“... presumably dead. I have never heard of her. 2 September. In a piece in the LRB on Buñuel Michael Wood mentions among ‘a number of startling and now famous images’ in Viridiana ‘a small crucifix’ that ‘flicks open to become a menacing knife’. The film came out in 1961 but I didn’t see it until some time in the 1970s after Buñuel’s much more ...”

“... no CD player at my mother’s: she’s still got – believe it or not – the same wacky fake-wood-grained cabinet-style phonograph we had in the Buena Vista apartments in the 1960s. It has spindly metal legs and space-age styling and looks like something the Eameses might have designed on a not-so-good day. Granted, I can get all weepy and nostalgic just ...”