There are two standout speeches - her mad fantasy about helping Hippolytus find his way out of the Minotaur's labyrinth and later her deranged imaginings about his love for the captive princess Aricia (Ruth Negga).

BBC: Review: Helen Mirren in Phedre

Blackburn's new novel follows a clear trajectory in the author's intellectual development: from imagined biographies to what I suspect are highly autobiographical imaginings.

CNN: 'The Leper's Companions'

Parts of all this went into the making of him, as well as the imaginings of the young Marcel Marceau, in Strasbourg in the 1930s, trying on his father's long trousers and contorting his body to make his friends laugh.

ECONOMIST: Bip