Eileen Jones – who is most famous for her iconoclastic, working-class brand of film criticism at The eXiled – has just put out Filmsuck, USA, a new collection of writing in ebook form, with a long introductory section that hopes to explain precisely why America’s cinema is in decline. Her thesis is an interesting one: the inventiveness that at one time made Hollywood the ‘dream factory’ of the world came largely from the American working class, and neither studio nor independent filmmaking has gained much since by divorcing itself from the plebs.

‘Since 1947, he has been intermittently associated with Communist-sponsored peace activities.’ That’s from an ASIO file compiled in the 1960s about the jazz pianist Graeme Bell, who died last week aged 97.