Book festival review: Simon Callow

THE writer and theatre journalist Al Senter has been a long-standing jovial presence in the chair at the book festival, but he can rarely have spent a more silent hour than befell him once Simon Callow got into his stride.

This was conversation turned exhilarating monologue, as the veteran actor built up a head of steam on the theme of Charles Dickens’s theatre: a virtuoso chair-bound performance enlivened with all the theatricality of its subject.

It turns out that the novelist was also an ardent thespian, first taking the stage in the “theatrical karaoke” of the 19th-century playhouses where punters could pay for a role among the professional cast. In time he earned fame as a comic actor (“he had a lovely throwaway technique,” Callow explained, “he didn’t hammer it out at all”), and ultimately he would encourage friends like Wilkie Collins to write serious plays for him. Performing in these, he could give deep vent to the torments of his troubled marriage.

Book festival review: Simon Callow | Tom Watson