Cultural Life: Lindsay Duncan, actress

Lindsay Duncan (Getty Images)

Film

The last film I saw was Ralph Fiennes' Coriolanus, which I raved about to anyone who would listen. It was an incredibly powerful, unsentimental, intelligent film and his direction was done with real rigour and imagination. Vanessa Redgrave's performance was simply magnificent – every word she utters is said as if it has just occurred to her and it was a real acting lesson for me. She commands the screen with a performance that is just so compelling.

Television

I loved Homeland – it's such an intriguing, intelligent piece of television and I am fascinated by them making a hero and heroine that are so odd, so flawed and so complicated. It is a programme that really draws you in. My other favourite is the divine Mary Beard, whose programmes including the latest Meet the Romans are incredible. I'm just one of her many, many worshippers. I even have a red duster coat that I want to wander around in and wear as a homage to her.

Books

I picked up Pure by Andrew Miller, which is wonderful. It is set in 18th-century Paris and about a young engineer commissioned to clear a cemetery literally overflowing with corpses. I am now reading Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh about the Bright Young Things of the 1920s which is utterly and just deliciously hilarious.

Music

I've been listening to a new band called Wolf Alice, courtesy of my son. The vocalist, Ellie Rowsell, has a gorgeous voice.