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Norma Waterson was one of folk's greatest voices – and greatest people

by Jude Rogers Jan 31, 2022

The British folk singer, who has died aged 82, was proud of the music she made – and her warmth as well as her toughness sang loudly in her songs

In the rain-sodden opening to the 1966 black and white BBC documentary, Travelling for a Living, a family of young folk singers are heading home to Hull. Big sister is driving the van, a cigarette pursed in her lips under her sharp, beatnik bob. She brooks absolutely no nonsense as she speaks about working-class culture being blitzed in the war, and how folk music can revive that community’s traditions. And then Norma Waterson sings, her full-blooded delivery coming straight from the gut, like torrenting water rushing over old stones.

Waterson, whose death was announced this morning, was one of folk’s greatest voices, and one of folk’s greatest people: proud, forthright and open about the music she made. I interviewed her in 2010 with daughter Eliza, in the family home in Robin Hood’s Bay, Yorkshire, shortly before she suffered an ankle injury that led to cellulitis and septicaemia and a four-month coma. After the illness, she had to learn to walk and talk again. She was brusque and funny but also incredibly tender, her granddaughter Florence at her knee, her musician niece Marry popping round for tea and biscuits, the room filled with laughter. This warmth was at the heart of her as well as her toughness, and it sang loudly in her songs.

Glasshouse review – dreamy dystopian horror with a Picnic at Hanging Rock vibe

by Leslie Felperin Jan 31, 2022

A mother and her daughters hole up in a Victorian conservatory, hiding from a devastating pandemic that lays waste to human memory

Shot in a Victorian hothouse in South Africa with a mixed cast of local actors and the odd imported Brit – including Jessica Alexander, soon be seen in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid – this tense dystopian horror-thriller feels geographically non-specific, almost as if it were taking place in some kind of dream world. That touch of hazy vagueness is just right for SA director and co-writer Kelsey Egan’s cracking feature debut (co-written with Emma Lungiswa De Wet) which imagines a family of survivors hiding out in the title’s botanical conservatory after a pandemic has ravaged most of the world’s population.

The invisible threat here is an airborne virus called “the shred” which wipes out memories and leaves its victims in a bestial state, unable to remember even their own names. A matriarchal woman known only as Mother (Adrienne Pearce) guides her three female progeny – cautious Evie (Anja Taljaard), dreamy Bee (Alexander) and adolescent Daisy (Kitty Harris), alongside shred-infected brother Gabe (Brent Vermeulen) – by teaching them how to garden (they have to pollinate the plants themselves because the bees are all gone), to read, paint, and pass on the stories of the Before Times.