'Extraordinary' adaptation is a hit with children and adults alike

The Watermill's Christmas show is a musical adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's "Pinocchio" – itself a reworking of Carlo Collodi's 19th-century story, told from the perspective of the puppet. With the book by Simon Reade, and music and lyrics by Chris Larner, it's a dish created by "many cooks", said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. But rather than spoiling the broth, they've concocted a copper-bottomed delight.

"From the first gorgeous scene featuring a luminous cherry tree trunk wrapped around actors" – signifying the wood from which Pinocchio is forged – this "glorious" production "oozes carnivalesque energy". Thrilling and magical, the show "packs in the drama to become an alchemical mix of music, movement, mischievous humour and quietly revolutionary puppetry".
Children and adults alike will love this boisterous yet heartwarming morality tale, agreed Paul Vale in The Stage. Directors Elle While and Indiana Lown-Collins "strike a perfect balance between family entertainment and imaginative theatre", and the company multitask brilliantly as everything from a "pompous policeman to a wistful Scottish chicken farmer". They also bring Marc Parrett's "wonderful" puppets vividly to life.

In particular, "kids will be enchanted by the parade of animals", said Clive Davis in The Times – including streetwise weasels, a boar with a watering can for a snout, and even a small whale.

The puppetry is brilliant, said Judi Herman on What's On Stage, filling the stage with "layers of thrilling movement". But so, too, are Larner's songs – by turns "exhilarating, comical, joyous, and plangent". And while there's much to laugh at (Afia Abusham's quick-witted fox and Eddy Payne's dim-witted cat are highlights), there's also a sense of poignancy and pathos to the production. The maternal longing of Signora Geppetto (Lottie Latham), for instance, is "truly affecting, and I found myself hoping her singular new son would bring her love and comfort". At the end, a "rapt audience of all ages laughed and clapped and cheered and rose to their feet". No wonder: this is "extraordinary" theatre.

The Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, Newbury. Until 5 January

by Emmanuel Carrère 

In September 2021, the largest criminal trial in French history got under way at the Palais de Justice in Paris. In the dock were 20 defendants, accused of helping to plan and organise what became known as "V13": the attacks of Friday (vendredi) 13 November 2015, at the Bataclan theatre and other locations in Paris, which killed 130 and injured hundreds. Everything about the trial was "unprecedented", said Chris Power in The Guardian: it lasted nine months, involved nearly 400 lawyers and magistrates, and took place in a 650 square metre purpose-built courtroom. The legal brief ran to more than a million pages. Watching it all was the celebrated non-fiction writer Emmanuel Carrère, who was covering the proceedings for the news magazine L'Obs. Now, he has expanded his reports into a superbly crafted – and "absolutely gripping" – book.

Carrère, best known as an introspective memoirist, seems an "unlikely stenographer for France's trial of the century", said Thomas P. Lambert in The Spectator. Yet "V13" is a "remarkably well-behaved piece of reportage". While Carrère is a presence in the book – he describes befriending the mother of one of the victims, which conveniently allows his attention to "wander outside the courtroom" – he also knows when to step back and "let the horrors speak for themselves". This he does most powerfully in one "nightmarish" section, a lengthy reconstruction of what happened at the Bataclan, stitched from the "fragments of testimony" of those trapped inside.

Only one actual assailant stood trial at the Palais de Justice, said Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times. Like the nine other gunmen, Salah Abdeslam was "supposed to blow himself up", but decided not to at the last minute. More than once during "V13", Carrère recalls something the terrorist told police: "Everything you say about us jihadists is like reading the last page of a book. What you should do is read the book from the start." The quote strikes Carrère as profound, but as the trial progresses, he comes to view Abdeslam as an "abysmal void wrapped in lies".

In the end, the victims interest him much more than the perpetrators, said Will Lloyd in The Sunday Times. As he hears about people who were "prepared to sacrifice themselves so that others could live", or who stayed with partners who'd been disabled or disfigured, he is "awed" by their courage and goodness. Ultimately, this "marvellous and terrifying" book concludes that "good is actually more interesting than evil, and a harder philosophical problem to solve".

Formidable politician who held New Labour together

A political bruiser of the old school, John Prescott is likely to be remembered for an incident shortly before the 2001 general election. On a campaign visit to Rhyl, North Wales, a farm worker hit him in the face with an egg. Prescott, a former boxer, turned instinctively and landed a left jab, said The Times. The incident was caught on camera, and there were calls for him to resign. But Tony Blair refused to condemn his deputy; he just shrugged that "John will be John".

The PM had good reason to be tolerant of Prescott's foibles. A working-class former ship's steward, Prescott was "arguably the most important figure in the New Labour project, key to ensuring the party's longest period in power". A man "of the left" who'd entered Labour politics the old-fashioned way, via the trade union movement, he had moved to the centre, and had "convinced his comrades to follow him".

Blair has spoken of the way in which he came to rely on Prescott, said Pippa Crerar in The Guardian – not just as a bridge, but also as "someone whose gut instinct I trusted better than my own". And Prescott was widely admired for his "sharp political mind". Yet he often found himself the butt of belittling jokes, said the Daily Mail, particularly about his garbled syntax. At Labour's conference in 1993, he delivered a barnstorming speech that helped persuade the grassroots of the sense of John Smith's "one man one vote" reforms – but which made newspaper reporters gasp. "John Prescott went 12 rounds with the English language and left it slumped and bleeding over the ropes," observed Matthew Parris. 

Prescott learnt to take the jokes: "Syntax! syntax?" he'd exclaim, "I thought that was a new Tory tax." But he found the jibes hurtful, said The Mirror. He was dyslexic, and had not had the benefit of a good education. In the Commons, he was the target of "corrosive" snobbery too. Referring to his former job on cruise liners, Tory MP Nicholas Soames would wave an imaginary glass and call out "Another G&T, Giovanni!" 

Born in Prestatyn, North Wales, in 1938, Prescott was brought up in Rotherham. His father worked as a signalman on the railways; his mother was the daughter of a miner and had been in service. The oldest of five children, John failed the 11-plus. "The disappointment left a scar," said The Independent. He left his secondary modern at 15, to work in the hotel trade before joining Cunard liners, where he earned a reputation as a troublemaker. He was regarded as a militant in the National Union of Seamen, but in the early 1960s, he started to focus his energies on his education, studying at Ruskin College, Oxford. He then read economic history at the University of Hull. By the time he graduated in 1968, he was married (to his wife Pauline) and had already made one stab at entering Parliament. He finally won Hull East in 1970, a seat he held for the next 40 years.

In 1983, Neil Kinnock made him a shadow minister; they differed often, notably over the miners' strike. He got on better with John Smith, and was shaken by Smith's sudden death in 1994. He lost to Blair in the leadership election that followed, but won the deputy leadership. He and Blair were not soul mates, but Prescott accepted that Labour had to change to win power, while Blair realised that Prescott represented "the Old Labour Party that he had to carry with him".  

After Labour's victory in 1997, Prescott was given a large brief, covering environment, transport and the regions. It was not a great success. However, he negotiated a deal to rescue the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, and helped to broker the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 1997.

Prescott, who subsequently served as cabinet secretary, was credited with acting as a vital peacemaker between Blair and Gordon Brown; but his status started to slide in the 2000s, not helped by revelations in 2006 that he had had a two-year affair with his diary secretary, Tracey Temple. He resigned with Blair in 2007, but later threw his weight behind Brown. His grumpiness had not helped his career, said The Guardian. But he'd also faced undisclosed health problems. He grappled with bulimia for 20 years; and he had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1990. He was given a peerage in 2010. By then, he had outed himself as middle class. "I have changed," he said. "I no longer keep the coal in the bath. I keep it in the bidet."

In the same year, he briefly moved into TV: to the delight of the show's fans, he made a cameo appearance in the sitcom "Gavin and Stacey" to confirm the truth of Nessa's oft-dropped hints that they had once been lovers. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2019. Pauline and their two sons survive him.