Aside from a few attempts to ape silent-slapstick style, the director of this sprawling bio-pic, Richard Attenborough, and the screenwriters (William Boyd, Bryan Forbes, and William Goldman, working from a story by Diana Hawkins), do their job like crammers.

NEWYORKER: Chaplin

At the Hampstead Theatre, Nina Raine directs William Boyd's new play, "Longing" a splicing together of a pair of Chekhov short stories.

WSJ: Review: The Good Ol' Boys | 'The Winslow Boy' at the Old Vic | 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' at the Apollo Theatre | 'Longing' at the Hampstead Theatre

Children's author Philip Pullman will receive the festival's honorary fellowship, an accolade given in previous years to William Boyd, Kazuo Ishiguro, and PD James.

BBC: Hilary Mantel and the Duchess of Cambridge

I'm not particularly knowledgeable about new authors so I'm going to be given a list of 20 exciting new novelists - and hopefully amongst them will be the new Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, William Boyd or Kazuo Ishiguro...

BBC: How has the Granta list shaped the literary landscape?