John Schlesinger

Midnight Cowboy

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Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 24 March Robert Koch announces discovery of the cause of TB, 1882 On this day in 1882, Robert Koch announced that he had worked out what was causing tuberculosis, a disease so devastating that it went by several names – phthisis and consumption were also common. Until Koch started his research, it was widely believed that TB was a hereditary disease. But though Koch had observed that TB would often spread through families, its epidemiology was not uniform – poorer families tended to get it more than richer ones. We now know that TB is caused by a slow-growing bacterium, mycobacterium … Read more

Far from the Madding Crowd

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Terence Stamp and Julie Christie in Far from the Madding Crowd

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 11 January Thomas Hardy dies, 1928 On this day in 1928, the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy died. He was 87 and this Victorian writer had survived into and almost through the age of the formal modernist, such as Joyce, with whom he had little in common, though he was an informing influence on writers with a more earthy, carnal and rural inclination, such as DH Lawrence. Hardy had trained as an architect in the 1860s but didn’t enjoy life in London and as soon as he became established enough he moved back to the West Country (Somerset, then Dorset) where … Read more