Hamnet

Paul Mescal will star as the young William Shakespeare in a big-screen version of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao.The film will be scripted by Chiara Atik, adapting Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage play, which has played to sold-out runs in Stratford-upon-Avon and the West End.Mescal will appear alongside Jessie Buckley as Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, called Agnes in the book, which explores the loss of their 11-year-old son to the plague.Speaking to Vogue to promote his current film, All of Us…

On the third day of a Covid infection, I have a very vivid dream. In it, I am being pushed in a wheelchair down a long windowless corridor. Above my head is a string of oblong fluorescent lights and, as I move through their weak circles of illumination, I’m disconcerted to find that I’m wearing a particular purple dressing gown, about which everything is familiar: the row of pearlised buttons, its fuzzy nap, each ribbed cuff. I know where I am: the basement of a hospital in which I spent a long time as a child while…