Christopher Ravenscroft movingly suggests Mr Winslow's advancing frailty as his reserves of strength and money are devoured by the case; while his wife (Susan Sylvester) vacillates between distress at the ruinous cost and delight at the opportunity to update her wardrobe

There are outstanding performances from Christopher Ravenscroft as Arthur Winslow, the father determined to clear his son’s name; Georgina Strawson, as Winslow’s suffragette sister Catherine; and Christopher Villiers, as Sir Robert Morton, the barrister defending him.

Christopher Ravenscroft’s depiction of Arthur inslow’s slow and painful physical breakdown over the course of the case is heartbreaking yet he also nails the older man’s sharp wit and keen brain...

Christopher Ravenscroft (the sidekick detective in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries) plays Arthur Winslow as a chronic arthritic with a caustic wit and fatherly sternness mixed with an absolute determination to see the cause through to the end, no matter how difficult that may be.

In the lead part of Arthur Winslow, Christopher Ravenscroft gives a remarkable performance of a man crippled by arthritis, obsessed with his cause but painfully aware of what it is doing to his family—but there are so many layers and subtle notes to his portrayal that it is impossible not to warm to this fully-rounded character.

The play is driven by an engine of older actors, all of whom have wonderful moments to shine. Christopher Ravenscroft’s, reasonable and ideologically superior Prosecutor is perhaps the highlight, he embodies a weariness and dissatisfaction which was wonderfully engaging.

Christopher Ravenscroft amusingly suggests the contortions of conscience through which Dykl puts himself and Paul Gilmore is funny as the vain and ineffectual Major Ofir.

Ultimately, Havel’s warning/message seems to be, as with the pre-Hitler Weimar Republic, democracy’s extreme vulnerability - be it due to personal agendas, misanthropic malevolence or even cool legal calculation as embodied in Christopher Ravenscroft’s superb State Prosecutor, himself not adverse to a spot of spanking. Would you trust democracy in these hands? Hardly.

David Rintoul gives a particularly strong performance here as a menacing Colonel Moher - the playful, psychopathic chief of police. Ritoul’s strident delivery and dominating stage-presence is perfectly counterpointed by Christopher Ravenscroft as the cerebral but ultimately weak Dykl

There's been disagreement about Ruth Rendell's The Vault, in which Reg Wexford is called in when four corpses are found in the coal hole of a house used in a previous Rendell novel.

Ruth Rendell is bidding fair to join Defoe and Dickens in creating one of the great criminal cities of literature. Her view of London is a similar murderous topography, less squalid, but with the same tentacles reaching out between rich and poor. The mapping of this novel began over a decade ago with the publication of her A Sight for Sore Eyes, which featured "Orcadia Cottage", a charming old house in St. John's Wood painted by a well-known artist as a backdrop for his portraits of a devoted young couple.

Wexford, a devoted grandfather who sends his very first email here, is the antithesis of the artistic and autistic Teddy Brex, the creepy student protagonist of A Sight for Sore Eyes. The Vault, as a sort-of-sequel, is a bold attempt to combine Rendell's two chosen specialities: the police procedural and the psychological thriller.

The Sense of an Ending, the new novel by Julian Barnes about the fortunes of a group of school-friends, is brief but masterful, says Anita Brookner.

In the first ever Book Review Show, Kirsty Wark is joined by guests including Germaine Greer and John Mullan to discuss the state of women's literature. Topics include the shortlist for the Orange Prize and posthumous publications from Daphne Du Maurier and Beryl Bainbridge. There will also be an interview with Lionel Shriver, the adaptation of whose 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' has just premiered at Cannes, and a literary 'salon' with Fay Weldon, Kate Mosse and Ruth Rendell.

Rendell’s greatest trick is making an unforeseen outcome feel predestined.

Ruth Rendell knows so many ways to tell a story you might count her as three or four writers. Her Inspector Wexford stories are probably her most popular works, especially after a long-running television series based on them. Her other mysteries are a bit more complicated, in that they usually have no fatherly detective to make it all better, and certainly no guarantee that a criminal will be identified or caught. You may get poetic justice, or you may not get even that.

Ruth Rendell's novels of London amount to a modern cultural history of the city – a fictional urban archaeology of Holland Park in the hippie-chick era, redbrick terraces before and after the attentions of the "property ladder". Now she turns her sharp powers of observation on to a small suburban block of private flats, very precisely located in the social scale, too far away from the centre to be really expensive, just a cut above council housing. Rendell charts the local changes in sharp detail: the closure of the local off-licence, the problems of Mr Ali's corner shop.

The only time that I actually felt really moved was when the father of the twins (played very well by Christopher Ravenscroft) was reunited with his wife. However, this beautiful moment was ruined a little by the American tourist behind me who exclaimed ‘Old people are, like, so cute!’.

Ruth Rendell knows so many ways to tell a story you might count her as three or four writers. Her Inspector Wexford stories are probably her most popular works, especially after a long-running television series based on them.

Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse, is its sober strand. Christopher Ravenscroft keeps his performance straight and, velvet-voiced, makes admirable sense of his complicated family history.

Moments of tenderness are trampled in the rush, despite the heroic efforts of Christopher Ravenscroft as dignified Egeon. And while the moochy dance band music is pleasing, with a couple of sassy numbers from Anna-Jane Casey thrown into the mix, it strips away the pace of this breathless farce. For a lesson in how music can propel the action rather than hold it up, see Women Beware Women at the National, and gulp in awe.

...Thus the old Syracusan merchant Egeon has been arrested and arraigned by a tall, white-suited Duke in a gendarme's hat that makes him look like General de Gaulle. Ragged and manacled, Christopher Ravenscroft makes Egeon's long, usually boring speech of explanation, one of riveting interest...

...There is also some dramatic balance in that the long opening account of misery from Egeon, the imprisoned merchant of Syracuse, is delivered with gravity (and clarity) by Christopher Ravenscroft.

RT @guardianculture: The Comedy of Errors | Theatre review

...Egeon goes through his ten minute ‘plot thus far’ speech, here gets an heroic, heart-wrenching delivery by Christopher Ravenscroft, like some latter-day Henry Irving.

Henning Mankell may have fancied a change of detective but Roslin is no Wallander, finds Mark Sanderson .

The 22nd in Ruth Rendell's Inspector Reginald Wexford series, The Monster in the Box rewards loyal readers with a generous trip back to the origins of the Kingsmarkham copper.

Laura Wilson on Lost World by Patricia Melo, Cold to the Touch by Frances Fyfield, The Monster in the Box by Ruth Rendell and Acts of Violence by Ryan David Jahn.

Ruth Rendell's son told her of a method for dealing with troubling thoughts: imagine a box into which you can put the disturbing images and shut them safely away. It's a good metaphor for a book about murder. The "box" is the method adopted by Inspector Wexford with an incident that occurred to him as a young policeman.

Cold cases never die: Inspector Wexford revisits one of his earliest crimes and the killer who got away . . . until now.

Reviewed by PD James

Portobello audiobook review

A revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s hit from 1975 to celebrate the Scarborough knight’s 70th birthday and his 50th year as a playwright. Three bedrooms, three couples and all are linked by a further couple, Trevor and Susannah, whose relationship is falling apart.

Yorkshire theatre critics and committed Yorkshire theatre audiences were able to wallow in an "Alan Ayckbourn Fest" this week.

This anthology, Midsummer Nights, celebrates the 75th anniversary of Glyndebourne opera house. Edited by author Jeanette Winterson, it includes an imaginative range of writers from Toby Litt to Ruth Rendell, Sebastian Barry and Marina Warner, each of whom has written in response to a chosen work. Almost all have kept the connection explicit and most of the stories take place if not within an opera, then at least in sight of an opera house.

Henning Mankell's new standalone novel opens similarly to its 2006 predecessor, Depths, on an island in the Swedish archipelago. Its themes of isolation and estrangement are similar too - but with one huge difference. There are no murders and little violence in Italian Shoes

English mystery writer Ruth Rendell has written more than 70 books and insists she would stop if she felt she had lost her touch for the intricate workings of the human psyche.

When a mock kidnapping of his mistress goes awry, a rising Tory politician covers his involvement. So begins The Birthday Present, Barbara Vine's latest psychological thriller.

This dark literary thriller -- written under Ruth Rendell's pen name -- masterfully folds adultery, kidnapping and lies into a tale of psychological suspense.

She tells a great story, but her fictional world has become period drama in bad modern dress.

Video interview with Kate Summerscale plus reviews by actors David Morrissey and Honeysuckle Weeks.