أغر؟´«أ½

Here's a piece of trivia for you. What was Karl Marx's favourite Shakespearean play? Answer: Timon of Athens. That's the kind of information you discover in the programme accompanying the new co-production of Timon by and the RSC. And you can tell why Marx was so impressed: the story of a wealthy man's decline into poverty which challenges an audience to think again about our sense of material security in the world.

This is far from the best play Shakespeare ever wrote -- in fact, we can't be sure just how much of the text is Shakespeare's and how much is by a collaborator or adaptor (most scholars seem to think Thomas Middleton has a large hand in it). Critics typically describe the play as "mysterious" or "experimental" or "unfinished". And even the most committed theatre-goers will rarely have seen a production -- in fact, Shakespeare didn't see a production in his lifetime either.

So I've now seen more Shakespeare than Shakespeare: I was at the opening night of Cardboard Citizen's Timon this week, in Stratford-upon-Avon as part of the RSC's Complete Works project. Adrian Jackson and Sarah Woods have produced a terrific adaptation which sets the text against the backdrop of a contemporary motivational speech experience -- the bard has fallen into the hands of the gurus of management speak, goal-reaching, and self-actualisation.

I was in Stratford with my Festival Night's producer, Sean McGuire, and we happened to be staying at the same hotel as the cast -- just across from the Swan Theatre. Needless to say, the hotel bar was filled with impressively-projected voices until the wee hours as we toasted the bard's most under-appreciated leading role.

You can see my report on the play on Monday's Festival Nights programme on أغر؟´«أ½2. Better still, see the . You won't regret it.

Pow! It's not often that an academic writes this kind of review of another academic's work. Terry Eagleton has penned what must now be the most negative academic review ever written. His review of Richard Dawkins's , which is published in the London Review of Books.

On Sunday evening, I interviewed the crime writer abut his new Inspector Rebus novel, The Naming of the Dead, in front of an audience in the spiegeltent at the Belfast Festival. Ian is not only a great writer, he's a superb performer on these kinds of occasions. Needless to say, the audience loved him. We had dinner afterwards and talked about all manner of macabre matters -- including my impending visit to the City Mortuary, where I was to interview the state pathologist and watch an autopsy taking place as part of a documentary we're making. Or maybe I should say postmortem examination -- "autopsy" seems a little too American, a bit on he Quincy or Columbo side. Oddly enough, when I met the pathologist the next morning for the filming, we ending up talking about Quincy and how unrealistic his television autopsies were. For a start, Quincy always seemed very emotionally involved in the story behind a particular cadaver; in reality, a pathologist simply has to avoid that kind of psychological entanglement.

I talked with Ian about Columbo, and discovered that we're both fans. Needless to say, he had developed his analysis of the Columbo series into a socio-political reading (which made a great deal of sense). David Torrens, from No Alibis Bookstore, was with us for dinner; he can talk about Columbo for days. In fact, he recently refused to sell the large painting of Columbo that adorns one of the walls in his bookshop. He was offered a hefty sum for it; but, he says, it's now an icon of his business and he wouldn't part with it. From naming the dead to naming the price.

Must dash ... got to catch a plane to Birmingham, then head to Stratford for the RSC's Timon of Athens. Look out for that on Festival Nights next Monday.

There's something rather distasteful about the Pakistan government's decision to delay the execution of , the Briton who has been on death row at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi for 18 years. Mr Hussain's execution was scheduled for November 1; clearly, a date determined before officials remembered that Prince Charles would be on an official visit that same day. Quickly side-stepping the diplomatic embarrassment of having to execute a British subject while the heir to the throne was visiting, a new date was arranged for December 31.

This is the fourth stay of execution Mr Hussain has endured since his conviction in 1988 for the murder of a taxi driver. I was not present at the trial, nor have I read a transcript. But we may presume that the Lahore High Court fully examined the facts when it reversed the original conviction in 1996. Mr Hussain maintains that he was defending himself against an attempted sexual assault, at gunpoint, when the gun was discharged and his assailant was killed. Nevertheless, the Federal Sharia Court reversed the decision of the High Court and Mr Hussain was sentenced to death after it was later determined that some of the offences fall under Islamic law.

Prince Charles deserves enormous credit for bringing international attention to Mr Hussain's story. One can only hope that this stay of execution will be further extended to allow further examination of a case that still raises significant legal and moral questions -- including questions about the relationship between secular and religious notions of justice.

Before today's Sunday Sequence, I read the opening chapter of Andrew Grimson's new book, Boris: the Rise of Boris Johnson -- we'll be reviewing it soon on the Book Programme. Chronological serendipity smiled from the first page, with a quotation from Edward Gibbon's Autobiography:

It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.

How strange that I should be reading that entry on this the 15th of October -- and stranger still since today is my birthday. It's enough to make you decline and fall off your chair. As I've pointed out in many an after dinner speech: the 15th of October is also the birthday of the philosopher Friedrich Nietsche, the mystic Theresa of Avila, and the erstwhile leader of Unionism David Trimble. The ultimate birthday lunch would be a table made up of historical figures with whom we share a birthday. I miss , by one day, the opportunity to dine with Margaret Thatcher -- but she has compensation enough in sharing a meal with Oscar Wilde. You'd pay to eavesdrop on that one, wouldn't you?

Yes, of course, we'll be debating the Friday the 13th Agreement on tomorrow's programme. It's the big political story of the week; even if the general public's attitude to the agreement amounted to "It's about time, too". Sir Reg Empey said on Friday it's the Belfast Agreement for slow learners. Bob McCartney said today on Talk Back that the agreement is even worse than the Good Friday Agreement. And on the same programme, Dermot Nesbitt, from Sir Reg's party, said the St Andrews Agreement got the unionist community less than the Good Friday Agreement. Not that the Good Friday Agreement has been superseded, of course. It's been revised, or slightly revised, or substantially revised, depending on your party affiliation. Confused? Our panel tomorrow morning will try to make sense of it.

We'll also be talking to Vince Cable, MP, the Lib Dem deputy leader, about one of his constituents, Heathrow check-in worker , who is now on unpaid leave after refusing to cover up her cross necklace. British Airways says her necklace contravenes their uniform policy. And we'll have more on the controversial Peta ad campain which accuses parents who feed their children meat of child abuse.

All that plus Van Gogh on the Newtownards Road, Leonardo Da Vinci at Oxford, the ethics of organ transplantation, and the gospel according to the Beatles. It all starts at 8.30 am tomorrow.

I'm just back from the Dockers' Club in Belfast, the venue for the , the new play by Marie Jones and Maurice Bessman. I talked with some people in the audience who've never been to a traditional theatre venue; and the Dockers' Club was the perfect choice for a production so focused on Sailortown. We filmed part of the play for Festival Nights, and you can see that soon on أغر؟´«أ½1. But don't wait for the TV preview; book your passage now. It's a great night out.

it is. Did the sun just gon down on the final Groundhog Day?

If I hear another news reporter develop a political metaphor involving putting, long drives, slices, bunkers, patches of rough or the eighteenth hole, I'll throw my copy of the Good Friday Agreement at the TV set.

Our politicians have just begun their in a St Andrews hotel in an effort to restore devolution. Tony Blair says the political will exists; so let's see what happens.

For some time now, we've been expecting a big move by Sinn Fein on policing. When I interviewed Gerry Adams a few weeks ago, he told me that the ball was in Peter Hain's court on that score -- as soon as the UK government honoured assurances given to Sinn Fein, Mr Adams would ask his party to sign up to policing. Some recent resignations from Sinn Fein have added to the speculation that a deal on policing is on the cards. But will that, in itself, be enough for the DUP? Today, Dr Paisley spoke about the need for the "ill-gotten gains" of terrorism to be returned; but the DUP's language of late has been remarkably diplomatic -- adding some to believe they've already accepted that policing is a done deal and that a restored Assembly is within sight.

The word from St Andrews tonight is that policing is the main issue. I'm looking now at TV images of the DUP and Sinn Fein teams around the table, with Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, apparently laughing at the same joke. A deal seems to be in the air. But can it be secured by Friday? Friday the 13th, that is. Hmmm.

The animal welfare campaign group PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, have launched an ad campaign which argues that parents who feed their children with meat are Are they right? Click on their link and let me know what you think.

A number of people have wondered if I've fallen off the edge of the planet. Rest assured; I'm still alive and kicking -- though kicking against a pretty hectic schedule this month as it turns out. I know that's a pretty lame excuse for not blogging as much as I might; and it's not far from my typical excuse for not attending gym as often as I should. I both cases, my friends say the same thing: you need to build your blog, and your gym, into your daily schedule so that it's just one of those things you do -- rain, hail, or snow (-ed under). My friends say helpful things like that all the time, and they always make perfect sense while they're saying them.

I spent half the morning filming for a new television documentary and I'm not even allowed to tell you the location because that would give away the nature of the documentary immediately and the أغر؟´«أ½ press office are keen to keep it under wraps until nearer the transmission date.

Then I went back to the studios in Broadcasting House to record a discussion about Paul Muldoon's new poetry collection, , and Leonard Cohen's There's been a lot of poetry in my life lately (not often you get to write a sentence like that): I've been filming some interviews with poets for this year's أغر؟´«أ½ coverage of the Belfast Festival at Queen's -- and to mark the publication of The Blackbird's Nest, an anthology celebrating the relationship between Queen's University and poetry. When I interviewed Medbh McGuckian yesterday afternoon, the producer, Siobhan Savage, arranged for us to meet and talk in the Lanyon Building's main quad. That went very well: Medbh talked about her passion and vocation as a poet and her long association with Queen's since 1968 when she matriculated as an undergraduate. Then we thought it would be fun to film Medbh reading one of her poems. But every time she started to read, a flurry of students rushing between classes and buildings created an unbroadcastable racket and we had to start again. We got it in the end, thanks to Medbh's patience and the crew's persistence.

I was at The Big Rates Debate in the Ulster Hall -- you may have heard the broadcast version this morning on The Stephen Nolan Show. The economist John Simpson and the direct rule minister David Hanson, MP, were practically alone in the Hall in making the case for the new capital valuation system.

One member of the audience addressed the minister as "David Ransom" -- whether that was a Freudian Slip or entirely deliberate, the crowd loved it. Nevertheless, the Hanson/Simpson double-act was pretty formidable.

My favourite moment was when a now-retired businesswoman stood up to complain that the government's proposed relief system would only assist those with personal savings of less than آ£15,000. They audience was fully behind her until her concluding rhetorical flourish, when she declaimed, "I ask you, who in this room has savings in the bank of less than fifteen thousand pounds?" Oh dear.

Edna O'Brien came into Broadcasting House in London today to be interviewed for the next series of the Book Programme. This was the first time I've spoken with her. We did share a stage once in Belfast, when she was accepting an honorary doctorate from Queen's University and I was graduating. She's now an honorary professor at University College Dublin, though she still lives in London.

I mention all that because O'Brien's rather lukewarm reception by the Irish academic world is one of the things I wanted to talk to her about today. I consider her a writer of enormous importance, and I can't fathom why it's taken so long for the literary academy to shower her with the praise she deserves. In America, she is treated like a living Faulkner; but in Ireland for too long she's been treated by some like the purveyor of literary chick lit.

I'm delighted to see all that changing now, and her new book, The Light of Evening -- her seventeenth novel -- will do nothing to reduce her stature. The novel is about mothers and daughters -- written, as it is, by a mother two sons with no daughter of her own. The elderly Dilly, prepararing for death, recalls the part of her youth spent in domestic serive in Brooklyn (New York is O'Brien's favourite city, and her own mother spent part of her youth in similar work there). Eleanore, the daughter, is a writer who has struggled with both her relationship wth her mother and with Ireland. These are only some of the autobiographical connections; but this is no disguised memoir. It is an extremely moving account of the "blood feud, blood bond" ... and "blood memoryâ€‌ that can characterise the unfinished business of childhood and parenthood.