Terence Ratttigan's original play is a Masterpiece....layer upon layer upon layer...it would make Pinter weep and is worthy of Ibsen...A courtroom drama that amazingly puts the human condition on trial....Rattigan's searing insight into the human condition is also savagely portrayed in 'The Browning Version#

Admittedly much of the details of this history were new to me, but it read as a novel in parts, is full of witty and pithy observations on various individuals in this epic narrative...it manages to convey to the reader a sense of interactive understanding of the unfolding events...A dense and measured read but very rewarding..Highly recommended

The story should have opened with the boat-trip...and then as their isolation became more and more inescapable, the other elements of the story could have been told in flashback. When the film gets to the moneyshots...the couple who love each other...desperately trying to remain afloat in a vast merciless expanse of ocean...it becomes not only terrifying but hints at Beckett-like preoccupations...A must see!!

Very clever reworking of Deliverance-type movie with just enough superficial social commentary to make it almost a text for Sociology 101 albeit a lot more entertaining than most texts!!...The main delinquent also appears almost against type in Eastwood's Harry Browne

This is a compelling revisionist work on the Pilgrim Fathers. A hugely informative and inspirational account of the preparation for the voyage. Unfortunately it could also be argued that a study of the earliest colonies...and we need to go back further than the Mayflower..become studies for a primer in ethnic cleansing. It would be interesting to see historians of Michael Burleigh's stature addressing the moral aspects of what became manifest destiny...But this book must be read by the amateur historian

Having watched Haneke's The White Ribbon and this movie in one weekend, I'm coming to the view that films like these are now serving the role previously carried out by the didactic and moralistic paintings of artists such as Bruegel and Bosch and Caravaggio. It is worth spending time with this movie in the gallery of your livingroom

Having read and hugely enjoyed Fintan O'Toole's writing on Shakespeare and Tom Murphy I was fascinated that he was interested in a period of history that had obsessed me since early adolescence but not shared by any of my family, friends or acquaintances, namely the Iroquois!(I blame Look and Learn magazine and Ron Embleton's animations of I think de Champlain killing three Iroquois Chiefs) William Johnson was an inspiration for many literary works but it seems to me that he has slipped beneath the radar, particularly in his native country. Fintan O'Toole's book is a serious step in redressing this trend. Can I also recommend some of the relatively recent works on the myth of the Iroquois empire and their invinciblity, for example..Beyond the Covenant Chain, and 'The Iroquois Restoration' etc. I have just purchase Michael Burleigh's Moral Combat and am looking forward to reading it but I will continue to argue that many lessons for today's world can be profitably learnt form a study of the Seven Years War.

Excellent overview for an amateur historian such as myself. I am now beginning to delve into more specialised works, particularly in relation to the Iroquois and the myth of their empire...a very potent myth nevertheless...Also Fintan O'Toole's White Savage about William Johnson is essential reading in relation to this conflict