Stuart Lancaster's England squad will show top teams never stand still | Robert Kitson

Worcester's Matt Kvesic, right, who is pushing hard for a back-row place in the England squad for the Six Nations, squares up to Sale's Richie Gray. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

How do you improve on perfection? It is a nice problem for Stuart Lancaster to contemplate as he seeks to capitalise on England's stunning win over New Zealand last month. This week's elite player squad reshuffle will duly reflect that startling Twickenham result but the best teams never stand still. If Lancaster is true to his instincts, and wants England to keep on winning, one or two tweaks are still required.

Some are straightforward. Of the original senior squad named back in the summer, the injured Rob Webber has not played all season and Matt Stevens has stepped down from Test rugby. Under the elite player squad rules Tom Youngs and David Wilson, the reserve specialist tighthead behind Dan Cole, can both be drafted in as automatic replacements. With the Test bench having expanded to 23, there is also room for an extra prop which means increasing the squad from 32 to 33 players. Saracens's Mako Vunipola, therefore, will be included, too.

Technically Lancaster also has a maximum further 10 changes at his disposal before the Six Nations Championship, five in the seniors and five in Saxons, but in reality no one is counting too rigidly. The England management's relationship with the clubs is much improved and the rapid improvement of someone such as Joe Launchbury demands to be recognised regardless of how many other alterations there may be. The Wasps lock is only 21 but his range of skills, size, athleticism and work-rate have catapulted him from nowhere to a first-choice pick in a matter of months. Tom Palmer, who will be 34 in March and has played little rugby for Wasps lately, and Mouritz Botha should not count on too many more senior caps beyond this summer's tour of Argentina.

The other three seemingly vulnerable forwards named last summer are Phil Dowson, Tom Johnson and Thomas Waldrom. Two of them may yet survive but anyone who saw Matt Kvesic for Worcester against Leicester last week will know he, along with Steffon Armitage, is pushing hard. There is also James Haskell, with Northampton's Calum Clark and Wasps' Billy Vunipola, Maka's brother, also lurking. England need to imagine would might be required against Scotland and Ireland if, say, Chris Robshaw were injured and, as currently anticipated, Tom Croft is not fully firing until March.

That scenario could count in the combative Clark's favour, with Vunipola and Kvesic biding their time in the Saxons, as Lancaster has so far shown no inclination to recall the French-based Armitage.

Behind the scrum Alex Goode's untimely shoulder injury will, like Croft, not prevent him being named in the formal squad but does alter England's back three options. If Goode is not around it means Mike Brown and Ben Foden will be competing for the full-back jersey which, in turn, leaves England even lighter on the left wing. It seems David Strettle, on good form for Saracens lately, is still regarded as the leading alternative to Charlie Sharples rather than Wasps' rapid Christian Wade, although injuries can soon alter such pecking orders.

That leaves the midfield. Jordan Turner-Hall and Anthony Allen are both excellent club players but, for assorted reasons, have not made an unanswerable case to be Test regulars. Gloucester's Freddie Burns, as he did during the autumn, will step up from the Saxons and it would be a clear signal of positive intent if his club-mate Billy Twelvetrees joined him.

The latter can distribute, kick and run with equal facility and would fit neatly into Lancaster's portfolio behind Manu Tuilagi, Brad Barritt and Jonathan Joseph.

There will also be room for a little bit of calculated risk in the Saxons. The names Kyle Eastmond, George Kruis, Tom Savage and Elliot Daly deserve at least a mention in dispatches and it would not be a surprise if Joel Tomkins, increasingly assured at outside centre for Saracens, gains recognition. The whole point of A internationals is to see who can thrive outside his comfort zone or, in this instance, on a Friday night in February in Newcastle.

When even an intelligent, rational man like Conor O'Shea loses his composure on the subject of referees, there is clearly a problem. The standard of officiating in the Aviva Premiership has indeed been mixed but the more criticism the refs receive the worse the situation becomes. Andrew Small, castigated by Leicester the previous week, appeared beset by uncertainty at Wasps on Sunday and referred just about every decision to the television match official. Slippy, wet underfoot conditions make things even trickier but the time has come for players, coaches and administrators to remember rugby's oldest truth. Without a ref, useless or not, there can be no game.

Ospreys v Leicester. The Tigers were convincing winners in the reverse pool fixture but the Ospreys have perked up since then. Welsh rugby badly needs a pre-Six Nations boost and this is a perfect opportunity.

Leicester's front five will be viewing things rather differently.

View the original article here

Connolly 'still loves abusive dad'

5 January 2013 Last updated at 12:59 GMT Connolly spoke candidly about his traumatic childhood during the interview with Kirsty Wark Actor and comedian Billy Connolly has spoken of how he still loves his late father, despite being sexually abused by him for five years.

In an interview for the BBC's Review Show, Connolly said the power of forgiveness was "immense".

And he said he still considered his father, who abused him between the ages of 10 and 15, to be a "great man".

His own children - the two eldest of whom had known his father - have never asked him about the abuse.

Connolly first revealed the abuse he suffered in a biography written by his wife Pamela Stephenson in 2001 - some 12 years after his alcoholic father William died.

In the book, the 70-year-old Scot described how his mother walked out on the family when he was three, leaving him to be brought up by his father and two aunts.

He said he and his father regularly shared a bed together in their flat in the Partick area of Glasgow.

During the interview with presenter Kirsty Wark broadcast on BBC2 on Friday evening, Connolly said he had not made a conscious decision to hide the abuse during his rise to stardom in the 1970s and 1980s.

He explained: "It wasn't the time to talk about things like that - not like now.

"I just didn't want to talk about it. It was mine and I kind of liked it being mine. I thought it made me very colourful but it was up to me to make of it what I wanted to, and I always thought it made me kind of special.

"I loved him, and I kept loving him, and I love him today. And you know, forgiveness is a great thing - the power of forgiveness is immense and you can forgive dead people as well.

"It is a very odd affair, sexual abuse. Mine is very, very typical - you don't tell anybody about it. Everybody wonders why people who are abused don't rush off to the police or the authorities or an aunt or an uncle and tell them.

"But it just doesn't happen because you feel you've taken part in it, because sometimes it's not the most unpleasant thing that has ever happened to you. So there is a deep guilt and shame involved and so you don't tell people".

Connolly and his father William (left) appeared in a BBC documentary together in 1978

When asked what his five children - two of whom were old enough to have known his father - had asked him about the abuse, Connolly replied: "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They thought he was a great guy, and he was a great guy".

Connolly also described how his Aunt Mona had regularly humiliated him by rubbing his underpants in his face and leaving notes saying "thief" in the biscuit jar.

Recalling how she found a copy of an erotic poem in his possession, Connolly added: "It was a schoolboy thing, it was a very dirty piece and she found it and humiliated me with it for years and years and years and threatened to take it to school.

"She was always going to tell my dad and he was going to beat me limbless. But it was every day, was the thing. Every single day.

"And I had a teacher Rosie MacDonald who was a bit of a psychopath so I would leave my aunt and go to Rosie. It's astonishing I'm not gay because the women in my life are nightmares.

"I remember my sister standing outside school teaching me long division. I was scared to go in because I didn't know long division and I knew Rosie would kill me. My sister, who became a school teacher, explained it to me. She was my guardian angel."

The Review Show With Billy Connolly will be available on the BBC iPlayer until 23:44 on Friday 11 January 2013.

View the original article here

Still waiting for Godot

5 January 2013 Last updated at 01:31 GMT By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent Godot's 60th: The University of Reading archive shows the first night Pic: Roger Pic So why are we still waiting for Godot? How has Samuel Beckett's play grown from a tiny avant garde performance in Paris to become part of the West End theatre coach party circuit?

It's 60 years since Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot received its premiere in the Theatre de Babylone in Paris.

The first public performance, in its original French form of En attendant Godot, drew an audience of high-brow Parisians, taking in the latest experimental theatre.

"All the thousands who claimed they were there could never have been at the premiere. There weren't enough seats," says James Knowlson, Beckett's friend and official biographer.

They also couldn't have realised that this play, beginning its shoestring-budget run on 5 January 1953, was going to be seen as one of the pivotal moments in modern drama.

International appeal

So why has Waiting for Godot proved so durable? How has Beckett's work outlasted the other iconoclasts and angry young writers of the 1950s and 1960s?

"I would suggest the answer lies in its ambiguities. So much is suggested rather than explicitly stated," says Prof Knowlson.

A programme from Godot's first setting at the Theatre de Babylone in Montparnasse, Paris

"People can read into it what they want to read into it."

This openness to interpretation has helped the play to avoid becoming dated, he says. For a play that's about the passing of time, it's curiously timeless.

It asks all the big philosophical questions - about life and death and the uncertain purpose of what goes on in between - but in a way that isn't limited to a particular place or era.

And the play has acquired a remarkable record for being performed in very different international settings. No disaster or civil strife is complete without its own Godot.

It was performed in Sarajevo under siege in the 1990s, in South Africa it was seen as a critique of apartheid and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina a performance in New Orleans was seen as an emblem of the city's wait for recovery.

Inmates in San Quentin prison in California saw it as their own story in a famous production in the late 1950s.

Prof Knowlson's friendship with Beckett has also created a rich and unexpected legacy for his university, the University of Reading, which now holds the biggest archive of Beckett-related material in the world.

From the early 1970s, the playwright began giving manuscripts and notes to Prof Knowlson, stuffed into bags, boxes and suitcases. And this Beckett International Foundation has grown to become the definitive European collection for researchers.

"He adopted us," says Prof Knowlson - although the attention-shunning writer was never persuaded to visit the archive in person.

As Waiting for Godot reaches its 60th anniversary, the university has artefacts and pictures from the original performances.

'Something extraordinary'

It's also a reminder of how easily the play might not have happened at all.

Samuel Beckett at the BBC recording a series of his plays in 1977

There were no famous faces or big funders to back the play. Instead it depended on the actor and director Roger Blin to hustle for cash and a venue - and once it had begun it relied on word of mouth for survival.

None of the original cast are still alive - and the theatre itself shut down a few years after staging Beckett's play.

In an interview with French television in the 1960s, Roger Blin suggested the initial power of the play. When Beckett showed him the script: "I said to myself: This is something extraordinary and it must be put on."

Another playwright who was enlisted in the search for funding fervently promised Blin: "I will defend this play to the death."

It was still proving controversial when the first English version of the play was performed two years later in London, directed by a 24-year-old Peter Hall.

Harold Pinter, also then in his twenties, saw Beckett as the the "most courageous, remorseless writer going", while reviewer Bernard Levin described Waiting for Godot as "a remarkable piece of twaddle".

Not a 'miserabilist'

Prof Knowlson is himself now one of the most important living links with Beckett.

Continue reading the main story

He could be very convivial, very witty, very good company, with a great sense of humour”

End Quote Professor James Knowlson Beckett's friend and biographer And he recognises that the continuing interest in Beckett's writing is wrapped up in the fascination with the enigmatic character of the author. His photogenic alienation has become a kind of literary brand.

But Prof Knowlson argues against the view of Beckett as a "miserabilist".

"He could be very convivial, very witty, very good company, with a great sense of humour.

"But there was an element of depression and despair that was part of his life, particularly after the war when he was deeply involved in writing the novels."

He says that Beckett's idea of a happy Christmas would have been a solitary occasion.

"He would have been preferably on his own and writing. He hated that kind of thing."

The underlying humour is also part of the continuing appeal of Waiting for Godot, he argues. It's often a peculiarly bleak comedy of resistance, but the thread of humour is always there to leaven the gloom.

It's now a commonplace to see Waiting for Godot described as one of the most important plays of the 20th Century - with its reputation gathering momentum rather than fading away.

The kind of movie actors who would have reached the career point of wanting to be in King Lear now want to shuffle across the stage in Godot.

Design conscious

A key reason for this growing resonance with audiences, Prof Knowlson says, is the visual appeal. Beckett's strong images appeal to a design-conscious, visually-literate culture.

"They have this strong visual element. I've become much more conscious of the filmic quality."

A handbill advertising the first run of Waiting for Godot

Prof Knowlson says that he increasingly believes there is a direct link between the plays and Beckett's interest in painting.

"He was passionately involved in painting, not just that he loved to be with painters, but he was a real expert on 17th Century Dutch painting."

"He knew these pictures so well, he was so engrossed in these scenes. It seems to me that these pictures are really echoed in Waiting for Godot."

Beckett's life was changed by the success of Godot - the international impact of the play helped him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

His publisher John Calder also recalled how the enigmatic Godot could haunt his creator.

He recounted how he had once met an anxious Beckett getting off a flight at Heathrow airport. When the plane doors had closed on the runway in Paris, Beckett had heard the loudspeaker announcing: "Captain Godot welcomes you on board."

"I wondered if my destiny had caught up with me at last," Beckett had told his publisher.

The Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading will hold a series of seminars on Samuel Beckett and Waiting for Godot in April 2013.

View the original article here

Connolly 'still loves abusive dad'

5 January 2013 Last updated at 12:59 GMT Connolly spoke candidly about his traumatic childhood during the interview with Kirsty Wark Actor and comedian Billy Connolly has spoken of how he still loves his late father, despite being sexually abused by him for five years.

In an interview for the BBC's Review Show, Connolly said the power of forgiveness was "immense".

And he said he still considered his father, who abused him between the ages of 10 and 15, to be a "great man".

His own children - the two eldest of whom had known his father - have never asked him about the abuse.

Connolly first revealed the abuse he suffered in a biography written by his wife Pamela Stephenson in 2001 - some 12 years after his alcoholic father William died.

In the book, the 70-year-old Scot described how his mother walked out on the family when he was three, leaving him to be brought up by his father and two aunts.

He said he and his father regularly shared a bed together in their flat in the Partick area of Glasgow.

During the interview with presenter Kirsty Wark broadcast on BBC2 on Friday evening, Connolly said he had not made a conscious decision to hide the abuse during his rise to stardom in the 1970s and 1980s.

He explained: "It wasn't the time to talk about things like that - not like now.

"I just didn't want to talk about it. It was mine and I kind of liked it being mine. I thought it made me very colourful but it was up to me to make of it what I wanted to, and I always thought it made me kind of special.

"I loved him, and I kept loving him, and I love him today. And you know, forgiveness is a great thing - the power of forgiveness is immense and you can forgive dead people as well.

"It is a very odd affair, sexual abuse. Mine is very, very typical - you don't tell anybody about it. Everybody wonders why people who are abused don't rush off to the police or the authorities or an aunt or an uncle and tell them.

"But it just doesn't happen because you feel you've taken part in it, because sometimes it's not the most unpleasant thing that has ever happened to you. So there is a deep guilt and shame involved and so you don't tell people".

Connolly and his father William (left) appeared in a BBC documentary together in 1978

When asked what his five children - two of whom were old enough to have known his father - had asked him about the abuse, Connolly replied: "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They thought he was a great guy, and he was a great guy".

Connolly also described how his Aunt Mona had regularly humiliated him by rubbing his underpants in his face and leaving notes saying "thief" in the biscuit jar.

Recalling how she found a copy of an erotic poem in his possession, Connolly added: "It was a schoolboy thing, it was a very dirty piece and she found it and humiliated me with it for years and years and years and threatened to take it to school.

"She was always going to tell my dad and he was going to beat me limbless. But it was every day, was the thing. Every single day.

"And I had a teacher Rosie MacDonald who was a bit of a psychopath so I would leave my aunt and go to Rosie. It's astonishing I'm not gay because the women in my life are nightmares.

"I remember my sister standing outside school teaching me long division. I was scared to go in because I didn't know long division and I knew Rosie would kill me. My sister, who became a school teacher, explained it to me. She was my guardian angel."

The Review Show With Billy Connolly will be available on the BBC iPlayer until 23:44 on Friday 11 January 2013.

View the original article here

Connolly 'still loves abusive dad'

5 January 2013 Last updated at 12:59 GMT Connolly spoke candidly about his traumatic childhood during the interview with Kirsty Wark Actor and comedian Billy Connolly has spoken of how he still loves his late father, despite being sexually abused by him for five years.

In an interview for the BBC's Review Show, Connolly said the power of forgiveness was "immense".

And he said he still considered his father, who abused him between the ages of 10 and 15, to be a "great man".

His own children - the two eldest of whom had known his father - have never asked him about the abuse.

Connolly first revealed the abuse he suffered in a biography written by his wife Pamela Stephenson in 2001 - some 12 years after his alcoholic father William died.

In the book, the 70-year-old Scot described how his mother walked out on the family when he was three, leaving him to be brought up by his father and two aunts.

He said he and his father regularly shared a bed together in their flat in the Partick area of Glasgow.

During the interview with presenter Kirsty Wark broadcast on BBC2 on Friday evening, Connolly said he had not made a conscious decision to hide the abuse during his rise to stardom in the 1970s and 1980s.

He explained: "It wasn't the time to talk about things like that - not like now.

"I just didn't want to talk about it. It was mine and I kind of liked it being mine. I thought it made me very colourful but it was up to me to make of it what I wanted to, and I always thought it made me kind of special.

"I loved him, and I kept loving him, and I love him today. And you know, forgiveness is a great thing - the power of forgiveness is immense and you can forgive dead people as well.

"It is a very odd affair, sexual abuse. Mine is very, very typical - you don't tell anybody about it. Everybody wonders why people who are abused don't rush off to the police or the authorities or an aunt or an uncle and tell them.

"But it just doesn't happen because you feel you've taken part in it, because sometimes it's not the most unpleasant thing that has ever happened to you. So there is a deep guilt and shame involved and so you don't tell people".

Connolly and his father William (left) appeared in a BBC documentary together in 1978

When asked what his five children - two of whom were old enough to have known his father - had asked him about the abuse, Connolly replied: "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They thought he was a great guy, and he was a great guy".

Connolly also described how his Aunt Mona had regularly humiliated him by rubbing his underpants in his face and leaving notes saying "thief" in the biscuit jar.

Recalling how she found a copy of an erotic poem in his possession, Connolly added: "It was a schoolboy thing, it was a very dirty piece and she found it and humiliated me with it for years and years and years and threatened to take it to school.

"She was always going to tell my dad and he was going to beat me limbless. But it was every day, was the thing. Every single day.

"And I had a teacher Rosie MacDonald who was a bit of a psychopath so I would leave my aunt and go to Rosie. It's astonishing I'm not gay because the women in my life are nightmares.

"I remember my sister standing outside school teaching me long division. I was scared to go in because I didn't know long division and I knew Rosie would kill me. My sister, who became a school teacher, explained it to me. She was my guardian angel."

The Review Show With Billy Connolly will be available on the BBC iPlayer until 23:44 on Friday 11 January 2013.

View the original article here

Still waiting for Godot

5 January 2013 Last updated at 01:31 GMT By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent Godot's 60th: The University of Reading archive shows the first night Pic: Roger Pic So why are we still waiting for Godot? How has Samuel Beckett's play grown from a tiny avant garde performance in Paris to become part of the West End theatre coach party circuit?

It's 60 years since Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot received its premiere in the Theatre de Babylone in Paris.

The first public performance, in its original French form of En attendant Godot, drew an audience of high-brow Parisians, taking in the latest experimental theatre.

"All the thousands who claimed they were there could never have been at the premiere. There weren't enough seats," says James Knowlson, Beckett's friend and official biographer.

They also couldn't have realised that this play, beginning its shoestring-budget run on 5 January 1953, was going to be seen as one of the pivotal moments in modern drama.

International appeal

So why has Waiting for Godot proved so durable? How has Beckett's work outlasted the other iconoclasts and angry young writers of the 1950s and 1960s?

"I would suggest the answer lies in its ambiguities. So much is suggested rather than explicitly stated," says Prof Knowlson.

A programme from Godot's first setting at the Theatre de Babylone in Montparnasse, Paris

"People can read into it what they want to read into it."

This openness to interpretation has helped the play to avoid becoming dated, he says. For a play that's about the passing of time, it's curiously timeless.

It asks all the big philosophical questions - about life and death and the uncertain purpose of what goes on in between - but in a way that isn't limited to a particular place or era.

And the play has acquired a remarkable record for being performed in very different international settings. No disaster or civil strife is complete without its own Godot.

It was performed in Sarajevo under siege in the 1990s, in South Africa it was seen as a critique of apartheid and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina a performance in New Orleans was seen as an emblem of the city's wait for recovery.

Inmates in San Quentin prison in California saw it as their own story in a famous production in the late 1950s.

Prof Knowlson's friendship with Beckett has also created a rich and unexpected legacy for his university, the University of Reading, which now holds the biggest archive of Beckett-related material in the world.

From the early 1970s, the playwright began giving manuscripts and notes to Prof Knowlson, stuffed into bags, boxes and suitcases. And this Beckett International Foundation has grown to become the definitive European collection for researchers.

"He adopted us," says Prof Knowlson - although the attention-shunning writer was never persuaded to visit the archive in person.

As Waiting for Godot reaches its 60th anniversary, the university has artefacts and pictures from the original performances.

'Something extraordinary'

It's also a reminder of how easily the play might not have happened at all.

Samuel Beckett at the BBC recording a series of his plays in 1977

There were no famous faces or big funders to back the play. Instead it depended on the actor and director Roger Blin to hustle for cash and a venue - and once it had begun it relied on word of mouth for survival.

None of the original cast are still alive - and the theatre itself shut down a few years after staging Beckett's play.

In an interview with French television in the 1960s, Roger Blin suggested the initial power of the play. When Beckett showed him the script: "I said to myself: This is something extraordinary and it must be put on."

Another playwright who was enlisted in the search for funding fervently promised Blin: "I will defend this play to the death."

It was still proving controversial when the first English version of the play was performed two years later in London, directed by a 24-year-old Peter Hall.

Harold Pinter, also then in his twenties, saw Beckett as the the "most courageous, remorseless writer going", while reviewer Bernard Levin described Waiting for Godot as "a remarkable piece of twaddle".

Not a 'miserabilist'

Prof Knowlson is himself now one of the most important living links with Beckett.

Continue reading the main story

He could be very convivial, very witty, very good company, with a great sense of humour”

End Quote Professor James Knowlson Beckett's friend and biographer And he recognises that the continuing interest in Beckett's writing is wrapped up in the fascination with the enigmatic character of the author. His photogenic alienation has become a kind of literary brand.

But Prof Knowlson argues against the view of Beckett as a "miserabilist".

"He could be very convivial, very witty, very good company, with a great sense of humour.

"But there was an element of depression and despair that was part of his life, particularly after the war when he was deeply involved in writing the novels."

He says that Beckett's idea of a happy Christmas would have been a solitary occasion.

"He would have been preferably on his own and writing. He hated that kind of thing."

The underlying humour is also part of the continuing appeal of Waiting for Godot, he argues. It's often a peculiarly bleak comedy of resistance, but the thread of humour is always there to leaven the gloom.

It's now a commonplace to see Waiting for Godot described as one of the most important plays of the 20th Century - with its reputation gathering momentum rather than fading away.

The kind of movie actors who would have reached the career point of wanting to be in King Lear now want to shuffle across the stage in Godot.

Design conscious

A key reason for this growing resonance with audiences, Prof Knowlson says, is the visual appeal. Beckett's strong images appeal to a design-conscious, visually-literate culture.

"They have this strong visual element. I've become much more conscious of the filmic quality."

A handbill advertising the first run of Waiting for Godot

Prof Knowlson says that he increasingly believes there is a direct link between the plays and Beckett's interest in painting.

"He was passionately involved in painting, not just that he loved to be with painters, but he was a real expert on 17th Century Dutch painting."

"He knew these pictures so well, he was so engrossed in these scenes. It seems to me that these pictures are really echoed in Waiting for Godot."

Beckett's life was changed by the success of Godot - the international impact of the play helped him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

His publisher John Calder also recalled how the enigmatic Godot could haunt his creator.

He recounted how he had once met an anxious Beckett getting off a flight at Heathrow airport. When the plane doors had closed on the runway in Paris, Beckett had heard the loudspeaker announcing: "Captain Godot welcomes you on board."

"I wondered if my destiny had caught up with me at last," Beckett had told his publisher.

The Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading will hold a series of seminars on Samuel Beckett and Waiting for Godot in April 2013.

View the original article here