diplomacy, humanitarian challenges and the state of the Labour party. Forde is also on tour from January 28 to June 10. https://www.mattforde.com


Whose City? Online February 9 Bérénice Hamidi goes on Zoom to discuss The Cities of Political Theatre in France in 2026 as part of a pan-European project looking at the connection between cultural politics and gentrification. https://tinyurl.com/2cqew2na


Television The New Yorker at 100 Netflix Out now


This behind-the-scenes documentary by Marshall Curry concerns the great print magazine as it hit its centenary earlier this year. Julianne Moore narrates the story of the editors, writers and celebs who made it happen. https://tinyurl.com/236a5hlp


Theatre Crown of Blood Sheffield Theatres February 2–7 Billed as a Yoruba adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Oladipo Agboluaje’s play is set during the civil wars of 19th-century Yorubaland, the cultural region in West Africa. Directed by Mojisola Kareem of Utopia Theatre. https://tinyurl.com/2bnvbnso


Spotlight Cosy local crime


Faith Eckersall made a mistake. She ditched her job as a reporter on the Bournemouth Echo for a job in PR. She was not cut out for it. Eighteen months


later, she returned to the Echo. It was meant to be; her grey cardigan was still on the back of her old chair. Her time away was


Deep Azure Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London February 7–April 11 The late Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman wrote this hip-hop influenced drama about police brutality in 2005, and its themes of love, grief and justice are unlikely to have lost their sting. Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu directs. https://tinyurl.com/2xsmb4h5


not wasted, however. In the absence of a real newsroom, she invented her own. Trying her hand at


cosy crime, she dreamt up the Dorset town of Piddington, where Harry Hedges, a discredited London


journalist, has to revive the ailing local paper. The result is The Body on the Roundabout: a Piddington Gazette Mystery. It takes place in a


world she loves to inhabit; a draft of volume two is with her


publisher and she is about to start a third. “I created a


disgusting newsroom, like so many newsrooms, in bits of buildings with horrible carpets,” says Eckersall, a long-time NUJ member, now freelance. “I wanted to get the


feel of this joyous merry-go-round of stories, exciting things happening, things changing. It represents how newsrooms often were, how they sometimes still are and how I wish they’d always be.” The Body on the


Roundabout: a Piddington Gazette Mystery, Faith Eckersall, Embla Books, https:// tinyurl.com/2yre7agc


Steve Bell


An existential threat to political cartoonists – Chris Proctor, Page 23 theJournalist | 19


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