At the end of the show a question from Neil. Recommendations: Stuart The Richard Burton Diaries - Book Chris Williams (editor), Richard Burton (author) Irresistibly magnetic on stage, mesmerizing in movies, seven times an Academy Award nominee, Richard Burton rose from humble beginnings in Wales to become Hollywood's most highly paid actor and one of England's most admired Shakespearean performers. His epic romance with Elizabeth Taylor, his legendary drinking and story-telling, his dazzling purchases (enormous diamonds, a jet, homes on several continents), and his enormous talent kept him constantly in the public eye. Yet the man behind the celebrity façade carried a surprising burden of insecurity and struggled with the peculiar challenges of a life lived largely in the spotlight. This volume publishes Burton's extensive personal diaries in their entirety for the first time. His writings encompass many years—from 1939, when he was still a teenager, to 1983, the year before his death—and they reveal him in his most private moments, pondering his triumphs and demons, his loves and his heartbreaks. The diary entries appear in their original sequence, with annotations to clarify people, places, books, and events Burton mentions. From these hand-written pages emerges a multi-dimensional man, no mere flashy celebrity. While Burton touched shoulders with shining lights—among them Olivia de Havilland, John Gielgud, Claire Bloom, Laurence Olivier, John Huston, Dylan Thomas, and Edward Albee—he also played the real-life roles of supportive family man, father, husband, and highly intelligent observer. His diaries offer a rare and fresh perspective on his own life and career, and on the glamorous decades of the mid-twentieth century. Eamonn Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish: How Having Fewer, Better Things Can Make Us Happier - Book Patrick Grant We used to care a lot about our clothes. We didn’t have many but those we had were important to us. We’d cherish them, repair them and pass them on. And making them provided fulfilling work for millions of skilled people locally. Today the average person has nearly five times as many clothes as they did just 50 years ago. Last year, 100 billion garments were produced worldwide, most made from oil, 30% of which were not even sold, and the equivalent of one bin lorry full of clothing is dumped in landfill or burned every single second. Our wardrobes are full to bursting with clothes we never wear so why do we keep buying more? In this passionate and revealing book about loving clothes but despairing of a broken global system Patrick Grant considers the crisis of consumption and quality in fashion, and how we might make ourselves happier by rediscovering the joy of living with fewer, better-quality things. David Watch Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land - Documentary Josef Koudelka Josef Koudelka is a fiercely independent artist. Branded an exile, stateless for many years after the end of the Prague Spring, photography is for him a powerful act that shows both humanity and its unsettling strangeness. His images are imbued with bohemian freedom and a dull, inhospitable promise. So when he was asked to go and photograph in Israel, the fear of being politically exploited, the fact of having to accept his designated young guide (to control him? he wondered)... mistrust almost won out. It was overcome by a mixture of rejection of "the wall" and attraction for this symbolic land. He simply insisted on paying for his own plane ticket, so as not to owe anything to anyone. What happened next, between him and his young guide Gilad Baram, is a truly romantic story. A friendship was born between the old photographer and the young filmmaker. Gilad Baram had the intelligence to turn these moments into a magnificent film, adopting the right distance and documenting the work of this demanding photographer.