What is a genius? We use the word frequently but surely, to guard its meaning, we should bestow it seldom. To me, a genius is a person whose gift contains an element of the inex- plicable, not to be accounted for by heredity, upbringing, background, exertions and talents, however noble. Thus, we can’t account for
Laura Gascoigne follows in the footsteps of the 18th-century Grand Tourist ‘I was much disappointed in seeing Rome,’ complained the English traveller Sarah Bentham in the 1790s. ‘The streets are narrow, dirty and filthy. Even the palaces are a mixture of dirt and finery and intermixed with wretched mean houses. The largest open spaces in
By Leafy Ways: Early Work by Ivor Abrahams Against Nature: The hybrid forms of modern sculpture Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, until 4 May The Henry Moore Institute is one of our foremost sculptural venues, a focus for study and scholarship, equipped with an impressive library and archive specialising in British sculpture. Opened in 1993 on
The Bucket List 12A, Nationwide As Rob Reiner should know better and Jack Nicholson should know better and Morgan Freeman should know better, what you have here is a film which has to make you ask: how come they didn’t? You’d think one, at least, would say somewhere along the line: ‘Thanks, but if it’s
Never have my asseverations in this column attracted so much attention as those about the Dean and Archbishop of Sydney. If anyone were to think that Anglicanism was a dead topic, they should visit Australia. One has only to scratch the surface and out pour the most passionate arguments, though not from the employees of
Uncle Vanya Rose Theatre, Kingston The Death of Margaret Thatcher Courtyard At last the Rose has burst into bloom in Kingston. Luckily I allowed myself twice the suggested 40 minutes to get there from Waterloo. It took me quarter of an hour to extract a ticket from the computerised machines, which have been brilliantly programmed
James son of James Barbican Three Short Works Royal Opera House James son of James Barbican Three Short Works Royal Opera House It is a pity that the definition ‘theatre dance’ is commonly used to indicate any choreographic activity that takes place on stage, for it could be much more effectively used to describe those
Salome Bridgewater Hall Peter Grimes Nottingham Die Zauberflöte Royal Opera House Salome Bridgewater Hall Peter Grimes Nottingham Die Zauberflöte Royal Opera House Does Richard Strauss’s Salome still have the power to shock, as the writers of programme notes like to claim? Not, anyway, in a concert performance, such as was given in the Bridgewater Hall
‘I think continually of those who were truly great,’ wrote Stephen Spender, which must have been awkward when he was trying to read a map, cook the lunch, or write that bloody awful poem about pylons. But I, too, have been thinking, if not continually, then at least often, about two great men, both dead,
In the past, television battle scenes consisted of half a dozen men in armour knocking seven bells out of each other. Then the camera angle switched and the same six men were still bashing the others, but from below. Next one of them fell (‘Aaaargh!’) and the other five kept on. It was not altogether
There was something ironic about a play entitled The Trial and Death of Socrates being broadcast on the weekend that our own great thinker, Rowan Williams, was undergoing what may turn out to be the biggest trial of his career. Maybe he tuned in on Sunday evening to Drama on 3 and heard Joss Ackland
I have waited several years for this moment — in fact, ever since the late 1990s upsurge in interest in gardening began to fade, the press stopped talking about it as the new sex, and the jeunesse d’orée turned their fickle gaze elsewhere. Now, as partygoers shade their hungover eyes from the glare of financial
