The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
To the French, Albion’s expertise in perfidy will come as no surprise. But centuries of warfare have given them time to learn. With their experience only dating back to 1914, the Germans clearly found it difficult to grasp during the second world war that nowhere is the truth more expertly and instinctively spun than in
The question of what artists actually get up to in their studios has always intrigued the rest of us — that mysterious alchemical process of transforming base materials into gold, or at least into something marketable in the present volatile art world. Today’s studio might as likely be a laptop as laboratory, factory, hangar or
If only there was an alternative ending to the Titanic story. We could use a change. ‘Phew, we almost hit that iceberg!’ Or, ‘Thank goodness the White Star Line made sure there were ample lifeboats for everyone on board!’ Or even, ‘So it’s true — this ship really is unsinkable, and tomorrow night we will
I wanted to find a YouTube clip of a classical British actor reading of Christ’s Passion from the KJV. There must be such a thing, but I can’t find it among the morass of American, Spanish and Pentecostal recordings. That seems to signify the growing irrelevance of Anglicanism and Englishness in this digital world. But,
In the fifth century BC Herodotus of Halicarnassus set out a history of hostilities between the Greeks and the Persians. For all his quirky non-sequiturs (Ethiopians’ skin is black, so must be their semen…) he fulfilled his not-so-modest objective to immortalize the deeds of Greeks and non-Greeks alike, in particular, the reason they warred against
Most of the time life is messy. But sometimes — just occasionally — it all comes together. I’d been reading Howards End. One of the classics I’d never got round to. Hadn’t even seen the film starring Emma Thompson, on account of it being a film starring Emma Thompson. By two-thirds of the way through
Marina Lewycka has broken her busy reading schedule to answer this week’s Shelf Life questions. She admits to a fascination with Biggles and Paddington Bear. Her latest book, Various Pets Alive and Dead, is published by Penguin. 1) What are you reading at the moment? Old Filth by Jane Gardam (almost finished — would have
The disappointment of second place at the Dionysiac festival might have been easier to bear had Sophocles known his Oedipus would eventually give credibility to a slew of neuroses and skew the literary canon forever. Even Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth would be lined up for a session on the couch. But he could never have imagined,
Acclaimed author Evgeny Morozov is in London promoting the new edition of his book, The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World. It argues that internet freedom is an illusion and that everyone’s freedom is at stake. It is timely, then, that his trip has coincided with the web surveillance row that has been shaking the coalition. Morozov
Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room gave Hilary Mantel and J.M. Coetzee some stern competition on the 2009 Booker shortlist. Mawer’s evocation of place stays long in the memory, but his crowning achievement was the description of the glass room itself — a minimalist house, built in the countryside above Prague, through which the savage history of 20th
Everyone remembers an inspiring teacher. The teacher who sticks in my mind was a bearded sage who loved Hardy and celebrated Winterval. I know in hindsight that he was a self-indulgent charlatan; but his wide-reading and enthusiasm were enthralling. That last quality made him a good teacher as well as a memorable one: it encouraged
I haven’t been much drawn to erotica or political allegory, but Chen Xiwo’s I Love my Mum changed that. Relaxed, in an open necked shirt and jeans, at a recent English PEN event in Bloomsbury, Xiwo looked the antithesis of a persecuted writer. He appeared with a range of other speakers, from exiled writers to
Elif Shafak, the most widely read novelist in Turkey, was in advocatory mood at Oxford Literary Festival last Saturday. Lamenting the demise of the kind of oral tradition former generations once extolled in Turkey, she illustrated some of the ways in which language in a written culture can be used to address barriers. Above all,
Ben Macintyre is back. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies is the last instalment in his trilogy about British espionage in World War Two, following the hugely successful Agent Zig-Zag and Operation Mincemeat. In Double Cross, Macintrye tells of how a cabal of eccentric double agents hoodwinked the Nazis into believing that the allied
As exhibitions in London’s public galleries become increasingly mobbed and unpleasant, it is heartening to report that the drive to take art to the provinces continues apace. New museums seem to be opening all over the country, from Wakefield to Margate, and although one may entertain doubts about their sustainability, their enhancement of our current
Kate Chisholm looks forward to The People’s Passion on Radio 4 which explores the role of the cathedral in a modern, secular world ‘We began by wanting to do something about cathedrals and the life that goes on within them,’ recalls Christine Morgan, head of religion and ethics at BBC Radio. That was about 18
‘Praising! That’s it!’ Rilke exclaims in one of his ecstatic Sonnets to Orpheus. It seems to be an unconditional injunction, but he hadn’t tried being an opera critic, and I’d like to see anyone even try plausibly to praise either of the two productions I saw this week. One was new and absolutely terrible, the
It’s back. And I can’t believe I missed it the first time. Live Theatre’s dramatisation of Chris Mullin’s diaries has returned to Soho for a lap of honour. Richly deserved as well. The show moves unobtrusively between Mullin’s many spheres of interest. We see his home life as a father of two and as MP
Switch is a French action thriller starring that lumbering wooden legend of French cinema, Eric Cantona, and it’s awful, but at least it is one of my favourite kinds of awful film: so awful it’s a triumph. If I were ever invited to lecture at film school — remarkably, I have yet to receive such
I suspect that, when men and women watch Mad Men, they see very different things. Women probably see a witty indictment of male patriarchy. I, on the other hand, see Heaven on Earth. Everything shown on Mad Men is what male dinosaurs like me expect from western civilisation: liquid lunches, beautiful secretaries, exquisite suits and
Imagine a small room, no windows, institutional cream on the walls. Bare of all decoration except for a circle of cheap chairs and the most basic of recording equipment. A gathering of people squeeze into the space — three young men, a strained-looking couple, an official-looking woman with clipboard and notes, a man in jeans
When the late Ken Russell published his autobiography in 1989, he called it A British Picture. That title could just as easily describe The Devils, his 1971 adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun, relating the true story of supposed demonic possession among Ursuline nuns in north-west France in 1634. Here is a world-class
The subject here is colossal, covering a substantial stretch of the later Roman empire, the last years of the Persian empire, the conversion of the Arabs, the spread of Christianity and what happened to Judaism. The time span runs, effectively, from the death of Jesus to the moment in the eighth century when the Abbasids
One evening nearly 40 years ago the world’s press descended on Patrick White in Sydney: they rampaged outside his house, pounded its doors, shouted through windows, camped on the lawn. The reason for this hullabaloo was that White had beaten Saul Bellow in the race for the Nobel Prize for Literature of 1973. Yet in
Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, has been keenly interested in food for years. Besides being a blogger, scholar and the youngest chess champion in the history of New Jersey, he is also the author of an online dining guide to the Washington DC area and an opinionated foodie. This is
Prunella Clough was a modest and self-effacing artist who nevertheless produced some of the most consistently original and innovative British art of the second half of the 20th century. She was by no means reclusive, enjoying an extensive social and teaching life, but she deliberately kept a low profile, being famously guarded with biographical details.
Take some boiled maize, chew it, spit it out, put the mixture into an urn, bury it, dig it up several days later, and Bob’s your uncle: the Ecuadoran delicacy chicha. It turns out that ‘controlled rot tastes good’; the particular rot you favour will depend on where you come from. In Sardinia casu marzu
The central themes of Russian history have remained constant for over a millennium. Russia’s vast spaces and lack of any natural borders have always made her inhabitants terrified of invasion. And to protect the country against invaders, and to preserve its unity, Russia’s rulers seem always to have felt it necessary to assert their authority
When Ed Smith became a full-time professional cricketer for Kent in 1999 the county side was preparing for the new millennium by shedding anything that smacked of old-fashioned amateurism. Professionalism was to be a state of mind. Players were henceforth required to sign up to a new code of conduct. This Core Covenant consisted mainly