Leopoldstadt, Wyndham's Theatre review - Stoppard at once personal and accessible

★★★★ LEOPOLDSTADT, WYNDHAM'S THEATRE Stoppard at once personal and accessible

Director Patrick Marber knits Tom Stoppard's putative swan song into a compelling whole

It’s not uncommon for playwrights to begin their careers by writing what they know, to co-opt a frequently quoted precept about authorial inspiration. So it’s among the many fascinations of Leopoldstadt that Tom Stoppard, at the age of 82, should have written his most personal play and also, very possibly (and sadly), his last.

Francesca Wade: Square Haunting - Bloomsbury retold

The stories of five women in Bloomsbury recover lost layers in London's palimpsest

These days, Bloomsbury rests in a state of elegant somnolence. The ghosts of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell linger on in the shabby gentility of Russell Square and its environs, the bookish institutions that are the bones of the place conferring tranquility, despite the many students and tourists.

Blomfield, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFH review - sounds of a troubled truce

★★★★ BLOMFIELD, PHILHARMONIA, SALONEN, RFH Three idiosyncratic works tell one story of the world in 1945

Three idiosyncratic works tell one story of the world in 1945

Concert programmes that set out to tell us a story can prove a mixed blessing. Yes, it’s valuable and stimulating to find ideas, and narratives, embodied in the musical flow. But great pieces, well-performed, have a habit of cutting loose from the frame of concepts someone has devised for them.

A Hidden Life review - Nazism stoically refused

★★★★★ A HIDDEN LIFE Terrence Malick's raptures find solid ground in a forgotten stand against fascism

Terrence Malick's raptures find solid ground in a forgotten stand against fascism

Terrence Malick returns to his former greatness following three features of unscripted, all-star poesy, with this sombre biopic of sainted Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl).

World on Fire, BBC One, series finale review - may this fine war drama fight on

★★★★ WORLD ON FIRE, BBC ONE Peter Bowker's ambitious series ended on a cliffhanger

Peter Bowker's ambitious series ended on a cliffhanger, with viewers waiting to learn its fate

A bit like all those people on the home front in 1940 (but only a little bit), we sit and nervously wait for news. Is World on Fire (BBC One) still listed among the living? Or even now is someone typing up the letter and sticking it in a brown envelope? “Fell bravely in the field … did its country proud etc…” Please may this ambitious Sunday-night drama live to fight another day?

Caroline Moorehead: A House in the Mountains review – the women's war against Fascism

★★★★★ CAROLINE MOOREHEAD: A HOUSE IN THE MOUNTAINS Uplifting and horrifying stories of the Italian Resistance and its heroines

Uplifting, and horrifying, stories of the Italian Resistance and its heroines

In September 1944, a heavily pregnant Resistance activist in the north of German-occupied Italy was arrested on a visit to Milan. Lisetta Giua, a law student and fiancée of the Jewish anti-Fascist chief Vittorio Foa, worked as one of hundreds of women staffette: vital underground operatives whose roles might stretch from courier and spy to liaison officer and saboteur.