Art

Gaynor has been influenced by such painters as Francis Bacon and W R Sickert, and some of the results of her research into these artists may be read in these pages. You may also read about the life and work of Lucian Freud OM and Maggi Hambling OBE.

Gaynor has always been a keen photographer. You may like to see some of her photographs in this album.

Theatre

Mike is a great admirer of William Shakespeare and his plays. He writes here about the Bard's life and offers his family tree.

Shakespeare wrote many of his greatest plays for the original Globe playhouse, the birthplace of British theatre.
Mike is a regular playgoer at Shakespeare's Globe reconstructed on London's Bankside. The 2017 summer season has been announced. It will be the second and last under the direction of Emma Rice. She has, shall we say, a fresh view of what the Globe should be doing. I hoped for the best but contrary to some audiences and many critics, I didn't enjoy the three plays I saw this summer. This is no longer Shakespeare's Globe, but rather Emma Rice's Globe. The uniqueness of the Globe was that the Bard's plays could be experienced in a setting similar to his own. The Globe is now just another stage to let directors impose their own interpretations. Fair enough, but not at the Globe! It seems that the Globe Board agreed with me and she will leave after this season.

The modern playwrights Mike writes about are Harold Pinter who sadly died in 2008, Sir Tom Stoppard OM, and Samuel Beckett.
Alan Bennett should really be here too - a future project I'm afraid.

Book Shop

Well Furlong is an associate of both Amazon.com in USA and Amazon.co.uk in Britain. This means that you may buy on-line many of the books that Gaynor and Mike recommend. If you buy one of our recommended books, then we may earn a small commission.

The Book Shop includes an Art department with sections devoted to art essays and critiques and to a number of individual artists. Not just British art here, but covering the gamut of world art. Separate sections are also devoted to books by or about selected British artists including Bacon and Sickert. Finally there is a section listing recommended books about sculpture and sculptors.

The Theatre department includes some recommended books about Shakespeare and Elizabethan playhouses. There are sections dedicated to the leading playwrights of the 20th century, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard.

By clicking on a flag icon you may find out more about the book, how much it costs, and if you so wish, buy it. You may also search the Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk catalogues directly from our Book Shop.

Gaynor

Gaynor is an artist working in a variety of media including oils, plaster of Paris and wood.
One of Gaynor's interests is jazz, and she has produced several paintings of jazz musicians such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, Ben Webster, Sonny Rollins, the Prez and others in her jazz gallery. Another interest is theatre and you may see some of her interpretations of the plays and playwrights in her portrait gallery .

Mike

Mike was a software developer working for Fujitsu Services. He retired early at the end of 2009. He is interested in theatre and computing. You may read a career page summarising his work life, and his personal theatre page .