The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
If you’re in the least bit squeamish you’d better stop reading now. What follows is not for those who blanch at Casualty and come over all faint at the sight of blood. I’m told it’s a first for radio — following an operation in real time and going right inside the experience. It began at
Monday saw the return of possibly the weirdest TV series in living memory. Imagine a parallel universe in which Are You Being Served? had starred Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Janet Suzman, and you might get some idea of what ITV’s Vicious is like. Alternatively, I suppose, you could just watch the thing and realise
‘I can’t tell you what a thrill it is to get this chance in life,’ said Christine McVie, as the opening jangle to ‘Everywhere’ rang out. Judging by their ecstatic reaction, the audience felt much the same way. Look, I’ll be honest. I’m not going to give you a dispassionately critical review of Fleetwood Mac,
In October 2011 anti-capitalist vagrants built an open-air squat outside St Paul’s within shrieking distance of London’s financial heart. The City thrummed all night with the dob-dob-dob of bongo recitals while the rebels held angry debates beneath their plastic canopies and declared the Square Mile knee-deep in ordure. To press the point they used nearby
Queen & County is John Boorman’s follow-up to his 1987 semi-autobiographical film Hope & Glory, although why a sequel now, after 28 years, I don’t know. (We’re not in regular contact.) I can only tell you that if you absolutely loved the first film, as I did — and still do — the news I’m
There’s been a clutch of middle-aged danseuses taking leave of life in one way or another recently. We’ve seen the abject (Mariinsky star Diana Vishneva’s solo show at the Coliseum) and the magnetic (Alessandra Ferri mournfully channelling Virginia Woolf at the Royal Ballet). A fortnight ago, the Paris Opéra’s aristocratic Aurélie Dupont retired from the
As Sepp Blatter has so affectingly remarked, the organisation he formerly headed needs evolution, not revolution. There is a consensus that this is also what David Pickard will bring to the Proms, when he takes over after this season. Of course, Pickard’s job is going to be more complex than Blatter’s ever was. The challenge
In eastern Congo years ago on a road logged into a hill I drove or was driven one evening to see pygmies who claimed they were being eaten. This was possible. I’d met a woman with my name who’d watched the fire on which her arm was cooked and then devoured. The pygmies turned out
In his Memoirs, Kingsley Amis includes a story about meeting Roald Dahl at a party in the 1970s. Dahl advises him to write a children’s book — ‘That’s where the money is’ — and brushes aside his objection that he doesn’t think it would be any good. ‘Never mind, the little bastards’d swallow it,’ he
Yesterday was a strange day on Twitter. For most of it, a living poet was trending. Unfortunately for Craig Raine, the poet in question, he was trending because a poem of his entitled ‘Gatwick’ had appeared in the LRB and Twitter didn’t like it. Most comments ranged from amused contempt to, well, just plain old
Well, as a mere PR exercise, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, awarded last night, has done really well, what with the American woman from Diageo (owner of Baileys) causing Ian Hislop to fall asleep while standing up during her speech. I haven’t a clue whether Ali Smith’s book, How To Be Both, about sexuality-shifting,
‘All my life, always and in every way, I shall have one objective: the good of Hungary and the Hungarian nation.’ Ask any musician for a one-sentence summary of Béla Bartók (1881–1945) and they will probably tell you that he is Hungary’s national composer — a musical modernist who passionately championed his nation’s folk music
‘It is the task of a Patton or a Napoleon to persuade soldiers that bits of ribbon are intrinsically valuable. The historian’s job, in part, is to spot contradictions and unravel obfuscations, and the history of the VC is steeped in both.’ To this job of de-obfuscating, Gary Mead, former journalist and military historian, might
Despite the offer of joy proposed in the subtitle, this is a deeply troubling book by one of Britain’s foremost journalists on the politics of nature. Michael McCarthy was the Independent’s environmental editor for 15 years, and his new work is really a summation of a career spent pondering the impacts of humankind on the
The Arabs invaded Sicily in the ninth century, leaving behind mosques and pink-domed cupolas. In the Sicilian capital of Palermo, Arab rule was generally tolerant, its dolce far niente evocative of sultans, minarets, concubines and other jasmine-scented delights. Walking round Palermo today, however, one is assailed by less lovely smells. Parts of the city remain
Finders Keepers is a sort-of sequel to last year’s Mr Mercedes, Stephen King’s first foray into what he called ‘hard-boiled detective fiction’. The new book is not so much hard-boiled as slowly poached, Heston Blumenthal style, in a sous-vide water oven, then finished on a violently hot grill. King has the popular novelist’s gifts in
It is almost a century since the Michelin brothers had the brainwave of supplementing their motorists’ guide with information about fine-dining establishments. Their star-rating system had become a mainstay of lifestyle reviews long before the Internet came along. In the digital age, this work has been comprehensively crowd-sourced: the immense success of review sites such
With a career of more than 60 years so far, Frank Auerbach is undoubtedly one of the big beasts of the British art world. His personal reticence, however, and the condensed, impacted idiom of his painting have contributed to his enigmatic, somewhat opaque reputation. Catherine Lampert, who has sat regularly and patiently for him since
Readers who have put in some time on the railways may remember the neat, brush-painted graffiti that appeared in 1974 on a wall facing the line just outside Paddington station: FAR AWAY IS CLOSE AT HAND IN IMAGES OF ELSEWHERE. Not until Banksy took up his spraycan did a piece of London graffiti make such
I must be an idiot for pointing out the failings of a novel that’s so screamingly, self-denouncingly about failure. Steve Toltz’s Quicksand is a nutty, occasionally hilarious, flaccid carrier bag of a comic romp, all dazzling one-liners and no comic paydirt. Like his debut novel, A Fraction of the Whole (about a misfit philosopher and
This is a thriller, a novel of betrayal and separation, and a reverie on death and grieving. The only key fact I can provide without giving away the plot is that Caroline, the film-making wife of Michael, the novel’s main protagonist, is killed in the badlands of Pakistan by a drone controlled from a facility
Few monarchs could become novelists. They wouldn’t be able to develop the practice, or possess the necessary temperament. No monarch could sit in the corner of a room observing, or walk the streets unnoticed. They don’t have much of a chance of a long morning working quietly, without interruption, or of seeing what ordinary people
Can you ballet-dance to words? How can choreography make any seriously worthwhile addition to a piece of music like Mahler’s vocal symphony Das Lied von der Erde? Kenneth MacMillan’s 1965 ballet Song of the Earth, currently on at Covent Garden, is frequently hailed as a masterpiece, but just as often you read comments by people
I don’t know much about poetry, but I know this: whoever Craig Raine’s poem is about, she will be chuffed. When you are 22, you are, probably, nobody. Not many 22 year olds are somebody. So to be immortalised in a poem that’s been published in the LRB will be pleasing. It may even be the defining
Alan Bennett’s Lady in the Van tells the story of a homeless woman called Miss Shepherd who moved her van into the playwright’s drive temporarily and ended up staying there for 15 years. Speaking about the film adaptation, which stars Maggie Smith, at Hay, Bennett claimed that Miss Shepherd would not be given the same welcome by
The poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s failure to pen a poem commemorating the birth of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge prompted us to invite you to do it instead. You stepped into the breach with gusto: sonnets, odes and haikus poured in. The entry was diverse, full of charm and a pleasure to judge. I was
On 1 July, at a swanky party at Tate Modern, one of Britain’s museums will bank a cheque for £100,000, as the Art Fund announces this year’s Museum of the Year. Sure, the money will come in handy. Sure, the publicity will be useful. But this posh bunfight can’t disguise a growing sense that museums
At the Turner Prize dinner of 2003, as the winner, Grayson Perry, took a photo call with his family wearing a girlish dress and huge bow in his hair, a German contemporary artist who was sitting at the same table leant over and hissed in my ear, ‘Only in England!’ He got it right in
It has been a while since the BBC really pushed the boat out on the epic history documentary front. Perhaps to make amends it is treating us to possibly the most historian-studded, blue-screen-special-effects-enhanced, rare-documentastic, no-hyperbole-knowingly-under-employed series ever shown on television. Armada: 12 Days to Save England (Sundays, BBC2). Having clearly spent a lot of money