Free Republic

Ralph Fiennes’s film about the secret love affair between Charles Dickens and a woman more than half his age is finally shooting. It was announced to great fanfare at the Cannes Film Festival a few years ago when Christine Langan, head of BBC Films, joined forces with producer Stewart Mackinnon to get Abi Morgan to adapt Claire Tomalin’s brilliant 1991 book The Invisible Woman. That book told of Dickens’s relationship with actress Nelly Ternan which started when she was 18 and he was 45.

Speaking at the BFI London Film Festival awards in Old Street, London, the actor said that modern language "is being eroded" and blamed "a world of truncated sentences, soundbites and Twitter." "Our expressiveness and our ease with some words is being diluted so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us," he said. Fiennes, full name Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, said that students at drama schools were especially suffering thanks to social networking sites. "I hear it, too, from people at drama schools,...

Lisa Roberston, who was sacked by Quantas after her liaison with Ralph Fiennes, has admitted she previously worked as a high-class prostitute Ralph Fiennes was urged to take an Aids test yesterday after the air stewardess who seduced him on a Qantas jet admitted she had previously worked as a high-class prostitute. Lisa Robertson, 38, said she earned up to £800 a night in an upmarket Syndey brothel while working for the Australian airline. She told a Sydney newspaper she first sold herself to pay the rent "because I was too proud to ask anyone for money". Miss Roberston was...

Qantas stewardess tells how she fell for Hollywood star in Seat 2K...and how after a mad, passionate fling he abandoned her to face the sack... The attraction had been immediate and overwhelming from the moment they first made eye contact. But as Qantas stewardess Lisa Robertson leaned over towards Hollywood star Ralph Fiennes to offer him a drink, she could not have imagined how the evening would unfold - or that she would end up in a passionate tryst with him in the aircraft lavatory. When rumours first emerged that Ralph Fiennes joined the Five Mile High Club in the...

The Qantas stewardess who claimed she rejected an amorous Ralph Fiennes on a flight to India has admitted having sex with him in an aircraft lavatory. Lisa Robertson told friends she was a big fan of the British actor and found herself luring him to the cubicle. But they apparently shared more than a 15-minute fling at 35,000ft. Miss Robertson claims they went on to share a passionate night in a Mumbai hotel - at the star's invitation. The Australian stewardess has told friends she recognised Fiennes, 44, as he soon as he settled into his business class seat, 2K,...

<p>A flight attendant accused of having sex in an aircraft toilet with actor Ralph Fiennes was in hiding last night after being grounded without pay.</p> <p>Other crew members claimed Lisa Robertson had a seven-mile-high fling in business class with The English Patient star.</p>