It’s three in the morning and a BBC executive is home in bed. Suddenly he wakes up, sweating. ‘What is it, darling?’ asks his solicitous wife. ‘I had a nightmare,’ he replies; ‘I dreamed that one of our viewers was bored. Bored! Just for a moment, but, my God…’ It’s the only explanation for some
I have always been reticent about recommending gardening books for anyone short of something to read on holiday. After all, gardening books are often heavy and unwieldy, their appearance is not improved by contact with sand or sangria, and they make you terribly homesick for your own garden. But, since reading Keith Simpson’s suggested summer
L’Incoronazione di Poppea The Proms Glyndebourne’s visits to the Proms are usually highly successful, which can seem odd considering that the home auditorium is so comparatively intimate, not to mention comfortable and air-conditioned, with fantastically good acoustics; while the Albert Hall is celebrated for its large-scale lack of any of those qualities. And Monteverdi’s last
It’s a topsy-turvy world at the moment, with New Labour tearing each other apart like Old Tories, and brothers Will and Ed transmogrifying into each other on The Archers. Even Radios Two and Four have been caught up in this changing-character business, with programmes you’d normally expect to find on Four’s schedule popping up on
Vilhelm Hammershoi: the Poetry of Silence Royal Academy, until 7 September The poet Rilke cautioned that ‘Hammershoi is not one of those about whom one must speak quickly. His work is long and slow…’ It is certainly muted, being composed mostly in shades of oatmeal and grey. Interiors and the fall of light were favourite
National Ballet of China: Swan Lake Royal Opera House My first article for The Spectator was a slightly long-winded analysis of the state of Swan Lake on the eve of the ballet’s centenary. It followed a far more pedantic four-part essay in the specialist magazine Dancing Times, of which the late Frank Johnson, my first
Her Naked Skin Olivier Elaine Stritch At Liberty Shaw In 2004 Rebecca Lenkiewicz got the black spot from the Critics’ Circle. Sorry, I mean she was voted ‘most promising playwright’. Less a gong, more a millstone. Praising writers for what they’ve done is fine. Praising them for what they may do in future is like
Elegy 15, London and Key Cities Elegy is about an ageing professor (Ben Kingsley) and a beautiful young woman (Penelope Cruz), and it is based on the Philip Roth novel The Dying Animal, which, in turn, takes its title from Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’, in which the poet describes his soul as ‘sick with desire/and
Mrs Spencer and I are just back from a few days in Tuscany where I was bullied into as punishing a round of culture-vulturing as I have ever endured. The temperature may have been just a degree or two short of 100°F in Florence, but a small matter like heat exhaustion wasn’t going to stop
Hadrian: Empire and Conflict The British Museum, until 26 October Sponsored by BP After last week’s Hadrian supplement in The Spectator, readers will be well-informed about this prince of emperors, so I will confine my remarks to a personal response to the exhibition. I must say immediately that it looks very impressive and that Sir
Mikhailovsky Ballet London Coliseum It is somewhat refreshing that the 2008 summer ballet season in London is not monopolised by either the Bolshoi or the Kirov/Mariinsky ballet companies as it has been for the past few years. The presence of two rarely seen formations, such as the Mikhailovsky Ballet and the National Ballet of China,
La Gioconda; Pulcinella; Iolanta Opera Holland Park On a hot fine evening in London there can’t be anywhere more delightful for an opera-lover than Opera Holland Park, which is now so comfortable, and has such high standards of performance, that to see a rarely performed work there is in all respects at least as enjoyable
The Female of the Species Vaudeville Hangover Square Finborough The Frontline Shakespeare’s Globe A first-class Aussie bitch-fight has erupted over a new West End comedy. Joanna Murray-Smith’s satire opens with a famous feminist author, Margot Mason, being held at gunpoint by a deluded fan and forced to explain the contradictions in her work. Margot Mason
The X-Files: I Want to Believe 15, Nationwide OK, straight to the point, because we are busy people, right? And when we are not busy we are pretending to be busy, right? So, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, worth your time? No. As it is, it’s 104 minutes that I won’t be getting back.
Marcus Berkmann on Travis Elborough’s nostalgia for LP records There’s a rather wonderful new book out by a man named Travis Elborough, which sounds a bit like one of those dead Dorset villages where every second house is a holiday rental. Mr Elborough’s previous book was a great thundering roar of nostalgia for the Routemaster bus,
Early mornings on Four have seen a miraculous appearance in the past fortnight with the emergence of the Evan and Nick Show. Not for years has there been a genuine double act on the Today programme; not since Brian Redhead and John Timpson in the 1980s when the Queen tuned in at ten past seven
A three-part series called Expedition Guyana was hurriedly retitled Lost Land of the Jaguar (BBC1, Wednesday) possibly in the hopes that viewers might think it was a spin-off from Top Gear, more likely because a BBC suit suddenly realised that the name ‘Guyana’ wouldn’t pull in viewers. No doubt someone else wanted to call it
One had confidently anticipated (‘The sex is better than ever!’ he burbled in excited undertone when I last met him a few years ago at a York University concert) that Wilfrid Mellers would make his centenary. His death this May at only 94 doesn’t sadden, however, so much as joyfully recall the wacky life force
Zorro Garrick The Tailor and Ansty Old Red Lion Is Zorro any good? Forget the show for a second, look at the marketing. The stars are English, the story is American and the music, by the Gypsy Kings, is French with a strong Spanish flavour. That’s half the Western hemisphere covered. Nice work, everyone. Things
Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging 12A, Nationwide Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is a teen movie as may be rather obvious from the title — come on, it was hardly going to explore the terrible reality of Bosnia’s post-war traumas; get a grip — and we are all for teen movies, aren’t we? A teen