Here in London are two historical exhibitions which treat more of human identity, national and individual, than they do of pure painting. Each one showcases art, but in the wider context of the artefacts of a particular period. For a nation which loves to visit country houses (courtesy of that great institution, the National Trust),
Listing page content here The war on terror means little to a lot of people, but to the itinerant musician at an airport it means ever-increasing hassle, rough treatment and delay. In case you didn’t know, the Americans have just invented a new queue the traveller must stand in: in addition to being photographed and
Listing page content here Twenty years ago, Britain was gripped by an architectural battle of styles. The Lloyd’s building in the City opened, representing the hopes for a resurgence of modernism, while Quinlan Terry’s classical Richmond Riverside was beginning to emerge from scaffolding like a vision by Canaletto. Since 1986, a great deal has happened,
Listing page content here I don’t know quite what came over me during the screening of Confetti. I was well prepared: I had curled my lip and rolled my eyes at the daft poster on the Tube; I had sighed and shaken my head over the British obsession with weddings — and films about weddings;
Listing page content here Dance and eroticism have long gone hand in hand. For centuries, moving bodies have been regarded as arousing and dangerously tempting. Twenty-first-century adverts still draw upon that popular equation and delve more or less seriously into the intrinsic sensuality of dance, whether it be ballet, modern or even street dance. Yet
Listing page content here My sister and I never had pets as children, or rather we had them but they didn’t tend to last very long. Indeed, no sooner had some dumb animal entered the house than my mother seemed to be making plans to get rid of it. The raven itself was hoarse that
Listing page content here There can’t be many more tantalising prospects for an operatic composer than writing an opera about the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 and then conducting performances of it there. That is what Stephen Barlow has pulled off, the première and two subsequent performances taking place at the
Listing page content here Good and evil slug it out in Paradise Lost. Good triumphs, just about. So, too, in the Oxford Stage Company’s version of Milton’s epic, where flashes of brilliance overcome a few choppy patches. The staging is simple and sometimes powerful but the costumes are a poor blend of mediaeval pastiche and
Listing page content here Although I don’t buy it often, I’ve always liked the New Yorker magazine, not only for its good writing but also for the humour. The cartoons are consistently sharp and amusing and the owners have cleverly marketed them as greeting cards, as The Spectator did recently. The magazine has somehow survived
I greatly enjoyed The Impressionists (BBC1, Sunday) in spite of clunky lines such as ‘This is Paris, in 1862,’ and ‘Cézanne! Do you know everybody?’ There are the scenes where they are painting their actual paintings, when Rolf Harris seems to have been parachuted into an episode of ’Allo, ’Allo! There was an unconsciously funny
