Hopkins where he died

There is still time to see a unique dramatisation of Gerard Manley Hopkins in Newman House. Go there at 7 p.m. on 6th or 7th October, and relish (rather than enjoy) “No Worst, there is none” (the title is from Hopkins’ desolate Sonnet 49). The young Irish company, the Stomach Box, uses the rooms and stairwells in which GMH spent the last sad years of his life, to bring the audience close to the horrifying disparity between the exuberance of The Windhover and Pied Beauty, and the downward spiral of the sonnets of desolation. It is as though nature has disappeared from his consciousness, and it is just the depressed, guilt-ridden self that remains.