The first ever stage adaptation of Barbara Pim's novel Quartet in Autumn will be showing at the Arcola Theatre in Dahlston from the 7th of May to the 13th of June.

With a script by Samantha Harvey who won the Booker Prize for her novel Orbital, Quartet in Autumn is, as Penelope Fitzgerald wrote of the book in the LRB, a deeply touching story

of ageing, friendship and the poetry of everyday life. Book now at our cola theatre.com. Tickets

start from £12. The devolved and local elections which took place in Britain on May 7th Thursday of last week

were a disaster for Labour. In Wales, it has almost completely vanished as an electoral force,

replaced as the major party in the Senate by Plied Comory. That is an astonishing upending for a party

once so completely identified with progressive politics in Wales. In Scotland,

it failed to profit from the scandals and dissatisfactions which have plagued the SMP of the past

few years, and though the SMP retained office, their victory was greatly diminished. In England,

Labour lost votes every way. Council slipped out of its control as reforms swept through

northern towns and suburbs,

and the Greens made truly significant gains in major cities. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats,

who exist, confirmed their position as the electoral destination for the kind of affluent,

moderate vote, which might once have gone conservative, and the conservatives themselves were

brutally reduced

to a fringe party, but seem oddly and perhaps delusional happy about it. If you ask Nigel Farage,

though, and much of the press, it was Reform's night. Certainly the party posted impressive

gains in all of the elections. Neither the Enoch Powell fans in his ranks

nor the maladministration of various reform councils over the last year seemed to have much

damaged his chances. Farage has certainly been talking very confidently about his party's success

and the end of the left-right system. But when we look a little closer, it's not totally obvious

that he's right.

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