The magic ingredient for a classic Christmas film is a touch of misery, not the manufactured merriment of today's movies, says Mike Shaw

The magic ingredient for a classic Christmas film is a touch of misery, not the manufactured merriment of today’s movies

In the 1950s, the zealous interrogators of the House Un-American Activities Committee used fear to incite an epidemic of forgetfulness. The idea that, with the rise of fascism in the Thirties, it was once quite possible for decent, liberal folk to be members of the Communist Party was wiped from the collective memory bank. Cue The Crucible.

Knightley and Moss pass test – but a lesser name tops the class

Enid Blyton must be gyrating in her grave.

The play contains allusions to his secret Down's syndrome child and marriage to Marilyn Monroe

"Will you stop talking like a civics book," growls one of the characters in Arthur Miller's 1947 play All My Sons.

One of the least likely liaisons in showbiz, the marriage between Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller followed a predictable trajectory, which Jeffrey Meyers illuminates with fascinating filigree. We learn that she believed "marriage to Miller would make her a better person ".

Marcus is a young man who loves his hard-working father – he just can't live in the same house as him. He's a straight-A student who can't get on with his room-mates at college, so he keeps asking to be moved. He's the object of beautiful Olivia's attention, but doesn't know how to respond to a young woman who's more sexually experienced than he is.

Questions of female identity are at the heart of Rebecca Miller's debut novel – a portrait of a middle-aged woman who has learnt to keep her real self under wraps.

The venue

ARTHUR MILLER, perhaps the greatest American playwright of the 20th century, died yesterday at the age of 89. He never won the Nobel Prize for literature, but few writers in any country at any time have so captured the universal themes of family, of the transience of success - how ordinary, decent people can be overwhelmed by the great tides of events.

Playwright made famous by his `Death of a Salesman' and marriage to Marilyn Monroe