DVD: A Merry War - Richard E. Grant and Helena Bonham Carter

This is a screen adaptation of Orwell's Keep The Aspidistra Flying. Comstock's struggle in 1930s England - that's George Comstock, budding poet and suitably angry young man - to write poetry and be a free man means that he must throw up his job as a star copywriter at an illustrious advertising firm to work in a dingy book shop for far less money. It also means that he must sponge off his hard-working sister, girlfriend and wealthier friends, while calling every man 'comrade' and loudly deploring the 'God of Money' - not to mention loudly abhorring that eternal symbol of stodgy respectability, the dreaded aspidistra. George has to descend into the squalid, bed bug-ridden depths of disreputable Lambeth to prove his point, while his patient and ever-practical girlfriend Rosemary stands by and waits for him to come to his senses. With many guest appearances by well-loved English character actors.