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Tuesday 2 December 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

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Arts

Top drama at bargain prices

Lloyd Evans talks to the Donmar’s artistic director Michael Grandage about his Wyndham’s venture

Life lessons

Talking to my dentist, as one does, we discover a mutual enthusiasm for Radio Three’s Composer of the Week (Monday to Friday) and especially its presenter, Donald Macleod.

Apocalypse now

The TV programmes you watched as a child are like acid flashbacks.

Enchanted forest

Hänsel und Gretel
Royal Academy of Music

Jenufa
Birmingham Hippodrome

Pelléas et Mélisande
Sadler’s Wells

The fall guy

Break out the bunting. Crack open the champagne. Spit-roast the capon and prepare to party. Or, come to think of it, don’t bother.

A perfect cadence

This year, on 11 December — and I wish more people knew about it than actually do — the American composer Elliott Carter celebrates his 100th birthday.

Books

The power of the evasive word

The Economist Book of Obituaries, by Keith Colquhoun and Ann Wroe

Deadlier than the male

When does a novel stop being a novel and become a crime story? It’s often assumed that there is an unbridgeable gap between them, but that’s not necessarily so.

Style & Travel

Pink and potent

Never gamble your pension on a food fashion.

Stocking- filler fizz

Stuck for stocking-filler ideas and feel like raising an insouciant middle finger to the credit crunch?

Brown has played into the hands of the Tory Bullingdon Boys he loathes

Fraser Nelson says that the Pre-Budget Report killed off New Labour without landing a punch on the Tories. It has paved the way for a new Conservatism, in which Cameron woos aspirational voters, focuses on government debt and looks for responsible spending cuts

Fraser Nelson