Reading: Alice Payne Rides

Alice Payne Rides is the second of two novellas by Kate Heartfield featuring Alice Payne, mixed-race eighteenth century English gentlewoman whose secret identity is the notorious highwaywoman the Holy Ghost, her lover, the inventor Jane Hodgson, and time-traveller Prudence Zuniga, born in the twenty-second century, once a soldier in a war spanning centuries of human history and now a deserter hiding out in Hampshire in 1789 but still trying (with the help of Alice, Jane and their neighbour Wray Auden) to covertly nudge history in the right direction. When a mission goes wrong and Arthur of Brittany ends up in 1789 rather than dead at the hands of King John's men, Prudence finds that their activities have drawn the attention of her former superiors, who want to bring her back into the fold.

Like the first novella, Alice Payne Arrives, this is pacy, clever and engaging, and if "lesbian highwaywoman time-travel shenanigans" sounds like the kind of thing that appeals to you, then you should definitely read it.

Watching: The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers's new film, The Lighthouse, stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as two lighthouse keepers trapped on a tiny, rocky island by a storm. Shot in a self-consciously artistic black and white with a minimalist and often mumbled script, it feels rather like I imagine The Rime of the Ancient Mariner might have done if it had been written by Samuel Beckett. By which I mostly mean confusing, over-long and very manpainy. It also features far more wanking than I ever wanted to see on screen, even when suggestively obscured by the arty cinematography. Not one I'd recommend.