Director: Stephen Brown John Banville’s Booker-winning novel The Sea is framed as an account by art historian Max of the recent death of his wife, Anna. He writes at a guest house by the sea, Cedars, that has childhood associations, although these are not defined until later. The book’s method is to overlay memories and sensations, both new and distant; Max’s hold on the present – his relationship with a fellow guest and their landlady, Miss Vavasour, or his discussions with his concerned daughter – is woven through with the pain and beauty of the past. The particular delicate ecology of Banville’s novel would not seem to lend itself immediately to screen adaptation. But stranger things have happened. Michael Ondaatje’s eclectic novel The English