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The Beatles’ “Taxman” articulates concerns different from the topics of most protest songs of the time. The song feels out of touch with the concerns that many people have today. On the other hand, the general sentiment of “Taxman” is relatable to listeners of various classes. The Beatles | Mirrorpix / Contributor

The Beatles‘ “Taxman” is one of the most famous songs from Revolver. On one level, it’s horribly behind the times. On the other hand, its message is immortal.

The Beatles’ ‘Taxman’ feels out of touch with 1960s music and out of touch with today

The 1960s saw a wave of famous protest songs. Folk singers like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger protested the ills of the world, like racism, conformity, and the Vietnam War. Even Elvis Presley, during his poppy Las Vegas years, got in on the trend with “In the Ghetto,” a protest song about the...

"Love Actually" is a bit of a sticky film to bring up. People either love it or write endless stories about how awful it is. If the film comes up at parties, it's bound to cause an argument. Whether "Love Actually" is the worst film in history, as some say, or a good-naturedly messy film about messy people in a messy world is up to you, but it's likely that many of us can at least agree about the dancing scene.

In the film, Hugh Grant plays the Prime Minister of the UK. He's young, handsome, and single. In a 2013 Daily Beast interview (updated in 2017) with the cast of "Love Actually," writer/director Richard Curtis said that the idea came from former Prime Minister Ted Heath, who was unmarried while in office. Curtis explains that he always thought about what would have happened if Heath fell in love with someone while running the country.

Margaret Thatcher is a force to be reckoned with on season four of The Crown. Played by Gillian Anderson, the Thatcher we see in the show is notorious for her bouffant and stoicism. But like many historical series, some of the events are dramatized or fictionalized altogether. After watching The Crown, you're probably wondering how accurate its portrayal of Margaret Thatcher is. The woman who was James Callaghan's successor and served as Britain's prime minister from 1979 to 1990 seemed to have lived a life of excitement and controversy. Some questions from fans include whether or not Thatcher was a feminist, what her relationship to Queen Elizabeth was like, and what she was like as a mother.

The First Female Prime Minister

Margaret Hilda Thatcher was born on Oct. 13, 1925, in Lincolnshire, England. She attended Oxford University, a prestigious school where she first became involved in politics in the Conservative Club. Nicknamed "The Iron Lady,...

John Sessions, a Scottish actor and comedian best known for his role on the U.K. version of “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” died on Monday at his home in South London, his agency Markham, Froggatt & Irwin confirmed to Variety. He was 67.

Sessions appeared on several other British comedy shows, including “Have I Got News for You,” “Qi,” “Stella Street” and “Spitting Image.” A noted character actor, he appeared in a wide variety of TV shows and films from the 1980s through the 2010s.

Born on Jan. 11, 1953, in Ayrshire, Scotland, Sessions trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, studying alongside director Kenneth Branagh. The two would go on to work together on “Henry V” in 1989 and “Five Children and It” in 2004.

In the late 1980s, Sessions was part of the cast of the original radio broadcast of the improv comedy series “Whose Line Is It Anyway.” He...

In Still the Enemy Within, we witness the last gasp of British working class dignity. The documentary, chronicling the 1984-85 Miner’s Strike, gives us a glimpse into an alien past. This Britain is a country of industry; a place proud of making things. Power lay in the hands of the working class and their trade unions, their economic centrality giving them leverage to fight for decent pay, safe working conditions and secure employment.

In 1972 and 1974 the National Union of Mineworkers staged successful strikes, with the ’74 strike bringing down the Heath Government. This display of power galvanized the trade union movement, every miner buoyed up by the knowledge that their union had their back. Then along came Thatcher. The concept of a worker’s union with the means and ability to affect profiteering was anathema to her free market philosophy, not to mention that the Tory party was consumed with...

Interview Ryan Lambie 25 Sep 2013 - 07:01

With its Final Cut out in cinemas this week, we talk to The Wicker Man's director Robin Hardy about the film's continued relevance...

A key moment in British horror filmmaking, The Wicker Man needs little introduction. The disturbing, darkly funny story of a virginal, self-righteous policeman, Sgt Howie (Edward Woodward) and his search for a missing girl on a remote, pagan island, it's an intelligent, measured film to stir the blood. Yet despite the brilliance of its casting - with horror alumni Ingrid Pitt and Christopher Lee in supporting roles - and the precision of its filmmaking, The Wicker Man was subjected to brutal treatment before release, with some 20 minutes hacked from its duration by an unsympathetic studio.

Although much of that footage has been lost forever - popular legend suggests that the negatives now lie buried beneath the M4 motorway - efforts...

Doctor Who began airing on November 23, 1963. This year it will celebrate its 50th anniversary. That’s a hell of a long time by many measures, and it’s almost an eternity in TV years. It was several years before I was born, and I’m willing to bet it was several decades before most of our readers were born. The amount of time that has passed can therefore be somewhat hard to get a handle on, so let’s see if we can break it down into digestible segments for us so that we can better appreciate this accomplishment and get a real sense of the distance between 1963 and 2013.

To start with something very Us-centric, consider that Doctor Who began airing the day after President John F Kennedy was killed. New episodes of the old series aired during the administrations of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Hw Bush.

Sir David Frost died yesterday (August 31) after suffering a suspected heart attack on board the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship.

Frost was born in Kent in 1939, the son of a minister. A keen footballer, he was offered a contract with Nottingham Forest Fc while at school, but chose to study English at Cambridge University instead.

It was here that he started out in journalism, editing the student newspaper Varsity and literary magazine Granta. He also became secretary of the Footlights club, where he met future comedy stars such as Peter Cook, Graham Chapman and John Bird.

Upon graduating, Frost became a trainee at ITV and was soon asked to host satirical show That Was The Week That Was in 1962. He went on to front a Us version of the programme for NBC, before presenting The Frost Report from 1966 to 1967, helping to launch the careers of John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.

The 49-year-old screenwriter and director on politics, comedy characters and why he refuses to work weekends

There's probably no other comedy character who has lasted as long as Alan Partridge. Though he's not always been on screen in his 22 years, when Steve Coogan and I meet up we'll always fill in the gaps and speculate about what he's been up to. His life runs simultaneous to ours.

I grew up in the Glasgow Hillhead constituency which, for a political geek, was like going to Glastonbury. We had Roy Jenkins in a by-election in 1982, Edward Heath speaking, Tony Benn. Then you'd bump into Shirley Williams.

Anger has to be in my comedy. Blair and the Iraq war was the first demo I had been on since I was a student – a lot of that went into The Thick of It.

I refuse to work evenings or weekends. If a script sees my character meeting for dinner,...

The 49-year-old screenwriter and director on politics, comedy characters and why he refuses to work weekends

There's probably no other comedy character who has lasted as long as Alan Partridge. Though he's not always been on screen in his 22 years, when Steve Coogan and I meet up we'll always fill in the gaps and speculate about what he's been up to. His life runs simultaneous to ours.

I grew up in the Glasgow Hillhead constituency which, for a political geek, was like going to Glastonbury. We had Roy Jenkins in a by-election in 1982, Edward Heath speaking, Tony Benn. Then you'd bump into Shirley Williams.

Anger has to be in my comedy. Blair and the Iraq war was the first demo I had been on since I was a student – a lot of that went into The Thick of It.

I refuse to work evenings or weekends. If a script sees my character meeting for dinner,...

Former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher has died at the age of 87 following a stroke, according to her spokesman.

Lord Bell said: “It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning.”

She was British prime minister from 1979 to 1990 – the first (and only so far) female to rise to the post, and sparked controversy with some infamous policies that made her a figure of occasionally bilious hatred from political opponents and their followers.

Born Margaret Roberts, she became the Conservative MP for Finchley in 1959, and stayed in a political role until she retired from the Commons in 1992. During that time, she took on the role of education secretary, before successfully challenging Edward Heath for her party’s leadership in 1975, and subsequently winning general elections in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

Her time in power took in a particularly turbulent time in UK history,...

Margaret Thatcher, the unyielding Conservative politician who from 1979 to 1990 served as Britain's first female prime minister - and the 20th century's longest running - died Monday. She was 87. Her spokesman Lord Bell made the announcement: "It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning. A further statement will be made later." Lady Thatcher, who was awarded title of Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven in 1992, had suffered a series of strokes in recent years, and in 2005 her doctors advised that she no longer give speeches in public. Her...

Gielgud, London

Well, I didn't believe in it but I was seduced by it. At least for a while. The Audience – the first surefire, unstoppable hit of the year – has been created to disarm all comers. Helen Mirren sparklingly reprises her passive-faced but steely-eyed performance as a Queen who is both stalwart and wistful. Stephen Daldry, the man who once said he would not mind being mayor of London, and who would do a spectacular job, brings to the production the giant flair that he brought to Billy Elliot and An Inspector Calls. Peter Morgan's script nods at those not enamoured of all things monarchical, suggesting that underneath the perm there is something of a lefty brain. Real live corgis are unleashed.

Still, zinging moments are not finally enough to disguise the fact that Morgan's very entertaining play is a skinny thing, a string of sketches dependent on high-grade mimicry.

Despite film hits such as Billy Elliot and The Reader, theatre is 'home' to Stephen Daldry and now he's back in the West End, directing a regal Helen Mirren. Here he talks about communal living, depicting Hm on stage – and those Olympic ceremonies

It's been a long day at the end of a long week and Stephen Daldry needs a drink. But before that a cigarette. "I'm on a pack-and-a-half a day at the moment," he says, as he ducks out of an airless, windowless rehearsal room that smells, in the opinion of the Observer's photographer, "of actor". He continues: "I blame it entirely on Peter Morgan."

Daldry, the director, and Morgan, the writer, have been stuck in here for weeks working on a new play called The Audience, which opens at the Gielgud on Friday. The premise is enticing: since the second world war, the British sovereign has met...

Actor best known for his role as the rugged and handsome captain in The Onedin Line

James Onedin, the protagonist of the long-running BBC television series The Onedin Line, gained his splendid name from a sea nymph. After the programme's creator, Cyril Abraham, had read about mythological figure Ondine, he transposed the "e", thus making her a man. And what a man: Peter Gilmore, who played Onedin in 91 episodes from 1971 to 1980, had tousled hair, flinty eyes, hollow cheeks, mutton-chop sideburns racing across his cheek, lips pulled severely down, chin thrust indomitably forward to face down the brewing gale. He has died aged 81.

The sea captain did not so much talk as emit salty barks that brooked no demur. In 1972, while filming, Gilmore was buzzed by speedboats from the Royal Naval College. Still in character as Onedin, he yelled irascibly at the tyro sailors: "Taxpayers' money! Where are your guns? What...

Comedian Rory Bremner has claimed that there is a "serious problem" with the lack of political satire on British TV. The impressionist, who appeared on Channel 4 politics series Bremner, Bird and Fortune between 1999 and 2010, claimed that the lack of an engaging politics show and the apathy from the public towards politicians was worrying and "a great shame". "I think there is seriously a problem with satire at the moment. There is a problem because the link between people and politicians has eroded after the expenses scandal and lots of other things," Bremner told Digital Spy. "First there was That Was The Week That Was, then we had Mike Yarwood doing Ted Heath and Harold Wilson impressions, then there was Spitting Image and then there was our show Bremner, Bird and Fortune. "But the point about those (more)...

David Cameron has 'a hilarious sense of humour', according to Helena Bonham Carter. Perhaps so, but who were the really funny rightwingers?

Are Tories funny? Of course, with the exception of Jim Davidson. Expressing amazement that they might be funny is like saying that because someone has different political views from us they can't have a sense of humour. Yet this appears to be exactly what Helena Bonham Carter did in an interview at the weekend, when she insisted her friend David Cameron was "not a rightwing person", citing his "hilarious sense of humour, which nobody really knows about".

Bernard Manning was funny. And racist and misogynistic too, but the jokes were good even if the laughter died on your lips. Peter Cook spent much of his life savaging Labour politicians, but there's no doubt that he was funny. You might recall the Tory rally in 1983 when Kenny Everett spoke for Margaret Thatcher.

Yes Prime Minister.

Marc Dubonnet

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When you consider the fact that the BBC is a publicly funded organization it is perhaps not surprising that politicians have been a regular feature of both satires and drama shows in the UK. Some depictions of these political figures have been sympathetic but many have been less than flattering. For better or worse, the following individuals are 10 of the Best British TV politicians.

1. James Hacker (Paul Eddington) in Yes Minister. Jim Hacker must rank as one of Britian’s best loved and weakest prime ministers. All too often his decisions were made for him by the sinister Sir Humphrey Appleby. Fans didn’t mind much since the original show spawned a sequel, a radio version and most recently a stage play.

A portrait of Margaret Thatcher from colossus to recluse is distinguished by Meryl Streep's superb central performance

In his mid-19th-century poem "A Psalm of Life", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote: "Lives of great men all remind us/ We can make our lives sublime/ And departing leave behind us/ Footprints on the sands of time." This was the kind of thinking that underlay the inspirational movies produced by Warner Brothers in the 1930s for which Variety coined the term "biopic" – films about medical pioneers, democratic revolutionaries and other movers and shakers who changed the world, invariably men (MGM's Madame Curie was a rare exception).

But suddenly, in 1941, Orson Welles entered the scene with Citizen Kane, a picture that fractured chronological narrative and constantly changed points of view while presenting a lightly fictionalised, highly critical life of the press tycoon William Randolph Hearst. The biopic was never the same again, and...

The definitive verdict on the biopic from former Guardian political editor Michael White, who observed Thatcher up close as a young sketchwriter in the 1970s

It would be easy to imagine saying to Meryl Streep, "I knew Margaret Thatcher. You're no Margaret Thatcher," as an American politician once did to a rival who compared himself to President John F Kennedy. Easy, but wrong. Streep's interpretation of Thatcher in three distinct stages of her career, before, during and after her 11-year premiership, is a remarkable and sensitive achievement. Give the woman another Oscar, the pair of them can share it. Hollywood would like that.

The jibe could be levelled against Phyllida Lloyd's film. The Iron Lady certainly contains a selection of Thatcher's greatest handbaggings – which everyone much over 40 will remember with nostalgic glee or a shudder. We all knew her. But it is background. What cinema-goers will remember from this film is its foreground,...

Wishy-washy and unfocused, Phyllida Lloyd's Margaret Thatcher biopic fails to embody the indomitable spirit of its subject

Director: Phyllida Lloyd

Entertainment grade: C+

History grade: C

Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990.

Structure

The Iron Lady tells its story as a series of flashbacks experienced by the ageing Thatcher (Meryl Streep), suffering from dementia and haunted by the imagined ghost of her late husband, Denis (Jim Broadbent). Streep is terrific, carrying off Thatcher in her prime and Thatcher in her dotage with equal aplomb. Regrettably, however, so much of the film's screentime has been devoted to the dotage – and so many of the flashbacks are, unlike Thatcher herself, preoccupied with her role as a wife and mother – that little time is left for the interesting stuff. A few of those who are relegated to blink-and-you'll-miss-'em status, or don't appear at all: Cecil Parkinson, Nigel Lawson,...

Biopic starring Meryl Streep has been criticised by John Campbell, who wrote the book on which the film is based

It has already been dismissed by Norman Tebbit, despite Meryl Streep being discussed as a shoo-in for an Oscar for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher. Now The Iron Lady, Phyllida Lloyd's much-discussed biopic of Britain's first female prime minister, has been criticised for inaccuracy by Thatcher biographer John Campbell.

The accusation holds some weight because Campbell's book, also titled The Iron Lady, was used as the basis for Lloyd's film. The author is concerned that screenwriters chose to enhance the prime minister's role in important affairs of the 1980s at the expense of other key figures, such as her foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe.

"Like any film of that sort, it simplifies and it dramatises her as a great individual, fighting against all these things as if it was just her on her own,...

Beryl Davis has died in Los Angeles, aged 87. The British singer, who was perhaps best known for her war-time ballad 'I'll Be Seeing You', passed away on Friday from complications from Alzheimer's disease. Plymouth-born Davis launched her performing career with her band leader father Harry Davis at the age of 3 and later shot to fame after singing on Bob Hope's radio show. She said that she was inspired by Us singers such as Ella Fitzgerald and toured around Europe before the war playing with well-known musicians Stephane Grappelli, Ted Heath and George Shearing. (more)...

Streep has Margaret Thatcher's plummy tones down to a T, as the film trailer reveals – but what's with her sense of humour?

So that's how Meryl Streep is going to sound when she appears on our screens as Margaret Thatcher. On the basis of the clip newly issued by 20th Century Fox (yes, I know it's Murdoch-owned, but he's hard to avoid) I'd say the great Us actor is not going to disappoint the Iron Lady's fans (though she does have a problem; I'll come to that).

But why not give it her best Hollywood shot? Playing a well-known public figure in an age when – thanks to multi-media platforms – everyone knows exactly how they sound is a formidable challenge. Like many things in life, it didn't used to be a problem. I think there are fragments of that great Victorian orator William Gladstone, recorded before his death in 1898, fewer...

Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts star in a shockingly bland romantic comedy. A love story starring Edward Heath and Julie Andrews would have had more chemistry than this

Tom Hanks has directed a bland, lifeless, sexless and entirely fatuous autumn-years romcom – co-writing it with Nia Vardalos, whose box-office smash My Big Fat Greek Wedding he and his wife Rita Wilson shrewdly brought to the screen as producers in 2002. Hanks himself plays a straight-ahead nice guy who is downsized from his job in a big store; he takes an adult education course at the community college and finds himself falling for jaded lecturer Mercedes Tainot, a stunningly bad performance from Julia Roberts, which she phones in while apparently working out her fee on a special Star Remuneration app. But before they come anywhere near getting together, the script provides for a long and massively boring subplot in which Larry appears to...

A dismal, glutinous romance in which Zac Efron conspicuously fails to outgrow his teen roots, says Peter Bradshaw

Like a high-jumper cracking the bar in two with his forehead, former teen star Zac Efron fails to make it into the Mature Performer league in this unendurable romantic drama, filmed in the buttery late-summer glow I associate with movies such as Message in a Bottle and The Notebook. Efron plays Charlie St Cloud, a talented high-school yachtsman with a modest family background – his mom, played by Kim Basinger, is a nurse. The yacht-snob kids sneer at Charlie, but he still kicks their asses in races and has just landed a sailing scholarship to a tip-top Ivy League school. (It would be nice, incidentally, to think his name was inspired by the name of Edward Heath's craft: Morning Cloud.) But grim fate upends all Charlie's life plans and the movie is...

Satire's limits will always be expanding to tackle new subjects – no matter how wicked or tragic

Like Louis XVI's decadent court at Versailles, we live in an age of ridicule. Fifty years ago, comedy of the public or professional kind was almost never fashioned out of real events or real people – past and present, the living and the dead. That other age is now amazing to recollect. Could Britain ever have lived so politely and solemnly, and with such regard for the social order and hurt to others? One night dad and I were listening to the Goons on a radio that needed time to warm up and carried the names Athlone, Home Service and Light Programme on the dial. The team of Sellers, Milligan and Secombe was at the height of its power as the cutting-edge of broadcast humour. Favourite catchphrases became sallies in the school playground. Weedy little voice (Bluebottle): "Oh,...

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert reminisces about the eccentric hotel on Jermyn Street that for 25 years was his sanctuary – but now faces demolition

Oh, no. No. No. This ­cannot be. They're ­tearing down 22 Jermyn Street in London. The whole block is going. Bates hat shop, Trumper the barber, Getti the Italian restaurant, the Jermyn Street theatre, Sergios cafe, the lot. Jermyn Street was my street in ­London. My neighbourhood.

There, on a corner near the Lower Regent Street end, I found a time capsule within which the ­eccentricity and charm of an earlier time was still preserved. It was called the ­Eyrie ­Mansion. When I stayed there, I ­considered myself to be living there. I always wanted to live in London, and this was the closest I ever got.

Many years ago I was in London and unhappily staying in a hotel room so small, they had to store my...

Although she receives the crowning accolade from her peers tonight, the great radical has had the worst of years following the death of her daughter

When Vanessa Redgrave receives her Bafta fellowship this evening from Prince William, it will be a moment rich in theatrical potential. First, there is the pathos: the great veteran actress, still vibrant at 73, bestowed with a crowning professional accolade one year on from the death of her daughter, Natasha Richardson, in a skiing accident.

Then the dramatic irony of the revolutionary Marxist accepting the award from a prince. And finally the dreadful tension: what will she say in her speech?

Redgrave does not boast the most tactful history of acceptance speeches. Four years ago, having been recognised for her lifetime's achievement by the Transylvania film festival, she dedicated the award to a group campaigning against a gold mine in Romania owned by one of the festival's sponsors.

Veteran journalist David Frost has called Frost/Nixon 'fiction' because movie chiefs changed some of the key historical facts for entertainment value.

The new Ron Howard-directed film is based on a series of interviews former U.S. President Richard Nixon gave to British TV host Frost in 1977 in which he admitted he may have broken the law in the Watergate scandal.

But Frost was not involved in the new project, which is based on the hit play by Peter Morgan, and fears the movie is telling an altered version of the real story to keep cinema audiences happy

He says, "I voluntarily gave up my rights to editorial control of it. I'm not complaining but it does mean that 10 to 15 per cent of the film is fiction.

"I wasn't just a talkshow host before (Richard Nixon). I'd done British prime ministers - Harold Wilson, Ted Heath - all the U.S. presidential candidates, Robert Kennedy, Ronald Reagan. I think Peter (Morgan) did it this way to make me out to be the underdog - more a showman than a journalist."

Nixon was forced to resign his presidency in 1974 following a series of scandals which rocked the White House and nearly ended in his impeachment.

Sir Ian McKellen thinks Britain will one day have a gay Prime Minister. The openly homosexual actor believes it is only a matter of time before Britain has a leader who does not hide his sexuality, because the number of gay politicians is constantly growing.

He told Seven magazine: "I think openly gay politicians are the standard, rather than not, in all parties these days. Eventually it's very likely that one of them will become a leader. We've already had one or two gay Prime Ministers."

Sir Edward Heath, who was a Conservative party Prime Minister from 1970 to 1974, has been the subject of rumors about his sexuality with some reports claiming he was told to stop cruising for gay sex in the 50s, many years before he became leader.

McKellen, 69, was delighted when the new U.S. President, Barack Obama, mentioned gay voters in his victory speech.