The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Markus Dohle, Chief Executive of Random House, must have had a long hard think about what a booklover could possibly treasure more than a Kindle. The answer is, of course, a Penguin. Everyone loves Penguin. Their paperback covers have become such a design cult that people flock to buy not just their books, but also
The rainforests must be jumping for joy these days. Which is ironic, as they’ve largely got Amazon to thank for it. As the e-book continues its rise, there’ll be less and less demand from publishers for that horrible, immoral, eco-balance-wrecking stuff called ‘paper’. But before the trees get too complacent, they should remember that there’s
Ever since Sergeant Cuff appeared in The Moonstone in 1868, we English have loved our detectives. Moody Scandinavian fiction might come and go, but Peter Wimsey, Poirot, Marple and of course Sherlock Holmes continue to delight us. In Simon Serailler, Susan Hill has created a detective that ranks alongside all these greats. Like Cuff, he
The summer exhibition at the Royal Academy, with its overstuffed galleries and motley collection of overblown portraits, twee still lifes and garish landscapes has become an event where you go to be seen rather than to see; it’s less about the art than the experience. But the first-ever public show of paintings, sculpture, architectural drawings
After wading through 646 pages of narcissistic gush and breathtaking vulgarity in the accents of Dr Kissinger and Dr Strangelove, I am consoled by the thought that the ordeal has not been entirely a waste of effort. Frequently able to put the book down, yet obliged every time but one to lift it up again,
Cometh the hour, cometh the many men (and women). The 2012 centenary of Captain Scott’s death inspired a series of heroic forays into print: glory-hungry (or just plain hungry) authors questing for something new to say about this much-described event. Next year is the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest, and so we
The wartime code-breaking successes of Bletchley Park are deservedly well known. The story of how they decrypted German and Japanese codes, most famously the Enigma, has been the subject of histories, novels and films, so much so that Bletchley is glamour. Much less well known, however, and much less glamorous — rarely even thought about
Being sent to finishing school in Bavaria in 1936 was a dream for some English girls: there were winter sports and sachertorte, opera and sausages, and troupes of handsome Nazis in shorts. In Rachel Johnson’s new book, Daphne Linden and Betsy Barton-Hill, 18-year-old beauties who’ve never properly met any boys, find themselves at large in
Two women are the only heroes of this book. One is Princess Margaret, whom the author points out was far more instrumental in the early years of Colin Tennant’s ramshackle creation of Mustique than merely lending it her unparalleled presence. Quite apart from insisting, after Tennant had fallen out with a slew of architects, that
I like Dawn French when she is playing a sinister nurse much more than when she’s a jolly vicar. As her new novel, Oh Dear Silvia (Michael Joseph, £18.99) is set in a hospital, her darker side is gloriously indulged. We are at the bedside of the comatose Silvia, who has fallen off a balcony.
It’s odd that this book should be about a cleaner, because it exactly conjures up the emotions I felt when I worked as a cleaning lady many years ago. Contemplating the grease-encrusted kitchen floor I was about to scrub, I’d cry aloud: ‘How long must I perform this thankless, gruelling task? Why me?’ These agonised
On his first day at boarding school in Kenya in the early 1950s, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o stood to attention as the Union Jack was raised on the school flagpole. Afterwards the boys sang Psalm 51 which contains the line, ‘Wash me Redeemer and I shall be whiter than snow.’ Then came a tour of the
Was a nation ever so beset by calamity as Poland? During the second world war, Polish cities were bombed, fought over hand-to-hand and crushingly shelled. Beyond their ideological differences, Hitler and Stalin were united in a determination to destroy the country. Without the Nazi-Soviet ‘friendship’ treaty of 1939, Hitler would not have been able to
The Quest for Corvo started something rather peculiar in biography. A.J.A. Symons’s 1934 classic — described as ‘an experiment’ — set out the biographer’s search for his subject, and not just the results. This was justified in the case of an elusive and unusual figure like the ‘Baron’ Corvo. Nowadays, many biographies are written like
To the Americas this week, and first to the land of the free and the home of the brave: Gay to Straight (Monday, BBC3) examined the practice of ‘gay conversion therapy’; Unreported World (Friday, Channel 4) investigated the political power of unregulated talk radio; and Inventing the Indians (Sunday, BBC4) explored the appropriation of the
Judy Finnigan tells us which Dane she’d take on holiday, which book she found in her mother’s bedside drawer and which book had better be on Richard Madeley’s reading list. Eloise by Judy Finnigan is published by Sphere. She tweets @judyfinnigan. 1). What are you reading at the moment? I’m currently re-reading American Wife, by
During the Second World War both Germans and Allies routinely shot civilians in reprisal for attacks on their armed forces. One shudders to think that a ratio could even be set at which such killings could be considered legitimate. In 1941 Hitler set the bar at 100 civilians per soldier. How high is too high?
I was on a date once in Atlanta, Georgia. We decided on the theatre and there was only one show playing, The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder. After a night time drive under the arms of blue mossed oaks we made it to Emory University and took our seats and the curtain rose
Mike McCormack published his first book of short stories Getting it in the Head in 1996. The debut earned him the Rooney Prize for Literature, and was chosen as a New York Times notable book of the year in 1998. McCormack has published two novels: Crowe’s Requiem, and Notes From a Coma, which was shortlisted
Hilary Mantel recently won her second Booker Prize, having clinched two Bookers in a row, the latest for the second book of a planned trilogy – surely a first. As we never tire of mentioning here at the Spectator, Hilary was the inaugural winner of our Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize, back in 1987. Her stunning
One departs and three more come charging in. It’s always rush-hour for Chekhov in the capital. As the Young Vic’s production of Three Sisters is drawing to a close, the Vaudeville is preparing to host a star-studded version of Uncle Vanya. Up the road, at the Novello, another Uncle Vanya is about to arrive from
Every so often, about once a decade, the work of Mark Gertler (1891–1939) is rediscovered and exhibited. I remember seeing excellent shows of his work at the Ben Uri Art Gallery in 1982 and in 2002, and at Camden Arts Centre in 1992. Each time a well-selected body of his paintings is gathered together, we
When, in 1940, Walt Disney released Fantasia, his radical arrangement of animations set to classical music, he fancied that he might add new segments to it every few years so that it could grow with its audience. Alas, it was not to be. The cost of installing the new ‘Fantasound’ technology in cinemas, plus a
It seems an astonishing statistic but 99.6 per cent of radio is broadcast live, delivered straight from the studio mike to your personal loudspeaker: 99.6 per cent! Compared with TV, which must be at least 80 per cent recorded, this is an extraordinary indicator of how radio is the on-message medium right now, able to
Which is the worse crime, would you say: eavesdropping on celebrities’ answerphones? Or hosting and covering up for a ruthless predatory paedophile ring — led by your biggest, most heavily promoted star — over a period of four decades? Mm, me too. In fact, I’d say the Savile affair is as close as we’ll ever
Covent Garden, 1833. Edmund Kean, the greatest tragedian of his age, has collapsed while playing the title role in Othello at the Theatre Royal. His son, Charles, is all set to take over and has just prised the lid off a trusty tin of boot polish ready to smear dark grease all over his peachy
About two of the operas I saw in Leeds this week there is a serious question as to whether or not they are comedies. The third, Gounod’s Faust, is clearly not meant to be; I’ll be writing about it next week. The new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by Alessandro Talevi is jokey and fast
Do you have a mysterious and slightly embarrassing musical blind spot? One of mine is for Dvorák, whom I don’t need to be told is a great composer. Maybe it was overexposure to the New World Symphony as a child; or maybe I’m unreasonably irritated by his Czech bounciness, just as some people write off
A degree in maths might have helped. ‘Correction of the Day,’ wind charts, slide-rules, log tables, maps of the terrain, OP reports — all combined (again and again) to make four 25-pounders point the right way. B-Troop, ‘officer material,’ we learned our parts: don’t get VD; take care when choosing your friends; prefer gin and