Sponging The Stone

I DON'T REMEMBER reading the book until my adult years, yet Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol seems always to have been with me. The Carol entered my life when I lay on the living room floor with a belly full of Christmas turkey avoiding adult conversation at my grandmother's dinner. My first recollection of the story is in the form of the 1951 American film version Scrooge. Alastair Sim, the most robust interpreter of Scrooge, fascinated me by his depiction of a man who starts off as "solitary as an oyster" and winds up a "second father" to

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Little Tim Grows Up A Review of Mr. Timothy

Louis Bayard assists Tim Cratchit in finding his own voice and getting some dignity, as well as revenge, in the recent thriller Mr. Timothy. Fed up with being a product of someone else's pity, idealization or philanthropy, Tim, upon the death of his father Bob, found his way to the gritty side of Victorian life. Living in a whorehouse, paying his rent through reading tutorials with the resident Madam, Tim acquired an autonomous start, out from the velvet grip of the Cratchits and Scrooge.

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