Fifty years ago it was not possible to bid at auction via the telephone — that first historic telephone bid was made for a Monet at Christie’s in 1967. Now the auction house’s Great Rooms, and indeed every other international saleroom, is lined by banks of telephones and digital screens, and absentee clients may also
Britain’s country houses were constantly in the news a generation ago. In 1974 The Destruction of the Country House, an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum curated by Roy Strong, Marcus Binney and John Harris, offered a dismal chronicle of the houses that had disappeared in the past century. It proclaimed their importance to
Bicycles can be powerful images in cinema. Like the 1948 masterpiece Ladri di Biciclette, Wadjda, the first film ever to be filmed in Saudi Arabia, is about a child and a bike. But whereas two wheels in Vittorio De Sica’s brutally neorealist film represented the shackles of poverty, here they embody freedom. Or at least
We don’t do burlesque here. We do bawdy, Benny Hill, end-of-pier prurience instead. Montmartre may have the Moulin Rouge, but the closest we get to saucy is John Major not ‘on’ Edwina Currie — titter — but on our tradition of music hall. As a nation we can-cannot do the can-can. So I found it
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain are performing at the Albert Hall: playing their tiny instruments in a very big space. There must be 5,000 people here, but the orchestra’s friendly jokes, the modesty of the ukulele sound and the familiarity of the audience make the concert seem intimate. The Ukes have been going for
London was an industrial city until remarkably recently. It seems extraordinary now, but Bankside Power Station was built in 1947, by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, to burn oil right on the banks of the Thames, opposite St Paul’s. What’s more, Gilbert Scott’s other great power station, Battersea, built in 1929, is less than a mile
A display of drawings by 20th-century sculptors is a welcome event, and the multi-levelled, multi-functional Kings Place provides just the right ambience, the building echoing the concept and providing a satisfying mix of enjoyment, surprise and irritation. To stage Sculptors’ Drawings (until 12 October) has been a long-held ambition of Pangolin’s Rungwe Kingdon and he
Tragically, the number of ballet directors who can orchestrate good programmes and good openings is dwindling these days. Helgi Tómasson, of San Francisco Ballet, is one of the few who are still in the know, judging by the terrific bang with which his company opened last week in London. Divertimento No.15 might not be one
It’s a smallish dark room but, wow, what a lot of sparklers. There are more than 10,000 diamonds set in tiaras, crowns (Diamond Diadem, above), brooches, swords, earrings and necklaces, on display at Buckingham Palace in a special exhibition Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration (until 7 October). These stunning pieces were acquired by six monarchs over
What’s that in your pocket? Magic or art? The near ubiquitous iPhone may be rammed with very new technology, but it is a witness of very old, even mysterious, values. Few of us understand its inner workings, even as we indulge ourselves daily with its impressive powers to astonish. ‘My life,’ Daniel Harris wrote in
Not many peacocks could handle an 8,000-strong festival audience. But such is the gentle atmosphere of the annual End of the Road music festival — set in the historic Larmer Tree Gardens, north Dorset — that the resident peacocks get on just fine with their weekend visitors. Last weekend was the seventh outing of the
The Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s biggest and most prestigious architecture exhibition, struggles to know who it’s for — the professional architect or the interested public — and indeed why it exists at all. This is partly Venice’s fault. To spend one’s time looking at architectural models, drawings and, this year, photographs and film when
Where better to explore the history of the city than at its very heart? Guildhall Art Gallery, nestled between St Paul’s Cathedral and the Bank of England, is currently home (until 23 September) to Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker, a collection of artefacts from London’s Livery Companies, or guilds — an historic part of London’s identity.
The Peckham Peace Wall began life as a window: a long pane of shop glass in the front of Rye Lane’s newly refurbished branch of Poundland. During the riots last summer, the glass went, along with some of Poundland’s stock. The next morning, after the damage had been boarded up, a local theatre group covered
‘Our fate lies within ourselves. We just have to be brave enough to see it,’ says Princess Merida, the winsome, feisty heroine of Disney-Pixar’s latest animated romp Brave (PG, nationwide). ‘Why shouldn’t we choose our own fate?’ asks another character, chafing at the constraints imposed by family, duty and tradition. Why not, indeed? As Brave
In the beginning was the Edinburgh International Festival, a carefully curated exhibition of high culture. Then came the Fringe, in which every pub and church hall in the city became a venue for everything from student theatre to experimental dance. Now, it is mutating again — and for the better. The real arts story of
Stage hypnotists need the trust of their audience, but also a whiff of danger. So Derren Brown calls his show Svengali, though he is not really an evil puppetmaster but a gentle, coaxing, mostly ethical puppetmaster. That show, which opened for its first run at the end of 2010, is back for a short time
If the River of Music put you in the mood for stimulating sounds on the banks of the Thames, next week’s Meltdown at the Southbank Centre, also part of the London 2012 Festival, is well-timed. Meltdown’s later-than-usual slot should earn it a little reflected Olympic glory, though it’s hard to imagine anyone less suggestive of
The iTunes classical chart hasn’t been around very long, but for the time it has been available the number one slot has usually featured Pavarotti singing ‘Nessun dorma’. Nothing wrong with that, except that the chart was invented specifically to encourage the current classical music scene and give an impression of who was doing what
It took Ian Fleming just eight weeks to write his first James Bond novel but the legacy of his eponymous spy has been far less fleeting. Fifty years after 007 first made it on to the big screen in Dr No (see Sean Connery, above) a Barbican exhibition is celebrating with a stunning display of
