Simon Russell Beale's Widmerpool, who has come to stay".[77] Reviewing the reissue of the films in DVD in 2012, Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian describes Widmerpool as "one of fiction's most intriguing monsters" and likens Beale's portrayal to that of "a kind of grown-up Billy Bunter with the charm sucked out".[78] Christopher Hitchens, writing in the New York Review of Books, criticised the production (though not Beale's performance), for depicting Widmerpool as "a hapless rather than a hateful figure".[5]