After the writer was stabbed in a horrific attack, his wife started making a video diary of his recovery. The clips are featured in a new film from Alex Gibney, who drew on Dennis Potter to create a powerful portrait of Rushdie’s tumultuous life
One Thousand and One Nights is the framing device for the author’s pithy and thought provoking takes on everything from eugenics to trouser suits
Anthony Cummings
Tuesaday 11 November 2025
In the framing device that opens the Middle Eastern folk tales collected in One Thousand and One Nights, King Shahryar avenges his wife’s infidelity by ordering her execution and marrying a new virgin every night, having each of them beheaded by sunrise so they won’t have time to cheat. When he runs out of victims, the young Persian queen Shahrazad volunteers but stalls her own murder by telling the king one captivating tale after another – and those become the stories we’re reading.
The Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit author on being a good landlord to a grumpy ghost, her optimism about AI and the ideal size for cats
Your debut novel Oranges are Not the Only Fruit turns 40 years old this year. How do you feel about it at this point in your life?
Can you believe it? I find that astonishing. I’m always having to think about it because people keep bothering me about it! Its next iteration is a musical, and then I really hope that’s the end. Just let me go! Obviously I love Oranges and I revisited it again with [her 2011 memoir] Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? and the musical too. Surely, by the rule of three, this is it? Then I can live in peace and plant potatoes.
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| Jeanette Winterson |
'How do I relax? Running. Sex. (But I hate sex on the run)'
Saturday 5 December 2009
Jeanette Winterson, 50, was brought up by adoptive parents in Accrington. At 23, she wrote Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, which won a Whitbread award, and later adapted it for a BBC series that won three Baftas. In 2006, she was given an OBE for services to literature. Her latest book is a children's story, The Lion, The Unicorn And Me: The Donkey's Christmas Story. She lives in Gloucestershire and London.
The British writer is known for his unique ability to get inside the heads of serial killers. But a Guardian investigation reveals multiple accusations of assault and child sexual abuse. What is the truth about the man described by his own daughter as ‘absolute evil’?
From the outside, it looked like the sort of happy family home a child might draw. Red brick, surrounded by rolling countryside, in Curdridge, near Winchester. Here lived the true crime writer Christopher Berry-Dee, with his second wife, Tracey Dee, and their two young daughters, Zoe and Sasha, in the early 1990s. Inside, it was a house of horrors, full of murder memorabilia. In a wardrobe were the clothes a nine-year-old girl had been murdered in. One afternoon, Zoe was playing when she found them. The now 38-year-old council worker from Romsey says she remembers “putting it all on … going downstairs and everyone being absolutely traumatised”. Later, another gruesome memento was added to the collection: the Austin Metro that convicted murderer Michael Sams had used to transport a body in 1991. Bloodied sections of the seatbelts had been cut out for forensic tests.
Enter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting-Gentlewoman.
DOCTOR.
I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth in your report. When was it she last walked?
GENTLEWOMAN.
Since his Majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.
Orson Welles in Macbeth (1948)
Thunder. Enter the three Witches.
FIRST WITCH.
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
SECOND WITCH.
Thrice, and once the hedge-pig whin’d.
THIRD WITCH.
Harpier cries:—’Tis time, ’tis time.
Enter Banquo.
BANQUO.
Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the Weird Women promis’d; and, I fear,
Thou play’dst most foully for’t; yet it was said
It should not stand in thy posterity;
But that myself should be the root and father
Of many kings. If there come truth from them
(As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine)
Why, by the verities on thee made good,
May they not be my oracles as well,
And set me up in hope? But hush; no more.
Sennet sounded. Enter Macbeth as King, Lady Macbeth as Queen;Lennox, Ross, Lords, and Attendants.
MACBETH.
Here’s our chief guest.
Enter Banquo and Fleance with a torch before him.
BANQUO.
How goes the night, boy?
FLEANCE.
The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.
BANQUO.
And she goes down at twelve.
FLEANCE.
I take’t, ’tis later, sir.
BANQUO.
Hold, take my sword.—There’s husbandry in heaven;
Their candles are all out. Take thee that too.
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!
Enter Macbeth and a Servant with a torch.
Give me my sword.—Who’s there?
MACBETH
A friend.
DUNCAN, King of Scotland.
MALCOLM, his Son.
DONALBAIN, his Son.
MACBETH, General in the King’s Army.
BANQUO, General in the King’s Army.
MACDUFF, Nobleman of Scotland.
LENNOX, Nobleman of Scotland.
ROSS, Nobleman of Scotland.
MENTEITH, Nobleman of Scotland.
ANGUS, Nobleman of Scotland.
CAITHNESS, Nobleman of Scotland.
FLEANCE, Son to Banquo.
SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland, General of the English Forces.
YOUNG SIWARD, his Son.
SEYTON, an Officer attending on Macbeth.
BOY, Son to Macduff.
An English Doctor.
A Scottish Doctor.
A Soldier.
A Porter.
An Old Man.
LADY MACBETH.
LADY MACDUFF.
Gentlewoman attending on Lady Macbeth.
HECATE, and three Witches.
Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers, Attendants and Messengers.
The Ghost of Banquo and several other Apparitions.
Austen’s second published novel gave us Lizzy Bennet, Mr Darcy – and arguably the original romantic comedy. The ironic humour, the lovable Bennet clan and the brooding, arrogant Darcy have inspired ardent fans ever since, with popular adaptations ranging from the classic 90s TV drama to the Keira Knightley film, and of course the inspiration for Mark Darcy in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones series.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Total votes 20
