Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them – The Original Screenplay

Pages: 293 Published: 18th November 2016 Started reading: April 28 Finished reading: May 2 Synopsis When Magizoologist Newt Scamander arrives in New York, he intends his stay to be just a brief stopover. However, when his magical case is misplaced and some of Newt's fantastic beasts escape, it spells trouble for everyone… Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find …

TV Review – The Miniaturist

Hello everyone, If you have read some of my previous blog posts, then you might know that The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton was one of my favourite books I read last year. I felt it was a modern classic, just beautifully written. It was adapted into a television drama in December 2017, so after reading the book, …

The Crimes of Grindelwald

The second instalment in the Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them series is finally arriving this week. I already have my cinema tickets for Friday, and as you may have gathered, I am extremely excited to see it! It is almost exactly two years since the first Fantastic Beasts movie was released, and I found that one truly …

Bowled over by The Blue Planet

It is extremely rare to come across something that absolutely everyone likes, but the spellbinding quality of Blue Planet II is such that it can't be met with anything other than universal acclaim. We all love it and admire it, and even feel a little overwhelmed by it. I have very vague memories of the original Blue Planet, …

Book to Film Review – The Girl on the Train

As someone who likes reading as much as I do, it took me a frighteningly long time to get round to starting on The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, the novel which - perhaps more than any other in the last decade - has become a total phenomenon. It's now the archetypal psychological thriller, …

My 2016 – Films

Never before have I watched so many movies in a year than in 2016. It came to be a personal resolution that I made up for lost time and took in many of the quality motion pictures that I had missed over the years, and on the whole it has been a fruitful journey. Visits …

Analysis: The Book Thief

In the world of literature and drama, it would appear that there is a never-ending stream of stories relating to the Second World War. It has become a genre in its own right, because it opens up a whole world of opportunity. Even now, over 70 years on, there is a generation of storytellers who …

Fantastic Beasts

For all fans of the Harry Potter series, both fanatical and casual, the announcement from J.K. Rowling that the upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie franchise is likely to span the course of five films has had us rejoicing. In a year which has also seen a groundbreaking West End play, the …

An Audience with David Nicholls

There are few more prominent authors and screenwriters in Britain today than Dr David Nicholls, so I couldn't miss the opportunity of seeing him discuss his work and inspirations at an event at the University of Bristol, where he graduated in 1988. In a bright and atmospheric lecture theatre, Dr Nicholls provided an extremely fascinating …

Lincoln: A top quality script and top quality acting

At the end of February Leonardo DiCaprio won the Academy Award for Best Actor at long last. That was for his role in The Revenant, where he played the hardy frontiersman Hugh Glass, and it was an award that I questioned not because of an absence of quality in his performance, but for his relative …