iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Did Ye Get Healed? - my take on what appears to be a new Royal Opera House production of Parsifal - but is it? Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

New Substack: As They Like It - The RSC’s new production turns Shakespeare into a message carrier. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

New Substack: To Make Us Feel His Love: Two theories of Atonement and a Dylan song. Ransom Theory. Penal Substitution. Cosmic deals, divine blood-price - and then Bob Dylan. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

A topical cartoon based on the RAF Fairford incident...

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

First time number 1 most read on The Critic with my Sheeran/Dylan article…

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Sad news about Richard O'Sullivan. From Carry On Teacher through Ptolemy XIII in Cleopatra, then the all-pervasive triumphs of 70s sitcom, Man About the House and Robin's Nest. I saw him (with Joyce and Murphy) in panto as Buttons in Cinderella. RIP.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Et in Arcadia ego: I hate to be that person. I explore why I was unconvinced by Stoppard's Arcadia, despite its enormous reputation. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Becoming Sixty: the personal significance of an age. I turned sixty last month. My father died at sixty. Today, on the anniversary of his death, I’ve written about the strange significance an age can acquire, and about one night in 1975 that has never quite stopped happening. Link👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

New Substack: Love in The Potting Shed: Graham Greene and a deal with God Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Carry On Collection 5 has arrived - each one of these is a little ray of light in desperate times.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

New Substack: Reading Raspail: On one of the twentieth century's most divisive novels. The Camp of the Saints is a literary taboo. Few admit to reading it, fewer discuss it as a novel. Having read it, I asked: what can a reader glean from this controversial book? Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Sweet Like Chocolate, Girl: Shaw's chocolate soldier story prophesies globalisation. I went to see an operetta based upon a Bernard Shaw play, which ended up revealing a lot about how borders and nations are destroyed. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

New Substack: Roddy McDowall: Memories of a childhood obsession. A new biography has sent me back to Planet of the Apes, old TV listings, and one of my earliest cinematic obsessions. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

RIP George Eastman (aka Luigi Montefiori). One of the greats of Italian exploitation cinema and a repertory regular with Joe D’Amato - especially as the Anthropophagous himself.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Substack: The Revolutionary Dream is over. Over the past couple of weeks, I've revisited three of the great socialist plays of the 1970s, including encountering a panel of reds in the wild. Occupations, Destiny, Teeth 'n' Smiles. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

RIP Michael Pennington. My first Hamlet, and saw him as Timon and John Gabriel Borkman. A very fine actor.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

New Substack: Goodbye Auntie I must leave you: Liberty yes, from the licence. I’ve finally broken up with the BBC - after bureaucratic farce, threatening emails, and one last binge of BBC studio drama on iPlayer. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

The obituary I drafted for John Stock Clarke (1929–2024) - playwright, scholar of Margaret Oliphant, and a singular, idiosyncratic fellow. Now on Substack. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

New Substack - Wotan's Spear: thoughts on and from the current Royal Opera House Ring cycle. Link👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

New Substack - Passion and Resurrection: Reflections for this time of year. From a Passion reading at Wing to the problem of the Resurrection: some Easter reflections on mockery, witness, and history. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, “The Morning of the Resurrection.”

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Christ Carrying the Cross is one of my favourite Bosch-attributed paintings, although the attribution is now disputed. However, no one can dispute its striking qualities and visceral power. It’s worth sharing this Good Friday.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Substack - The Correct Reaction: Leaning what to think about John Proctor at the Royal Court. Join me at Sloane Square, where even the plumbing tells you what to think... Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

A wild structural mess held together by one of literature’s most enigmatic figures, Wuthering Heights fascinates less as a story than as a puzzle about what Heathcliff actually is. www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

My play Coward is being revived as a rehearsed reading at Hampton Hill Theatre on Sunday 19 April. See 👇 for booking link.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Substack: Patrick Bateman Sings! American Psycho as a musical. Bret Easton Ellis's novel is one of my all-time favourite reads. So what did I make of the musical version..? Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

I take a cold, hard look at whether creative degrees really offer an in to the arts and creative industries, in The Critic. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

New Substack: The Dirty Harry Problem: Vigilante films, international law, and the war with Iran Vigilante films are on my mind, imagining as they do the moment when the law fails and justice still demands an answer. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

To mark Kenneth Williams’ centenary, here’s a piece I wrote last year about my childhood love of the actor, and the acquisition of a memento. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

The National Theatre’s Playboy of the Western World treats Synge’s proto-sitcom like a sacred relic, smoothing out its bite and leaving only flashes of the savage comedy that once caused riots. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

New Substack on rhetorical conversation-stoppers. The Gospel opens it. On 'What Would Jesus Do?' and other slogans, and what about Paul and Augustine..? Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Peter Mandelson is a figure of Shakespearean proportions. A snake with fangs deep in the heart of the body politic, a major contributor to the sickness that has overtaken the land. Simply put - a villain.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

New Substack for UK Holocaust Memorial Day: a piece I wrote in 2016 after visiting Auschwitz and reflecting on Claude Lanzmann’s Pourquoi Israël. It was never published at the time. I’m sharing it now, unchanged. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

New Substack: First Thoughts on The Academy A gnomic sci-fi text appears on Bob Dylan’s Instagram and immediately provokes mystification. I explore this brief labyrinth: anti-managerial, Blakean, noir-inflected, and totally now. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

My new Substack 'Christmas in Wing' offers a reflective look on village Christmas services in Wing, exploring carols and community, before turning (and turning away from) to the online reaction to the King’s speech. Link👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

In Alden days... From baroque drama to tasteful inertia, the Royal Opera's new Ariodante disappoints Link👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Watching the first episode of 70s sitcom Lord Tramp, which demonstrates at least that the failures of the past are as egregiously awful as the failures of the present. Joan Sims is wasted.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

A day at the BFI Archive studying Talbot Rothwell Carry On drafts. Fascinating to see his process. A master of structure - arrived at in first draft - his rewrites were mostly tightening endings and expanding/improving dialogues.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

My third time at Rough and Rowdy Ways, as Bob Dylan slowly but surely slips from view behind the piano, behind the music, but the voice is still strong.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

In my new Substack, I take a peek at Inside No. 9, the stage version. I found something part Grand Guignol, part variety show, and wholly what the fans expect. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Saw the Young Vic’s Entertaining Mr Sloane. A flawed but fascinating revival that emphasises Orton’s comedy's themes of exploitation, vulnerability, and sin. Full thoughts 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

How enormously sad. Their collaboration, especially on the first 3 Soft Cell albums, was immeasurably important to so many of us. RIP Dave Ball.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

New Substack: Breaking Whitemore’s Code Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code offers an example of a secular saint’s play. A new epilogue turns its quiet hagiography into noisy sermonising – and reveals much about contemporary sanctity, and sanctimoniousness. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

I highly recommend Bijan Omrani's God is an Englishman, a far reaching survey on what Christianity has done for us, and what it might still potentially do. Fuller thoughts linked 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

Not lovely Diane Keaton! Sublimely funny in Woody Allen films, heartbreaking as Kay in The Godfather films, a feisty Louise Bryant in Reds. Always wonderful in everything. RIP.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Substack: The Path to Dachau. The first in an occasional series of archive posts from previous blogs, this piece of travel writing tells of a visit I made to Dachau in 2010. Link 👇

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

John Woodvine was Malvolio in the first Shakespeare I ever saw on stage, an RSC Twelfth Night in 1980. A wonderful performance, my classmates and I’s sides ached with laughter. I am eternally grateful to him for that Induction. RIP.

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James Martin Charlton @jmcfire.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Troilus and Cressida at Shakespeare's Globe is disappointing staging that leans too broad, but almost worth seeing for Samantha Spiro’s inspired Patroclus. Link 👇

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