In Version 2.0 of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith will have a ‘preferred customer’ gold card for Googlezon, the corporation that results from the merger of the internet giants Google and Amazon. Google has completed its mission to organise all the world’s words, images and sounds and make them easy to find; and, once
Any show that sets out to be definitive encourages brickbats and controversy. When Charles Baudelaire called in 1863 for a painter of modern life, he was seeking the kind of artist who would do justice to the realities of contemporary existence rather than escape them as was the habit of the French Salon painters of
Ever since he burst on the scene in the 1960s Michael Sandle RA has been the rogue elephant of British art. At Ludlow Castle, a perfect venue for work whose subject is war, both metaphorical and actual, his artistic power is irrefutable. This is a superb show. John Powis, who owns the castle, should be
There was a piece in the Telegraph last week claiming that nearly two thirds of people over the age of 50 are happier now than at any previous time in their lives. We know there are lies, damned lies and government surveys, and at first sight this seems to be one of the least persuasive
Dance: Transports Exceptionnels, Compagnie Beau Geste, Jubilee Gardens; Cast No Shadow, Sadler’s Wells Dance-making has come a long way since the days when a duet was the expected climatic bravura piece for principal dancers. Even before modern and post-modern challenges altered the traditional format of the classical pas de deux, 20th-century ballet-makers such as Mikhail
Theatre: Present Laughter, Lyttelton; Moonlight and Magnolias, Tricycle; Dealer’s Choice, Menier Perhaps it was all a joke. In 1939 Noël Coward wrote a play starring a vain, bullying, self-obsessed, misogynistic diva called Garry Essendine. Himself, that is, with his worst faults exaggerated. He duly took the role into the West End and everyone duly loved
Now, listen, and listen good, or I’ll come round and box your ears. Should anyone happen to say to you, ‘Shall we go see The Nanny Diaries tonight?’, you must answer, ‘No.’ There should be no need to embellish this. Just say ‘no’. It’s very simple. Practise it now. No, no, no, no, no. Should
As I sat contentedly watching the latest, and supposedly last, revival of Nicholas Hytner’s production of The Magic Flute last week at the Coliseum, I wondered why, when something is as serviceable and as flexible as that, it need ever be retired and replaced by another — which, to judge from recent experiences, especially ones
There is no end to the programmes about the land we live in: we have had portraits of Britain, the Britain we built, the coast of Britain, and journeys around Britain. There seems no aspect of the country that’s not been covered. The Beeb must be desperate. How about Underground Britain, Around Britain on a
The only good thing about being stuck in crawling traffic at 9 a.m. on Monday morning was that it gave me the rare chance to tune in to Andrew Marr’s Start the Week on Radio Four, and even better to listen to it full-on instead of with my attention half-drawn to a weekend’s worth of
