Posted by Bonnie at
9.10pm
Just a quick update to say that a few recent articles have been added to the site, most of which are to do with events that Rachael has attended over the summer.
There are also a few new photos in the Events: 2011 gallery.
The articles I've linked to above have raised a couple of questions amongst Rachael fans. We can now confirm that yes, it is true that Rachael and Oliver split up earlier this year, and yes, Rachael has quit smoking. A few people have emailed in to ask both of those questions, so it felt right to clarify on here.
Keep an eye on the website as we are working on some exciting changes!
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Posted by Bonnie at
8.26pm
I have finally finished uploading the Women in Love: Episode 2 screencaps. So sorry it took me so long!
View the full gallery
Please leave comments below. Sometimes I do wonder if anyone is actually looking at the site for longer than five seconds, so feedback is always appreciated. 
More updates soon, I hope!
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Posted by Bonnie at
12.00am
Soon to grace our cinema screens in the romantic comedy Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, Dame Diana Rigg's talented daughter Rachael Stirling has less happy news in her love life.
For Rachael, 33, whose engagement to fellow actor Oliver Chris was revealed here last February, is single again.
Oliver presented her with a ruby engagement ring, which he designed himself, in her dressing room at the Vaudeville Theatre, where Rachael was appearing in An Ideal Husband. Alas, Oliver is now unlikely to fill that role.
Says a friend: 'It's unclear what went wrong, but it is all over. It's a shame because they seemed such a good match.'
Rachael, whose father is landowner Archie Stirling, was previously romanced by well-born DJ John Lycett-Green, grandson of the late Poet Laureate John Betjeman. She made her name in the raunchy TV adaptation of Sarah Waters's literary lesbian drama Tipping The Velvet
Perhaps Oliver isn't quite ready for matrimony, judging by his Twitter entries, which are peppered with four-letter words and puerile vulgarity. In one, he appears to suggest he once committed a lewd act at the top of the World Trade Centre in New York. Now, what girl wouldn't want to wed someone as charming as that?
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Posted by Bonnie at
12.00am
School was the perfect place to catch the acting bug, says Rachael Stirling — even if her family had to sit through some awful nonsense.
I have misgivings about boarding schools, but this much I know is good: in an effort to engage easily bored young minds outside the academic syllabus, there is nothing my own alma mater — Wycombe Abbey — wouldn't do. There were concerts put on, plays staged, musicals sung, art trips to Florence and Duke of Edinburgh trips to China, or Stokenchurch, and of course there were lacrosse teams to join if you were that way inclined. (I was not, I might add; it is muddy and cold and awful, not to mention dangerous.)
I spent most of my time in the Lancaster Arts Centre or 'LAC' as it was called; a 1960s building that rises up from the edge of a lake just inside the wall of the school grounds. It is all concrete and breeze block and glass. By rights it should be hideous, yet somehow it is beautiful. It has a fully equipped 400-seat theatre, two floors of well-lit exhibition space and another big studio space with floor-to-ceiling windows, which looked out over the water. As a child I had spent a certain amount of time backstage, being the daughter of an actress, and like a homing pigeon I attached myself to that building. I took part in anything that meant I might spend more time in it. I suffered the grim pangs of homesickness terribly, and would go there and rehearse and forget myself for a while.
The plays we put on were not always brilliant. I remember a very painful house play which had something to do with Francis Drake. It is recalled by my family as Drake's Drum as it was particularly long and really, truly boring and featured yours truly in full Elizabethan pantaloons playing a random nobleman. My brothers skipped the second half and instead spent their time signing me up for all expeditions on the school notice board including the trip to China, as well as tryouts for every school lacrosse team. In our late teens we put on The Roses of Eyam, an intense piece set during a plague outbreak in which God's will was closely questioned as disease took hold of a rural community. One by one my classmates were covered in revolting putty buboes. I played the (serious and boring again) priest who didn't get the plague, but whose wife did. She had a brilliant death scene and wore flattering robes in rich dark colours while I sported a black cassock and tights, and preached a lot.
But some of the drama was awesome. At the end of the summer term, there was a school competition in which a few finalists would perform three or four pieces from any play or poem they chose, on a bare stage, to the rest of the school. I remember a girl proclaiming the Maya Angelou poem 'I rise' and by the end I was convinced that the skinny white scamp standing on that stage was a voluptuous African-American 'with diamonds at the meeting of her thighs'. My school believed in the power of our young imaginations, and in the ability of drama to engage them. It taught us to have confidence in our creative selves, not to be afraid of what we don't know. And it encouraged us to be curious all through life and keep learning as we went.
I saw the effect of drama on less privileged kids too. For a while, I went once a week to a local comprehensive to assist one of our teachers with her classes there. Over time, she encouraged them to improvise and you could clearly see beneficial effects that playing out scenes — real or imagined — had on these kids. Even if they laughed it off or refused to take part, the whole process challenged them in a positive way.
As an academic subject, however, drama was not always taken seriously, or rather not perceived to be serious enough by the governors at my school. When drama GCSE came up I remember an inter-staff battle on the question of its academic credibility. Our formidable drama staff soon won out. The syllabus included study of the theatre and its history. The Shakespeare of my English classes came alive to me then, and we were introduced to new writing, too: Death and The Maiden, Athol Fugard, Sharman Macdonald, alongside Webster, Euripides, Ibsen and Chekhov.
So I had a wonderful time, but then, I had a very expensive education, one which is, sadly, not on offer to the vast majority of British children. My own children, for instance, won't be going to private school — not on my acting wage. And I worry that it's easy for our state schools, with all their endless focus on exams and targets, to ignore the theatre. But the imagination of young people in Britain today is one of our most precious assets. We are good at the arts in this country. They are a major selling point. Let's hope academies of today learn how to nurture the creative spirits of tomorrow.
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