The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
In the early summer of 1910, a naval officer, bound for the Antarctic, paid a visit to the office of Thomas Marlowe, the editor of the Daily Mail. He had come in search of some badly needed funds for his expedition, but just as he was leaving he paused to ask Marlowe when he thought
In December 2005, a passenger on an early-morning flight from Dallas to Las Vegas fell asleep. Woken by a steward when the plane touched down, the man wearily disembarked and took a connecting flight to San Francisco. It was only there that he realised he’d forgotten an item of hand luggage on the first flight.
In some ways, you’ve got to hand it to Craig Raine. Two years ago, after a distinguished career as a poet and all-round man of letters, he published his first novel — and received a series of reviews that, as Woody Allen once put it, read like a Tibetan Book of the Dead. According to
Montaigne, who more or less invented the discursive essay, had a method which was highly unmethodical: ‘All arguments are alike fertile to me. I take them upon any trifle . . . Let me begin with that likes me best, for all matters are linked one to another.’ Geoff Dyer could say very much the
The last time we went out for lobster in Lyme Bay we found a dogfish in the creel. A type of shark that roamed the seas before dinosaurs existed, a dogfish won’t slice your leg off the way a Great White might, but it is very scratchy to hold onto, thanks to its denticles, the
Raylan Givens, an ace detective in the Raymond Chandler mould, has encountered just about every shakedown artist and palooka in his native East Kentucky. His creator, Elmore Leonard, is a maestro of American noir; Raylan (Weidenfeld, £18.99), his latest thriller, presents a familiar impasto of choppy, street-savvy slang and hip-jive patter that verges on a
Who is Britain’s greatest ever general? The BBC and the National Army Museum put the question to the public at the end of last year. The public declared the Duke of Wellington Britain’s best, together with William Slim. Professor Saul David is not so sure. His latest book, All The King’s Men: The British soldier
A publishing bidding war began the moment that Amanda Knox walked free. Photogenic, sexually adventurous, naive, wrongfully imprisoned — it’s guaranteed to be a blockbuster to match The Count of Montecristo and The Shawshank Redemption, only its contents will be factual. The book was bought last night by Harper Collins for $4 million. First-hand accounts
The Queen rarely intervenes in public life. It is a mark of the vehemence of the recent attacks on the Church of England that she has leapt to its defence, characterising it as the guardian of people of all faiths and none. The storm of words between secularists and establishmentarians will intensify tomorrow when the former Archbishop of
Chances are you’ve already seen this incredible round-up of the ten most beautiful bookshops in the world. This recent post on hip US blog Flavorwire has enjoyed remarkable success, inspiring several articles and a huge amount of praise and discussion in various forums worldwide. Over here in Britain, the Guardian’s article about it received nearly
I should not like this book, but I do. Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child has an unpromising start. Mabel, a nervy wreck of a woman, decides that her loveless life is not worth living. She strides out into the Alaskan wastes seeking a quiet death. It is a cliché worn thin by bad television drama,
Danny Boyle’s staged version of Frankenstein packed in the crowds to the National Theatre last year with its Olympian scale and throbbing orange sunsets. But if you were hoping for a more intimate invitation to the world of Mary Shelley’s monster, you might be better off popping down to the small but central Jermyn Street
This week’s Shelf Lifer, Mary Quant (pictured here in 1960s), invented both the mini-skirt and hot pants. If that weren’t enough, she later claimed to have invented the duvet cover. She tells us which part of the Bible she would take into solitary confinement and which character in Little Women gets her going. Her autobiography
Inspired by Tessa Hadley’s point about the importance of literary prizes, and itched by guilt at not have given some of them due attention, I did some research. It seems that all must have prizes. There are numerous literary awards in Britain. The Society of Authors offers 9. English Pen runs 4. The Authors’ Club has 3. While
Writers have to be careful of prizes — careful of thinking about them, or not thinking about them. Sitting down to write, one needs one’s head clear of all the apparatus of vanity and status anxiety and self-doubt that may clutter it the rest of the time. No one who’s any good puts words on
This blog believes that Valentine’s Day should be abolished, so prepare for disappointment if you’re looking for praise of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s sugared bleats. If you haven’t read it yet, Tessa Hadley’s short story collection, Married Love, is beguiling. Each story presents a stereotype of love, delves into it and turns out a fresh perspective. The book begins with precious student Lottie ruining
Gatsby’s back. A film adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s enduring book will released later this year, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. Why now? Asks Philip Hensher in today’s Telegraph, a question he easily answers: ‘It’s just the novel for us. Its world reflects on bubbles and gaudy display, and people whose magnificent social position conceals
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank is Nathan Englander’s third book since his unanimously praised 1999 debut collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. With this latest collection, Englander comfirms his place as a master of the short story form, staking a place for himself as an heir to the traditions
Spring is around the corner, and new books are flying onto the shelves. The work of those Austro-Hungarians who followed in the wake of Franz Kafka is back in fashion. Stefan Zweig’s fiction is available in a new edition, as are the letters of his contemporary, Joseph Roth. A critical reappraisal of Roth is gathering
The RWA galleries offer a superb setting for a sculptor, and Ivor Abrahams RA (born 1935) has taken full advantage of the beautiful top-lit space of the main rooms to present a lively retrospective look at his principal themes and achievements. The work ranges from the 1950s to the present day, and embraces a number
The American poet Robert Frost wrote memorably of pausing on his pony in the snow and looking longingly into woods that were ‘lovely, dark, and deep’, regretting that he had promises to keep and ‘miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep’. In another poem he described a woodland path as
Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, on a radio programme that tells the history of the monarchy through 50 objects in the Royal Collection A History of the World in 100 Objects managed to squeeze the great paradigm shifts of anthropology into the interval between the roadworks sign and the all-clear, spiriting away traffic
There is only one place these days where the music of Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) sends its hearers into reliable ecstasy, and that is in choirs and places where they sing. Otherwise he is something of a bust. Despite having written seven symphonies, nine operas, 11 concertos (including three piano, two violin, a cello and
They are lighting the candles at Covent Garden to honour one of the great singers of our age. Thomas Allen (as he was then) first appeared on the stage of the Royal Opera House in 1972, as Donald in Billy Budd, when Benjamin Britten was alive and his opera not nearly so highly thought of
The Muppet Show was my favourite TV programme when I was growing up, but this film, the first in over a decade? Not so much, even though it is fun in parts. I liked it terrifically at the beginning, and loved seeing Kermit again, and Miss Piggy, with her ‘pork chop’ (‘Hi-yah!’) and Gonzo and
An outbreak of heritage theatre at the National. She Stoops to Conquer, written by Oliver Goldsmith in 1773, is the ultimate mistaken-identity caper. A rich suitor woos his bride-to-be while under the impression that the home of his future in-laws is an upmarket inn. Boobs and blunders multiply until love triumphs and harmony is restored.
Bellini’s Norma is an opera that I not only adore: it obsesses me, too. Whenever I listen to it, I have to hear it again very soon, and parts of it lodge in my mind, playing over and over again, to an extent that very few other pieces do. It was the work through which
At first sight, the new Royal Ballet double bill might come across as an odd coupling: Ashton’s sparkling The Dream on one side, MacMillan’s metaphorically sombre Song of the Earth on the other. Yet the two works are complementary in that they show two distinctive and historically significant facets of 20th-century British dance-making. On the
Maybe he was asking for it. Maybe his article in the New Statesman was a subconscious attempt to undermine his brother’s authority. But what was the point of grilling David Miliband about his relationship with his brother Ed on the Today programme (Radio 4) on Monday morning? What we wanted to know was whether Miliband