I have seen several remarkable performances of Coriolanus. Two stand out in my memory. Ian McKellen took on the role at The National Theatre in 1984. I remember it as a blood-soaked staging, and the picture below seems to confirm that.

More than fifteen years later, I saw Ralph Fiennes play the part of the arrogant Roman in a darker, more psychologically intense staging at (I think) the Gainsborough Studios in London. It has always been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, so I was excited to head back to The National Theatre recently to see how David Oyelowo would interpret the role. The production was still in preview, so the cast was still working out the kinks. (Oyelowo forgot his lines at one point, but recovered after a nerve-racking moment). Overall, it struck me as a cinematic, polished, and slightly flashy staging. It felt a little muddled in design terms. Generals brief their battlefield commanders via cell phones and video calls while soldiers fight with swords and shields. The action moves from sleek, expensive, hotel-style interiors to unadorned public spaces staged like a museum. Performances were generally very strong.

Coriolanus is very much a play for our times. Politicians inflated with hubris and boastfulness, pretending to care for the people when it suits, but otherwise deeply contemptuous of them, and fickle, easily. manipulated electors. Does any of that sound familiar or urgently relevant to our times?

Henry Moore first attracted significant public attention during the Second World War when the drawings he made of Londoners sheltering from the Blitz in tube stations were first published. Although Moore’s reputation today rests mainly on his monumental sculptures, those intimate drawings of men, women, and children taking refuge in such claustrophobic conditions remain powerful and affecting. The Courtauld in London has displayed some of this work in a small exhibition called Shadows on the Wall.

The premise of the exhibition is Moore’s fascination with those confining walls, ceilings, and tunnels – architectural elements that he explored further in his well-known drawings of the Yorkshire coal mines and that were far more than simple backdrops for the human figures he represented. It’s an interesting idea. Looking closely at the drawings, the fusion of the human and the architectural becomes more pronounced.

The engrossing exhibition in London ends soon, but a catalog authored by Penelope Curtis and others is available.

Oliver Smith had long dreamed about completing the camino, the ancient pilgrims’ walk to Santiago de Compostela. The pandemic put the realization of that particular longing on hold. He started to think about focusing his interest in pilgrimage in a different way, reflecting instead on the pathways and destinations, ancient and modern, to be found closer to home, and planning an adventure across the sacred landscape of his native Britain. On This Holy Island is the result.

Some of the places that featured in his journey are familiar to almost every Briton. Stonehenge, Glastonbury, Avebury, Lindisfarne, and the White Horse at Uffington – these are places we learn about at school (even if we never get to visit them or understand their significance). But the history of pilgrimage in Britain encompasses a much broader topography, physical, emotional, and spiritual.

Smith writes with a self-deprecating charm and a light touch. This isn’t some dry, heavy thesis about the nature and meaning of pilgrimage. It’s a fact-filled, anecdote-filled travelogue, a book of encounters and conversations as much as wanderings and destinations.