{"id":10421,"date":"2025-09-08T22:09:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T22:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/10421\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T22:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T22:09:10","slug":"i-love-the-king-we-have-a-rapport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/10421\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I love the King, we have a rapport\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Dickens. I\u2019ve read all his novels. My favourite book is probably Little Dorrit, Bleak House or Great Expectations. He is a window into the 19th century, sharp about people, and his characters burst off the page so you feel you know them. And he is extremely moral \u2014 you know where he stands with each character. <\/p>\n

Philippe Sands\u2019 The Last Colony. It\u2019s brilliant. I gave his book East West Street to the King for his birthday. He hasn\u2019t replied yet, but I think he would have enjoyed it. I love the King; I admire and know him. I think we have a rapport \u2014 I hope he would say we do. <\/p>\n

Little Dorrit. It\u2019s both funny and sad, and is a key to Dickens\u2019 life because his whole family went to jail and it\u2019s about how we\u2019re all marked by the things that happen in our lives \u2014 the way we never escape. <\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more book reviews and interviews \u2014 and see what\u2019s top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List<\/a><\/p>\n

The book I couldn\u2019t finish <\/p>\n

Proust\u2019s Remembrance of Things Past. I got bored. Maybe it was a bit too French for me. I didn\u2019t care enough about the people.le<\/p>\n

The book I\u2019m ashamed I haven\u2019t read <\/p>\n

Tristram Shandy. I would like to have attempted it. I hope I will \u2014 I like to think anything is possible, even at 84. <\/p>\n

My favourite film \"Arletty<\/p>\n

Arletty in Les Enfants du Paradis<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

Les Enfants du Paradis. The acting, the story, the power of the characters \u2014 you\u2019re thrust into the world of bohemian Paris and showbiz people. Arletty was one of the greatest actresses who ever lived. A Nazi sympathiser it seems, but God she was a good actress. <\/p>\n

My favourite play<\/p>\n

King Lear. There\u2019s an agony, a daring, and the character of Lear is so unbearably tragic. He\u2019s so foolish and wrong. And the fool is witty and heart-rending. It engages all my emotions and that\u2019s what I want \u2014 I want to feel alive when I\u2019m at the theatre. <\/p>\n

The box set that I\u2019m hooked on\"England's<\/p>\n

Sarina Wiegman with the England team<\/p>\n

JONATHAN MOSCROP\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

I recently watched Unforgivable, which I thought was very good. It\u2019s about paedophilia \u2014 not a world I know anything about, but I felt that it was truthful and beautifully acted. But I just watch sport now. I love tennis. And of course I was watching the ladies\u2019 football. The English had more longing \u2014 they just weren\u2019t going to give up. I\u2019m just crazy about them. As for the coach, Sarina [Wiegman], she\u2019s my pin-up. <\/p>\n

My favourite TV series<\/p>\n

Television is not my art form. I\u2019ll say something I was in which I thought was very good: The Girls of Slender Means, made in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

My favourite piece of music\"Photo<\/p>\n

Sinead Campbell-Wallace as Floria Tosca and Noel Bouley as Baron Scarpia in a 2022 production of Tosca<\/p>\n

JOHN SNELLING\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

I love opera. Any Italian opera would be my favourite. Tosca, anything by Verdi or Donizetti. I love hearing people sing because I can\u2019t. I have no music in my soul. I love The Merry Widow \u2014 it conjures up a world that\u2019s gone and I\u2019m very conscious of all the things that have gone. I\u2019m not really conscious of what\u2019s here and now. <\/p>\n

The last TV show that made me cry and laugh<\/p>\n

Reruns of Barry Humphries. He was a genius and a friend. I miss him terribly. <\/p>\n

\u2022 Friend, genius, alcoholic \u2014 who was the real Barry Humphries?<\/a><\/p>\n

The lyric I wish I\u2019d written<\/p>\n

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach. It\u2019s poetry.<\/p>\n

The poem that saved me <\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s song \u201cfear no more the heat of the sun\u201d in Cymbeline. It\u2019s an acknowledgement that life goes by and that we have to accept what happens.<\/p>\n

The instrument I play<\/p>\n

My voice. <\/p>\n

The instrument I wish I\u2019d learnt<\/p>\n

The cello. It\u2019s mournful and beautiful and has a more sonorous sound than the violin, which can be a bit scratchy sometimes. <\/p>\n

The music that cheers me up<\/p>\n

Anything by Gilbert and Sullivan; Three Little Maids from School Are We. <\/p>\n

If I could own one painting it would be\"Portrait<\/p>\n

Rembrandt\u2019s Self-Portrait with a Golden Chain (c1635)<\/p>\n

FINE ART IMAGES\/HERITAGE IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

One of Rembrandt\u2019s self-portraits. He was unafraid to paint the sadness in his life. He painted himself unvarnished \u2014 I think that\u2019s quite hard to do when it\u2019s your own face. I think of all these women who put Botox in their faces in order to conceal the lines of life. That to me is a travesty.<\/p>\n

The place I feel happiest<\/p>\n

A little village called Montisi in Italy. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m having a fantasy dinner party. I\u2019ll invite these artists and authors \"Portrait<\/p>\n

Dame Edna Everage, aka Barry Humphries<\/p>\n

GIE KNAEPS\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Charles Dickens, Barry Humphries, Colm Toibin, Amitav Ghosh, Joan Rivers, Eileen Atkins and Vanessa Redgrave. <\/p>\n

And I\u2019ll put on this music<\/p>\n

None, absolutely not. <\/p>\n

The show I\u2019m looking forward to<\/p>\n

Nina Conti\u2019s ventriloquist act. She\u2019s f***ing amazing.<\/p>\n

The play I walked out on <\/p>\n

The Lehman Trilogy. I couldn\u2019t believe in the characters or the story \u2014 I just didn\u2019t care. [I didn\u2019t think it was antisemitic], that didn\u2019t occur to me. But I mean almost everything is antisemitic because the English don\u2019t like Jews. People get a bit confused between Israelis and Jews and they think that all Israelis are Jewish, which they\u2019re not, and all Jews are Israelis, which they\u2019re not. If you ask me what is the worst thing in the world at the moment, I would say Gaza. That doesn\u2019t make me antisemitic, it just makes me moral. <\/p>\n

Overrated\"Mick<\/p>\n

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones<\/p>\n

GARY MILLER\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

The Rolling Stones. Too noisy.<\/p>\n

Underrated<\/p>\n

The playwright and actor Stewart Permutt, who died not very long ago. He was wonderful and had a particular vision of expressing himself and characters. He was a genius unrecognised. <\/p>\n

The Little Book of Miriam by Miriam Margolyes is out now (John Murray \u00a316.99 pp320). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk<\/a>. Free UK standard P&P on orders over \u00a325. Special discount available for Times+ members<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Dickens. I\u2019ve read all his novels. My favourite book is probably Little Dorrit, Bleak House or Great…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-10421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}