate the traces of ourselves that remain. Amidst the political disquiet rising from the groundwater, or the unearthing of the class divide at the gravesides of plague victims, the veil between th...

Former lovers Pam and Merv open a cyber section in their Vodka and Veggie Café in this BBC comedy seriesWhen Merv and Pam got divorced, that should have been the end of their relationship. But here they are, trying to turn a veggie-and-vodka bistro in a cyber cafe, while Merv is still living in Pam's front garden in a small caravan.Merv's dreams of being a rock star failed a long time ago, so the Cyber Pass is now his only hope - although his customers main...

A modern dramatisation of Dracula performed by a full cast 'in the dark'.