Arts Reviews

When Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies of the Spring was published in 1923, a post-first world war mass wishful belief in fairies was at its height in Britain. Just over two years previously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writing in the 1920 Christmas issue of the Strand Magazine, had stated that the ‘Cottingley Fairies’ (tiny winged figures visible in photographs taken near Bradford by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths) were almost certainly genuine and were clear evidence of the existence of psychic phenomena. Barker remained unmarried, and lived a quiet life of flowers and innocence The public – 21 years on from the birth of Peter Pan – were hungrier than

For artists lacking any obvious feel for the style, ‘going country’, similar to mainstream white artists dabbling in reggae in the 1970s following the breakthrough of Bob Marley, tends to elicit the sour whiff of a morning after the last chance saloon. Particularly at a time when a slick multi-hyphenate brand of country music is the pop trend du jour, carpetbagging and bandwagonism abounds. The lyrics on Look Up are elementary to the point of banality, which is as it should be Ringo Starr needn’t worry. Starr is the cowboy Beatle. He has loved this music from a young age, which is a long time. The Beatles wisely facilitated his

American Primeval should really be called Two Incredibly Annoying Women In The Wild West. Yes, the first title is more clickbaity, whetting the prurient viewer’s appetite for the savage, primitive violence that splatters over every other scene. But the second is more accurate. Not since Lily Dale in Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire have I rooted so fervently for the protagonist to meet a sticky end as I have with this series’ two feisty heroines. The Wild West depicted in American Primeval is grotesquely, mindlessly violent One, Sara Rowell (Betty Gilpin), is a mother on the run from the law. There’s a bounty on her head because she killed someone (who

The Natural History Museum is one of the most beautiful buildings in London, but its gardens have long been a bit boring – just a pavement on the way in to Alfred Waterhouse’s ornate ‘cathedral to nature’. Most people noticed them solely when the ice rink appeared at Christmas. There was a wildlife garden in one corner that only real enthusiasts (like me) bothered to visit. Where else in London could you walk three billion years along pavements this good? With this enormous overhaul of the site, that’s all changed. The scale of the Evolution Garden, designed by landscape architects J&L Gibbons and architects Feilden Fowles, is enormous, both in

There must have been a time when slow-burn psychological thrillers didn’t start with a scene of high drama followed by a caption that reads ‘Three months earlier’ – but if so, it’s getting hard to remember it. The latest programme to deploy the tactic was Playing Nice, which began with James Norton running towards the sea screaming ‘Theo!’ as a child’s body bobbed, face-down, in the waves. He was next seen, post-caption, laughing with his pre-school son in various picturesque Cornish locations while using the word ‘buddy’ a lot. Not to be outdone in the great-parent stakes, his wife also piled on the cuddles for little Theo. Before long, Miles

Don Bradman, the greatest cricketer of all time, was once asked if he reckoned he could have maintained his batting average of 99.94 against the fearsome West Indian bowling attack of the time. Oh no, he said. Not a chance. He’d probably be hitting in the 50s, like the very best batsmen of the time. But then again, he added, he was in his late 60s so it was unrealistic to expect better. Seeing the Stones is the only thing that compares to the human-jukebox effect of McCartney live That’s the position Paul McCartney occupies in the world of pop. No, at 82 years old he is not going to