The Scouting Book for Boys 15, Key Cities This week, I should probably have seen Old Dogs starring John Travolta and Robin Williams as ‘two best friends who have their lives turned upside down when they’re unexpectedly charged with the care of six-year-old twins’ but I saw the trailer on TV and couldn’t do it.
News that the archivist of the Booker Prize, Peter Straus, has discovered that in 1970 the prize was not awarded for technical reasons set me thinking about annual music prizes. This thinking was in no way discouraged by an aside, made by Matt Damon at the recent Oscar ceremony, to the effect that it would
Many years ago, when I decided to ‘become’ a novelist, I shipped myself off to a village in south-west France called St Jean de Fos for three months, banned myself from reading any novels in English (lest they corrupt my style) and became an obsessive maker of French dishes like cassoulet because my first book
It’s such an important book, the first great psychological novel, yet few people can with honesty claim to have read it, and even fewer to have read it all the way through, past the violent rape scene that takes place halfway through volume five. It’s such an important book, the first great psychological novel, yet
By the time you read this, I will either be taking Mrs Oakley out for a well-deserved dinner at Le Caprice or I will be carrying a sack of stones and a pair of leg-irons, looking for a deep river. The Cheltenham Festival will have come and gone, probably taking with it most of my
Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey National Gallery, until 23 May Just up the road from where I write is the dramatic ruin of Framlingham Castle, the historical seat of the Howard family and the Dukes of Norfolk. The castle was granted to Princess Mary by her half-brother King Edward VI, and she took
Michelangelo’s Dream Courtauld, until 16 May This is one of the series of exhibitions built around a single masterpiece from the Courtauld’s collection — in this case Michelangelo’s remarkable presentation drawing ‘The Dream’ — placed in an informative context of closely related loans. The Courtauld does it superbly: quietly stated, rigorously researched, laid out with
Tamerlano Royal Opera, in rep until 20 March Handel’s Tamerlano is rated extremely highly by the cognoscenti, indeed routinely listed as being among his two or three greatest operas. I have only seen it twice, once at Sadler’s Wells nine years ago in a production by Jonathan Miller, conducted by Trevor Pinnock, and now at
Private Lives Vaudeville, until 1 May Party Arts, until 13 March This isn’t right. This can’t be happening. She’s over 50. Quite a bit over. In fact, she’s 53 and she’s playing the 29-year-old heroine in one of the finest comedies in the repertoire. And she’s doing it in London. And she isn’t even English.
King Lear Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in rep until 26 August At the prospect of every fresh attempt on the summit that is King Lear, one’s heart begins to sink — the bleak, bleak vision, the convoluted subplottings of son against sibling and father, of sister against sister, the merciless length of the play. It seems
Hooray for the one-click purchase. Reading one of the music monthlies, I saw that the Buggles’s second album from 1981, Adventures in Modern Recording, had been released on CD, digitally remastered, with ten extra tracks I clearly had to hear. A mere week or so later, the package came through the letterbox, slightly battered but
Shutter Island 15, Nationwide The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 18, Nationwide. Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island is really rather outrageous. Thunder! Lightning! Crazies! Cliff drops! Creepy scientists! Nazis! It’s a madhouse thriller that plays like a wildly cranked-up B movie which, being Scorsese, must mean he intended it to play like a wildly cranked-up B
‘The BBC is a part of public space because the public themselves have put it there,’ suggests the BBC’s DG, Mark Thompson, at the beginning of the report which is recommending, among other things, that Radio 6 Music and the Asian Network be shut down. ‘The BBC is a part of public space because the
I am, I hope, still too young to watch daytime television, but conversation can be slow in the care home where I visit my parents every week. Having something bland wittering on in the corner is a help. In the middle of the afternoon we have antique shows. Endless antiques. Just as we are soon
Bond had no need for thought. He’d seen it as a concept in Detroit and Geneva in 2006. Now that it existed, he wanted it. He spoke once more, ‘Get it.’ Then added, very quietly, ‘Please.’ Bond was right to insist. When I first saw designer Marek Reichman’s concept Rapide in Geneva, I thought it
Henry Moore Tate Britain, until 8 August Even some of the greatest artists go in and out of fashion, though market forces are grimly determined (in the short term) that this should not be so. Death often brings a lull in interest, or conversely a revival. An artist who has been overrated may be for
Satyagraha English National Opera, in rep until 26 March When Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha was first put on by ENO in 2007, I found it intolerably tedious, to the point where I felt that if I didn’t leave the theatre I might start to scream. Yet I came across quite a few people, some of
Alice in Wonderland PG, Nationwide Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland is kind of a joy but it is not a fully-fledged joy, hence the ‘kind of’, in case you were wondering. Mixing live action with CGI, it is sensationally gorgeous to look at — beautiful! Ravishing! Dazzling! — and it does have its wonderfully inventive
My word, you Spectator readers are an education, and a delightfully idiosyncratic bunch to boot. To celebrate this 100th ‘Olden but golden’ column I invited you to send in your all-time top tens, and three dozen entries have arrived so far, some from as far afield as the US and Australia. In 2002, we confined
Ghosts Duchess, until 15 May Off the Endz Royal Court, until 13 March Ghosts is the most Ibsenite of all Ibsen’s plays. In a sub-Arctic backwater two pairs of lovers pursue doomed romances while outside it drizzles constantly. Oswald can’t marry his mother’s serving-girl because his brain is being attacked by syphilis. Meanwhile, Pastor Manders’s