Showing tonight on Sky Documentaries is Elizabeth Taylor: the Lost Tapes. Built around recordings made by the double Oscar-winner in 1964, filmmaker Nanette Burstein describes the material as “really intimate and candid”. Get the popcorn ready.
Lost Tapes is the latest work to shine a spotlight on Taylor and her great love, and occasionally greatest enemy, Richard Burton. Next year, the centenary of his birth, there will be another documentary and two films, one based on Erotic Vagrancy, Roger Lewis’s wildly funny biography of Burton and Taylor, recently released in paperback. Also this week, BBC Scotland announced a new documentary, Salmond and Sturgeon: A Troubled Union, to mark the 10th anniversary of the independence referendum.
Featuring new interviews with both former First Ministers and other key figures, including current FM John Swinney, the makers Firecrest Films promise “an emotional tale of ambition, power and broken friendships [that] reveals the human cost of devoting your entire life to a political cause”. Phew. If that seems overblown at first, a glimpse at recent history might make you think again.
Where does one start? The blizzard of headlines, a landmark trial, claims of a vast conspiracy at work, official inquiries, all at huge cost to the public purse. Lest we forget, the story is not over yet. Looked at in that light, Salmond and Sturgeon are the Burton and Taylor of Scottish politics - minus the marriages and diamonds, of course.
Their strict.