Thrilled and delighted to see my play THIS IS NOT A SHAKESPEARE PLAY performed by Neale Wade Academy in the Coram Schools Shakespeare Festival. It's about mystery and magic in a school production Macbeth, and it's to introduce children to the power and magic of Shakespeare.

Farewell to Call the Midwife: a beautifully judged final episode. This has been a consistently intelligent, sensitive and skilfully written series, capturing character and period, reflecting social change and attitudes accurately and realistically but always with hope. Thank you! @stephenmcgann.uk

Donald Trump criticises this country, saying this is not the era of Winston Churchill. In 1940, when Churchill, faced with a triumphant Nazi Germany, appealed to the USA for help he got nothing. And he had a rather more compelling case than Trump has.

Although 'fewer than six items' is correct, 'fewer' being the adjective attached to 'items', 'six items or fewer' should be 'six items or less' because 'less' refers to the number: 'six or a number less than six'. The girl who corrected a supermarket's grammar was mistaken.

Talking of Mandelson wrongly as 'US Ambassador' when he was the BRITISH Ambassador TO the US is not just lazy journalism: it suggests Mandelson is somehow someone else's problem. No, he was a British ambassador and he is a British problem.

@stephenmcgann.uk Call the Midwife was just masterly tonight.

The words 'he/she is FINE, sister' in Call the Midwife are as fatal as wearing a red Security top was in Kirk-era Star Trek. @stephenmcgann.uk

Say it loud: Sometimes 'less' is right and 'fewer'is wrong.

British actors who have played US Presidents, and US actors who have played British PMs: JQ Adams (Anthony Hopkins), van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne), Lincoln (Daniel Day Lewis). AND Wellington (John Malkovitch), Churchill (Rod Taylor, John Lithgow), Thatcher (Meryl Streep). Others?

So this is not a Board of Peace, it's a Board of Trump.

Normally you can rely on the Conservative-leaning press in Britain to support Trump against his critics, but now he is angering the right wing just as much as the left. He thinks he is immune to all rules, even those of politics, history and common sense.

Who on earth is this vile, odious Trump apologist on Any Questions? He's just denied the existence of international law.

King Herod was French! At least, he is in my Christmas Crib scene.

I didn't realise we would have to act out the words in this game, or I wouldn't have suggested The Habsburg Empire.

Everyone talks nostalgically about the nineties. I still feel I'm living in them.

I mean, I hate to be a party-pooper, but does no-one recall learning about the Rhineland? www.thetimes.com/world/russia...

Why 'Nuremberg' is such a disgracefully dishonest film. A thread. We start with a small detail of greater significance than might at first appear. The indictment is shown being served by an American officer. In fact it was served by a British officer, Airey Neave, /1

Coming to the @EtceteraTheatre Camden in October - my play PAPER TRAIL, about the dark secrets to be found in your family's past - and in the local archives.

"said 16-year-old student Harriet Copley, who will college in Peterborough from September" (BBCNews website) Since when did "college" become a verb???

It seems apt that, while discussing people coming from France to England in boats, President Macron should offer to lend us the Bayeux Tapestry, which shows, er, ....

What ho! Come and hear my talk on JEEVES AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE on Wednesday 25 June 6.30 for @histassoc at Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge! Sign up: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/jeeves-the...

What ho! Come and hear my talk on JEEVES AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE on Wednesday 25 June 6.30 for @histassoc at Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge! Sign up: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/jeeves-the...

Bluesky and Threads will always find it hard to compete with EX-Twitter because posts on that one make news, so people hear of it, which in turn suggests it's important. I've not yet heard a news story about a post on Threads or Bluesky. I can't believe there's nothing newsworthy on here.

Provocative proposition for American friends, but I really think we are all adversely affected by their almost religious reverence for the Constitution. It's 200 years old and it's about time they put it to bed and drew up a new document better suited to the reality of the 21stc.

VE Day

Solidarity with Canada!

The Dean's homily at the Pope's funeral sounded like a rebuke to Trump - pointed reference to the plight of refugees, with Mexico/US namechecked, and special mention for the climate emergency. To add to the fun, it was in Italian, so Trump sat there but didn't understand it.

So, not content with Ofsted having driven Mrs Perry to suicide, Amanda Spielman appears to want to dance on her grave. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Still time to book for this Saturday's SPRING HISTORY DAY from the Cambridge branch of the @histassoc! @NathenAmin on 1483, Chris Read on Lenin and @hoyer_kat on East Germany - the best Saturday morning you'll spend this year! EVENTBRITE: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cambridge-....

'An apple a day, if well aimed, keeps the doctor away.' #Wodehouse

If you're near Cambridge - a DOUBLE BILL of (my) plays about the past and its hold on the present, from the Australian Child Migrants to the fate of Richard III: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU WERE? Corpus Playroom 22-23 January.

What's your weirdest exam invigilation story? I was once down to invigilate an A level art exam. A woman I had never seen before walked in wearing a dressing gown and then slipped it off. That's when I realised it was a life drawing exam. #noonehadtoldme

Played the organ for Midnight Mass last night. There is NOTHING quite like playing the last verse of O Come All Ye Faithful, including THAT chord! (All musicians will know what I mean!)