The Minotaur Royal Opera For the first time in the 12 years that I have been reviewing opera weekly, I have been to the first performance of a masterpiece. The Minotaur, so far as I can tell from one intense experience, has all of Harrison Birtwistle’s strengths and none of his weaknesses. He likes to
The last time Opus Dei was portrayed as a murderous, self-flagellating, power-hungry secret society of monstrous hypocrites was — you may remember — in The Da Vinci Code, first in the novel, then in the film starring Tom Hanks. Millions read the book, millions saw the film, millions decided that we were the personification of
Small Change Donmar War and Peace, I and II Hampstead Oh my God. Did that really happen? I knew nothing about Peter Gill’s 1976 play, Small Change, before arriving at the Donmar to see this revival under the author’s own direction. It’s a love letter, an immensely detailed and spectacularly superficial account of the working-class
Something so weird has happened to the way we live now that Radio Two has decided it needs to dedicate a week’s programming to Let’s Talk About Sex. It’s designed, says the billing in Radio Times, ‘to encourage parents to speak more freely to their children about sex and relationships’. But there’s already so much
Once Upon a Time in the North is not to be confused with The Book of Dust, the big book which Philip Pullman has been promising for some time in interviews about His Dark Materials trilogy and what happens next. It is, instead, a short, elegant, simple story about what happened between two of his
It’s startling to read about extremely recent news events in a book presented as a novel. In Born Yesterday, Gordon Burn uses the McCanns, the floods, the foiled terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow, Blair’s farewell and Brown’s hello as the meat of his narrative. Although this isn’t a conventional novel, in that the narrator
The subtitle is ‘The Erika and Klaus Mann Story’, and the shadow is that cast by their father, Thomas Mann, the greatest German novelist of the 20th century. Erika and Klaus were the oldest two of his six children, and, while it is fair to say they lived in his shadow, they were not obscured
The first 100 or so pages of this book almost made me give up, so saccharine is the description of the childhoods of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, with even a reference to the latter’s ‘dear diary’. I am glad I persisted. Mills and Boon duly evolves into Kraft-Ebbing. Carole Seymour-Jones may assert that
The Chariots of Fire moment that revealed Gordon’s 10p tax timebomb The abolition of the 10p starter rate of income tax in Gordon Brown’s last Budget has a special significance in recent Spectator history: coming only a month after our move from Doughty Street in Bloomsbury to Old Queen Street in Westminster, it was the
Sometimes the news isn’t terrible: A doctor caught with 14 ecstasy tablets at a music festival has been allowed to keep his licence to practise. A General Medical Council panel told Dr Fraser Gibb they were satisfied he only used drugs to enhance his life and not to “prop it up”. However, it found him
The latest PR Week scoop about what is going on in Downing Street has revived my suspicions about who is doing the leaking. The story says that Gordon Brown is obsessed with Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor who is now the Tory’s chief spinner, and blames him for his current troubles.
The Spectator 180th Anniversary blog has been launched. Visit it here. Fraser Nelson confronts the striking teachers, and charts how Labour has hurt the poor. James Forsyth questions the moral authority of the Brownites, and considers the revelation that an Israeli strike on Syria was targeted at a nuclear reactor. And Peter Hoskin observes the
Over at the 180th Anniversary blog, we’re asking which historic events you’d like to see The Spectator’s take on. Just head over there to post your suggestions. As part of the anniversary celebrations, we’ve also posted a recent photo of the current Spectator team. If you really want to know what we all look like, now’s your chance…
What is it with the BBC and Margaret Thatcher? Britain’s leading public-service broadcaster never seems to miss an opportunity to do her down, especially in its dramatic depictions, which regularly demean and disparage her and her record. Not content with having a library full of anti-Thatcher footage, the excellent First Post Daily website reports that
Perhaps, the oddest event of 2007 was the non-reaction to Israel’s strike on Syria. One would have thought that Israel bombing a target deep inside Syria would have sparked off a major international incident. But it did not. As The Spectator reported at the time the Israelis, the Syrians and the Americans all wanted to
In a pre-record for GMTV on Sunday, a Plaid Cymru MP – Adam Price – has said there is “no veto” on coalition with the Tories. That’s an understatement. The nationalists will be praying for an hung parliament so they (plus some Ulster MPs) can jump into bed with the Tories. The Welsh and Scottish
Another issue of PR Week, another scoop for David Singleton. Today, he’s used his Downing Street sources to reveal that Brown’s “obsessed” with the Tories’ press man, Andy Coulson. So obsessed, in fact, that our Prime Minister can talk about little else. Brown may try to convince us that he wakes up thinking only of how
If Labour does as badly as the polls suggest it will on May 1st, one of the few options left to Gordon Brown will be to reshuffle his cabinet. Today’s Mirror predicts that this will see Alan Johnson become the government front man and chief whip while Hoon moves to BER and John Hutton to
Matthew Norman’s article in the Independent today is among the liveliest, and most condemnatory, accounts of the Government’s 10p tax U-turn. The whole thing’s well worth reading, although I thought I’d pull out the last couple of paragraphs – if recent comments are anything to go by, they should chime with CoffeeHousers: “Perhaps with hindsight this
Um, whatever happened to PJ O’Rourke? Once upon a time he was funny, even deliciously so. Of course it’s harder for a humourist to shine when his side is in power and O’Rourke’s jaded sardonicism is a style especially ill-suited to team-play. Perhaps that explains his sadly drab, unconvincing piece in the latest issue of