Shakespeare on Toast » The Guardian

Cafedirect & Toast at Hay-on-Wye

Ben — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:13:19 +0000

This coming Sunday 31st, as part of The Guardian Hay-on-Wye Literature Festival, I’ll be talking all things Shakespeare, at the breakfast hour of 9am.

Cafedirect is sponsoring the event, providing free coffee – and I’ll see if I can’t rustle up some toast and jam to go with the Toast…

Come one, come all… Click here for a link to the Hay website… and below to the right for details of Cafedirect… also their blogpost here…

“Excellent”– The Guardian

Ben — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:52:47 +0000

I have been given back my book. My father has given up his new-found acting career. All is once more right with the world of Toast.

www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jan/31/steven-poole-shakespeare-ben-crystal

“Crystal ends up admirably succeeding in his ambition to provide a toolbox for getting to grips with Shakespeare’s plays” — The Guardian

Ben — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:07:00 +0000

Toast is reviewed in today’s The Guardian:

Crystal, who is also an actor, paints in a lot of useful context about Elizabethan playhouses, explains very well the business of textual comparison… and conducts an excellent technical discussion of metre, which culminates in a genuinely thrilling dramatic exegesis of an extract from Macbeth… There are gems of close reading and theatrically focused attention throughout.

However, the authorship of this Shakespearian Toolbox has been ascribed to my father, the linguist, David Crystal.

He was thrilled to discover the audition offers flooding in for him this morning, while I look forward to Routledge publishing my autobiography this May.

For the review in full, click here