The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Passion was in the air in the rooms of the Wallace Collection last week — or at least the word was at the inaugural Apollo seminar sponsored by specialist art broker Stackhouse Poland with AXA Art Insurance. ‘How do you collect art and antiques in today’s market?’ was the question and the panel, chaired by
As the 414 bus swings left from the Edgware Road at Marble Arch you avert your eyes, hoping you won’t have to look at the thing looming up in front of you for a single second longer than you have to. Even so, you know it’s there — a blot on the sky, a gulp
Whereas Don Giovanni seems, for assorted reasons, to be unfloatable at present, The Marriage of Figaro is virtually unsinkable, with Così somewhere between. In general it seems that comedies go in and out of favour and fashion more than tragedies or ‘straight’ works, though Figaro may be a glorious exception, like Die Meistersinger. It is
In 2004 Jérôme Bel, one of the most provocative performance makers of our time, created Véronique Doisneau, a solo for a Paris Opera Ballet artist who was about to retire. On the immense empty stage of Palais Garnier in Paris, Doisneau, in practice clothes, shared with the public reflections on her career, her favourite ballet
In all the heavier-duty excitement of Liszt’s anniversary I had failed to register that W.S. Gilbert expired 100 years ago; and, perhaps just as significant, the copyright of the D’Oyly Carte opera company expired 50 years ago. I am old enough to remember the fuss which that moment provoked — the highbrows hoping to kill
So, The Three Musketeers, and one for all, and all for one, but I wish it were every man for himself, and they’d all decided to call it a day and go their separate ways. This is a film of no charm whatsoever and I’d advise you to steer clear, walk the other way, keep
Here’s an idea from the heyday of radio comedy. A soap star about to get the chop improvises an unscripted deathbed recovery during a live broadcast in order to save his career. I think it was Tony Hancock who starred in that sketch. To expand it into a full-length play would be quite a challenge.
‘We all need to rendezvous every week. It keeps us all as a community,’ said Jane Copsey on the In Touch anniversary programme (produced by Cheryl Gabriel). The Radio 4 magazine for the blind and partially sighted has been around for 50 years dispensing advice and encouragement, hope and cheer. Nowadays it’s been cut to
I caught an intriguing session at the Cheltenham literary festival, titled ‘Secrets of the TV Critics’. As it happened, the main secret seemed to be that some of them liked a drink while they watched the box. In the distant days before advance DVDs and internet previews, one critic of the Daily Express used to
L.A. The Eighties. Hard rock is alive and well. Two smalltown hopefuls, Drew and Sherrie, arrive on Sunset Strip, as a German property developer is threatening to flatten it. Both find work in the same bar, and Drew has just plucked up the courage to tell Sherrie, ‘I think you’re really rad,’ when jaded rock
Sam Leith on the paradoxical nature of Britain’s first literary celebrity What a piece of work was Ben Jonson! If you lived in Elizabethan England and had just narrowly escaped the gallows after stabbing a man to death in an illegal duel, wouldn’t you want to keep your head down for a bit? Not Jonson.
Asked to review this book, which I was told was about encounters between unlikely pairs of people, I assumed it would be on the lines of Walter Savage Landor’s Imaginary Conversations. Craig Brown is our premier parodist, the best since the incomparable Max. Might his chatting twosomes include Cleopatra and Janet Street-Porter? The Marquis de
‘The candle is burning out and I must stop. Darling I wish you the best I can — that your anxiety will be at an end before you get this — with the best news, which will also be the quickest. It is 50-to-1 against us but we’ll have a whack yet and do ourselves
Jeremy Paxman has written an excellent book, but it is not the book that he set out to write. His central argument is that, since the empire had a formative influence on modern India, it must also have had a formative influence on modern Britain. If it influenced the colonised, it must have influenced the
A book about a campaign to rid the world of malaria may not sound like a riveting read and Lifeblood is an unlikely page-turner. But you are soon caught up in the challenges of the campaign and, along the way, you learn a great deal about the labyrinthine world of aid, Africa, business and politics.
What’s not to like about Candida Lycett Green’s Seaside Resorts (Oldie Publications, £14.99)? Lovely colour photographs of over 100 of England’s prettiest seaside towns, accompanied by spry, architecturally informed little essays that give the reader the gist of each place: if there’s a better book to give for Christmas published this autumn, I’d like to
In The Fear Index, the latest thriller by Robert Harris, now heading for the Christmas bestseller lists, a brainbox hedge fund manager with little in the way of interpersonal skills discovers that his computer-driven trading system has flown out of control and threatens to send the world’s stock markets into a tailspin. Anyone familiar with
At the less than enticing Guildhall Art Gallery, a purpose-built museum that manages immediately to depress the spirits by its utterly unsympathetic design, is a major exhibition of John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836–93), the celebrated Victorian painter of moonlight. The show is the brainchild of Jane Sellars, director of the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, where it
The theatre world is abuzz with rumours that Michael Boyd, director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, has quit this afternoon. He was appointed in July 2002 and was expected to complete at least a decade in charge. His colleague Vikki Heywood is also expected to resign. Boyd will probably be best remembered for overseeing the
Calm reigned outside Kensal Rise Library this afternoon, following the dramas of the morning. Contractors arrived at 6am to board up the building after a court decided that Labour controlled Brent Council could close six libraries as part of its austerity drive. They discovered two people standing guard at the front door, who immediately stood-to and
It is Guildford’s turn to pick up the literary baton and kick off its 10-day Book Festival. Here is the first of our dispatches from Surrey. At the summit of the sprawling city of Guildford, with its cobbled streets and quaint hideaways, looms the Cathedral famed for featuring in The Omen. Last night its bells
It’s easy to blame the Americans, but sometimes — as the courts ruled in Perugia last week — they’re innocent. The case brought to mind another instance of injustice meted out to our transatlantic cousins, all in the name of that most exacting of mistresses: grammar. Of the many linguistic crimes we’ve accused them of
The prognosis is grave for the Booker Prize, say more than a few literary commentators in response to the news that a cabal of publishers, authors and agents plan to establish a “well-funded prize” that would have a “different set of priorities” to the Booker. For different “set of priorities”, read “high-brow”; the prize may
What’s it about? The Great Crash of 2008 inspired a glut of books aiming to demystify the credit crunch for the financially illiterate. Michael Lewis’ Boomerang attempts to do the same for this new Eurozone crisis. Based on articles he wrote for Vanity Fair, the book is a whistlestop tour through Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany
What’s the future for the footnote? Seems a strange question to ask about such an antiquated device. But modern technology, I think, could see a renaissance for that tricky little beast lurking at the bottom of the page. The thought has occurred because I’m currently reading one of those books (a real one, that is,
Over at Guardian Books, Irish playwright Belinda McKeon has picked her top 10 farming novels. Here’s her list: 1. Stoner by John Williams 2. Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh 3. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather 4. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans 5. That They May Face The Rising
Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, cricket is India’s first faith – or so the cliché says. Wisden, the cricket Bible, announced earlier this week that is to launch an Indian edition. I’m surprised that Wisden does not already have a sub-continent edition, given that money-spinning cricket innovations such as the Indian Premier League have accompanied the region’s boisterous economic expansion. You
This is the second half of Kate Maltby’s essay on the representation of September 11th in art. You can read the first here. Decade succeeds in humanizing moral failings: fear, shame, doubt. In the simplest and most intimate scene, we hear a blokish, British New Yorker talk through the guilt of swapping his day off
Why do I keep hearing about Dickens? This is just the start of it. 7 February 2012 is the bicentennary of Dickens’ birth, and there are all sorts of commemorative shenanigans planned for next year. Expect lots more biographies and documentaries. Who’s Claire Tomalin? An award-winning biographer of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Mary