Pomona Rewind

  The passing of any rising star rattles the public. However the news that ' Black Panther ' star Chadwick Boseman had died after battling colon cancer is particularly shocking as no-one outside a tight circle of family and friends knew he had been battling the disease for four years. It will have a particular resonance for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe who will not only remember him as the Black Panther but as a star who conclusively proved that an African American dominated franchise, the ninth biggest film of all time, could dominate the box office and earn the first Best Picture Oscar nomination for a superhero movie. Born in Anderson, South Carolina in 1976, he had recently caught the eye of audiences in Spike Lee's Vietnam War adventure  ' Da 5 Bloods ' and audiences believed he was clearly destined for great things. His mother Carolyn was a nurse and his father Leroy worked in a textile factory and also managed an upholstery business. At high school,

  Earlier this year, Steve Coogan's partnership with director Michael Winterbottom served up a double helping of comedy. The pair reunited with Rob Brydon on the small screen for what they say will be the last time with Sky Atlantic's sublime improvised sitcom ' The Trip to Greece '.  Around the same time in cinemas the director and his star served up the satirical movie 'Greed' - a withering expose of the illusion of wealth in big business. Written and directed by Winterbottom, 'Greed' has a lot to get off its chest and it attacks its subject with great vigour. Coogan plays Sir Richard McCreadie, a cheap fashion magnate modelled on the real life figure Philip Green. Like the Arcadia Group chairman, McCreadie is under the microscope of a Parliamentary committee as Westminster MPs led by Miles Jupp's unnamed chair. The committee is probing unethical practices in his business empire and the wider fashion industry. Using flashback, Winterbottom shows ho

  Seven years ago, The Guardian newspaper compiled a list of the 100 greatest novels written in the English language. Charles Dickens' 'David Copperfield' was the only one of his novels to make the list. Ranked at number 15, the novelist  Robert McCrum argued  the book marked the moment when Dickens became one of literature's greatest entertainers while he toyed with the darker themes that would characterise his later work. Adored by Sigmund Freud, who gifted the book to his fiancé Martha Bernays on their engagement in 1882, the novel chronicled the difficult childhood of a principled young man and his eventual blossoming in adulthood as a writer. Viewing 'David Copperfield' as the gateway novel for Dickens' darker masterpieces like 'Bleak House,' 'Hard Times' and 'Great Expectations', McCrum observed it "becomes the antechamber to his subsequent mastery.. The young man daydreaming about literature among his father's old book