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Making history

Simon Hoggart

Wednesday, 12th March 2008

Rivers of Blood (BBC2); Delia (BBC2); The Most Annoying Pop Moments ... We Hate To Love (BBC3)

The Most Annoying Pop Moments ...We Hate to Love was a curious, gloating show on BBC3 last Saturday. In my youth, on the whole we wanted to admire our pop singers. We didn’t wish to read endlessly about their sexual peccadillos, had no idea that Elvis hoovered up drugs or that Dusty was gay. We liked them too much. Now, in these more anxious, insecure times, young persons seem to have a need to despise and jeer at their stars: Robbie Williams, Michael Jackson dangling his baby, and poor Amy Winehouse, a fabulously talented singer whose ordained public role now seems to be only as a drunken junkie. The overall effect was desperately sad, for the stars and for the people who need to hold them in easy contempt.

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A perfect cadence

Stephen Pettitt

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.

Forgotten wonders

Andrew Lambirth

Byzantium 330-1454
Royal Academy, until 22 March 2009

Out of the ordinary

Carolyn Bartholomew

Carolyn Bartholomew talks to Tilda Swinton, an actor who has made a career out of being unconventional

Life lessons

Kate Chisholm

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

James Delingpole

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

Want to cut taxes? First cut spending. Here’s how

Fraser Nelson

After a week of clamorous competition between the parties over tax cuts, Fraser Nelson offers a guide to paying for them: a programme of spending cuts that would preserve core services but shave off the fat of the Brown years. All that is needed is political will

Dickens delivers

James Delingpole

Little Dorrit (BBC1); Prescott: the Class System and Me (BBC2)

Too much of a good thing

Deborah Ross

Ghost Town
12A, Nationwide

The great debt deceit: how Gordon Brown cooked the nation’s books

Fraser Nelson and Peter Hoskin

Amid global financial turmoil, and on the eve of Labour’s conference, Fraser Nelson and Peter Hoskin reveal the true extent of the nation’s debt — equivalent to £26,100 for each British household — and Brown’s scandalous manipulation of the Private Finance Initiative

Family business

Andrew Lambirth

Painting Family: The De Brays, Master Painters of 17th Century Holland
Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 5 October

Cecil Collins — A Centenary Exhibition
Monnow Valley Arts Centre, Middle Hunt House, Walterstone, Nr Abergavenny, Herefordshire, until 14 September