The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
If there is one underlying source from which all our other societal problems stem, it is surely this: we no longer know who we are or how we got here. Worse, we mistakenly believe our situation to be inevitable, presuming that we have arrived in this modern liberal state through something like gravity. At the
I first mistook David Gilbert’s second novel for the sort of corduroy-sleeved family saga at which American writers excel. The main character, Dyer, is an elderly author gathering his sons about him in Manhattan after the funeral of a boyhood friend, Charles. There’s Richard, a Hollywood screen hack whose teenage journal Dyer lifted for a
The actor David Niven was once badgered by the American columnist William F. Buckley to introduce him to Marc Chagall, a neighbour of Niven’s in Switzerland. Buckley, a keen amateur painter, wanted to know what Chagall thought of his work. With grave misgivings, Niven agreed to set up a meeting. Chagall in silence gazed at
When James Whistler was two years old, he was asked why he’d disappeared from company and hidden under a table. ‘I’s drawrin,’ he replied. He started as he meant to go on. Daniel E. Sutherland’s well-appointed new biography of the American-born painter — whom Henry James described as a ‘queer little Londonised Southerner’ — keeps
Half-term again, so naturally all my TV viewing plans have gone out of the window. In some households — my bearded Victorian brother Dick’s, for example — parents still cleave to the old-fashioned values whereby a sofa-blocking child in front of the TV is instantly ejected should its father or mother wish to watch something
What do you say to an arts graduate? Hamburger and fries, please. It’s an old joke but one that still rings true as students consider the value of a university education. A new survey from the graduate recruitment site Totaljobs.com today suggests that 40 per cent of graduates are still looking for work six months
Every time I hear that song ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll’ played on the radio, I think, Lord, how I miss Ian Dury. Then I wish they’d play something other than that plodder, especially when there are so many great songs of his to choose from. Some people knew all the words to
Discoveries: Art, Science and Exploration at Two Temple Place (until 27 April) is like a giant cabinet of curiosities. Maps, gizmos and memorabilia are spread across two floors of this glorious high-Victorian building on the Embankment. There are drawings from doomed polar expeditions, bones and teeth of fish from the Woodwardian Collection (see above), early
So long, Scandinavia. Bonjour, Benelux! BBC4, your subtitle-friendly channel, has filled the hole left by Nordic-noir The Bridge with Belgian crime drama Salamander (Saturday). At first, I thought this might involve a series of murder mysteries set in Flemish country houses, all solved by a dapper English detective called Horace Parrot. Not to be. Salamander
You know that old quip ‘I’m not just a pretty face’? I always thought it was meant to be said tongue-in-cheek, with an undertone of self-deprecation. Surely it’s not for those literal instances when a really beautiful person does something really, really smart. It’s for when those of us on the middle-to-lower rungs of the
It appears that J.S. Bach’s music is to theatre-dance what whipped cream is to chocolate. Masterworks such as Trisha Brown’s MO, George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco and a plethora of less-known, though equally acclaimed compositions owe a great deal to the giant of baroque music. Wayne McGregor is the most recent addition to this illustrious roster
Last seen clambering over the MDF wheelchair ramps of Laurent Pelly’s Royal Opera House production of Jules Massenet’s opéra comique, Manon the minx, the ‘sphinx étonnant’ of Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, reappears in two guises as part of Welsh National Opera’s Fallen Women season; as the
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–64) was, I must admit, unknown to me until I visited this show, the only Castiglione I was properly aware of being the one who wrote The Book of the Courtier published in 1528; clearly not the same man. The artist Castiglione was a tempestuous character, always losing his temper and getting
Sochi 2014 is the least wintry Winter Olympics ever. Yes, there’s a bit of downhill shimmying going on in the slalom. And a few figure skaters are pirouetting around the rink. Midair daredevils, with their feet lashed to planks of bendy plastic, are performing spectacular twirls and somersaults and crashes. And there are speed freaks
I love a good hymn, so long as I’m not expected to sing it. Lusty declarations of faith sound ridiculous coming out of my mouth and embarrass the hell out of me, so I pretend that I’ve forgotten to pick up a hymnbook on my way in. If someone shoots me an accusatory glance, then
The symbol engraved on Augustus’ signet ring was a sphinx. Julian the Apostate described him as ‘a chameleon’. He seized power declaring himself the saviour of the Roman Republic, but in the process abolished it. He ruled as an autocrat but maintained the fiction that he was no more than the Republic’s First Citizen —
‘Prizes are for boys,’ said Charles Ives, the American composer, upon receiving the Pulitzer in 1947, ‘and I’ve grown up now.’ He was using humour to make a serious point, but it would be lost on many people today. Never has there been a lusher time for self-congratulation; when all, as in Alice in Wonderland,
He was there again in the small hours: not this time in a dream, but in a dream of dreaming. Even so the two of us looked aside, stuck for something to discuss that was not a matter of life and death, so we fell back on football and the elections. Then suddenly he started
Isabel Allende is not an author one usually associates with the thrillers about serial killers. Ripper, however, lives up to its title. It’s the name of an online game, set in Jack the Ripper’s London. Six players — five teenagers and an elderly man — inhabit their personas with fanatical fervour. They switch their forensic
About 30 pages in and unable to find my bearings, I flipped to the end of this novel — well, not the actual end, to the acknowledgements (always fascinating) and after them a very handy ‘Q & A with Nathan Filer’. And there I found the key I needed. As part of a creative writing
When John Buchan was appointed Governor General of Canada in 1935, the country was deep in depression, the western provinces a dustbowl and a quarter of a million people on public relief, while the prospect of war in Europe threatened great stresses in a newly independent country and its relations with Britain. Many or even
There are writers whose prose style is so fluid, so easy, the reader feels as though he has been taken by the hand and is being gently led down a path by a guide who can be trusted to point out interesting landmarks, allow the odd meander, but always keep firmly on course. Mark Gevisser,
What is the origin of left and right in politics? The traditional answer is that these ideas derive from the French National Assembly after 1789, in which supporters of the King sat on one side and those of the revolution on the other. Yuval Levin in The Great Debate, however, argues not for seating but
On 28 August 2005 — Sheri Fink’s Day One — Hurricane Katrina reached New Orleans. The National Weather Service warned that ‘human suffering will be incrdible by modern standards’. Fink’s enormous book chronicles that suffering as experienced inside the Memorial Medical Centre, one of the city’s biggest hospitals. Traditionally, staff had sheltered from hurricanes in
Modern Architecture, capitalised thus, is now securely and uncontroversially compartmentalised into art history, its bombast muted, its hard-edge revolutions blurred by debased familiarity. You have been to Catford? You have seen a heroic vision compromised. Modern Architecture is no more threatening than abstract art, although the Swiss-French Le Corbusier retains a heady whiff of the
‘King of Iraq’ has an odd ring even to those who know that Iraq was called Mesopotamia and was part of the Ottoman empire before falling into and out of the clutches of the British. Many people, including Iraqis, seem unaware that it was a monarchy until 1958. Some 45 years after its overthrow, members
‘Brown is very good — no Cameron. David Cameron no good,’ he said. Just in case we weren’t sure what he meant, he repeated, ‘Brown I like. Labour government I like. I like the Brown. I like the Tony Blairs. David Cameron no good.’ It was such an odd thing, to hear praise for Gordon
I apologise for writing a blogpost about a tweet, which can look a bit like over-analysis, but I was intrigued by a couple of things that writer Graham Linehan wrote last week. Writers tend to the left because writers tend to have compassion. The nasty party has none so the BBC will never be just
In recent years contemporary art and regeneration have gone hand in hand. Works such as Antony Gormley’s ‘Angel of the North’ have been visible and celebrated examples of regeneration. So when, last year, Southwark Council decided to sell Elephant and Castle’s seemingly unloved Heygate Estate (above) to Lend Lease for development into new homes, it
