The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
With hindsight it was probably a mistake to sit down with my daughter to watch Enid (BBC4, Monday). Before it started, Girl was a massive fan, especially of the Naughtiest Girl series and The Magic Faraway Tree. By the end, she pronounced herself so disgusted with the evil hag that she swore never to read
Ferdinand Mount Andrew Brown has spent a lot of his life writing about religion, not least for The Spectator. He has never written anything remotely like Fishing in Utopia (Granta, £8.99), but then nor has anyone else. The book tells the story of how the author fell in love with Sweden and everything Swedish, including
The Artist’s Studio Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until 13 December Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, 9 February to 16 May 2010 Compton Verney, in the heart of Warwickshire, settles into its Capability Brown landscape like a grand old diva sinking into a sofa. Some surprise then, as this sparkling art museum constantly raises the senses
Mixed Up North Wilton’s Music Hall Letting in Air Old Red Lion Do you love theatre and hate musicals? Let me recommend the work of Robin Soans. In the past five years Soans has established himself as the most successful practitioner of verbatim theatre, plays drawn from the testimony of eyewitnesses. Where musicals aim for
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle English National Opera Swanhunter Opera North Bartok’s only opera, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, shouldn’t be a difficult work to stage, to sing and to play, yet most of my worthwhile experiences of it have been listening to recordings — where it has done notably well. Though the plotline is as simple as can
It’s been difficult enough in this age of instant Googlification to wait even 24 hours until the next instalment of Radio Four’s latest Dickens serial, Our Mutual Friend, is given its 15-minute airing. It’s been difficult enough in this age of instant Googlification to wait even 24 hours until the next instalment of Radio Four’s
Last autumn, I issued a self-denying ordinance. I would not allow myself to plant a single solitary tulip in the garden, except in the large terrace pots. This was because the varieties planted in the open ground had become hopelessly muddled over time, so I wanted to clear the borders of them. We are often
Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting Hayward Gallery, until 10 January 2010 Apparently, Ed Ruscha (born 1937 and pronounced Rew-shay) is widely considered one of the world’s most influential living artists. American, he has been based in Los Angeles all his working life, and is much indebted to the strategies and formal devices of film-making.
The first world war was the last major conflict to be brought to an end in the traditional fashion, with a formal treaty of peace. Or, rather, several treaties of peace, one for each of the defeated belligerents. They were all negotiated in Paris, but named after the various royal palaces in which the signing
Caroline Wallace, a journalist specialising in book reviews and the occasional travel piece, is asked, or rather told, to go to Dublin to interview Desmond FitzMaurice, a once famous playwright and foreign correspondent, in order to revive interest in his now forgotten work. Fitzmaurice is nearly 90, and so there is no time to be
At first glance, these books have an awful lot in common. Indeed, all three might have been produced by the same self-centred chatterbox, so similar is the slightly manic, self-consciously jokey, self-interrupting, lower-middle class vernacular in which they are all written. Fluent, full of ideas and, above all, conversational. All three authors treat their imaginary
There are literary monuments that don’t allow for intimacy. Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities is one of these imposing masterpieces; Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers is another. There are literary monuments that don’t allow for intimacy. Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities is one of these imposing masterpieces; Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers is another. Vastly
It all began at Hardwick Hall. Imagine an impressionable and imaginative young boy staying with his relations, wandering about absorbing the atmosphere of that miraculous survivor of an Elizabethan house. Mark Girouard’s intellectual curiosity about English architectural history was ignited by his childhood experience of living in those extraordinary rooms. He was on the roof
In 1800 Henrietta Clive, wife of Edward Clive who had been appointed Governor of Madras in 1797, embarked on an 1,100-mile, seven-month journey round southern India with her two daughters and her Italian artist friend, Anna Tonelli. This was an unusual thing to do at the time, and the fact that she was accompanied by
At first glance, a history of running seems a pretty doomed exercise, like writing a history of breathing, or sneezing. For how can anyone really describe and ‘historicise’ an intrinsic physical process, something people do, involuntarily, without thinking? Perhaps alert to this potential pitfall, Thor Gotaas confines himself to a specific sort of running —
For generations, the Christmas ‘funny’ book has received a poor press. For generations, the Christmas ‘funny’ book has received a poor press. We have all been given one, usually by someone who thinks we still have a sense of humour. We have opened it in good faith, we have searched within for the promised mirth
Henrietta Bredin talks to Spencer de Grey, architect of the new opera house in Texas There can’t be a gesture much more brave and defiant than building a new opera house in the current doom-laden financial climate. Deep in the heart of Texas, in the centre of its freshly revamped arts district, Dallas has done
Yay! Another young, still-to-reach-their-prime performer! I like Laura Cantrell heaps. She has something. Here she is performing When the Roses Bloom Again. A nice, properly mournful song that is, in its title anyway, a spin-off of an old Carter Family tune that itself is reminiscent of some of the old Border ballads and, thus, a
The White Ribbon 15, Nationwide Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, which won the Palm d’Or in Cannes, is coldly manipulative and, in a way, probably quite facile but, God, it is good. It is so powerfully intriguing that, for 143 minutes, I did not shift in my seat, yawn, sigh, strain to read my watch
Stravinsky once said that music was powerless to express anything at all. Leaving aside the niceties of whether a rising scale can at least represent something hopeful or aspiring, his music, like so much music, does nonetheless have the capacity to express the spirit of an age. Since this is a much vaguer undertaking than
Triple Bill The Royal Ballet Although George Balanchine’s 1957 ballet Agon is not based on a Greek myth, it is traditionally regarded as the third instalment of the ‘classical antiquity’ series, following Apollo (1928) and Orpheus (1948). Inspired by the competitive displays of physical bravura that were so popular in ancient Sparta, Agon marked a
If someone had asked me last month when it was that the revered Radio One DJ John Peel had died, I’d have said a couple of years ago. If someone had asked me last month when it was that the revered Radio One DJ John Peel had died, I’d have said a couple of years
‘Listeners may find some of the content disturbing,’ said the announcer before the programme began (a warning that was also given in the Radio Times). ‘Listeners may find some of the content disturbing,’ said the announcer before the programme began (a warning that was also given in the Radio Times). You’d have thought we were
Marcus Berkmann I tend to read non-fiction for review or research and fiction to keep me sane. This year I have rarely been more than two books away from another Georges Simenon. I started late last year with three old Maigrets I found on a shelf (fortunately my own), then progressed to the romans durs,
Wild Thing: Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Gill Royal Academy, until 24 January 2010 Supported by BNP Paribas and The Henry Moore Foundation It’s an unlikely grouping, this alliance of Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska and Gill. In many ways, this should be an Epstein solo show, or possibly an Epstein and Frank Dobson show (to link two key modernist sculptors
L’assedio di Calais Guildhall School of Music and Drama This is the time of year, before the long hibernation of opera companies sets in, when there is sometimes a choice of several operas per night, many of them performed by the schools of music, which often seem to adopt the unintelligent course of having their
‘Thank you. It’s magnificent,’ said Philip Pullman as he opened the new extension at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford at the end of October. ‘Thank you. It’s magnificent,’ said Philip Pullman as he opened the new extension at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford at the end of
Origin of Species Arcola Seize the Day Tricycle Oh, not again. Yup, I’m afraid so. I had no wish to return to the vexed topic of Darwinism but a much-praised show in east London tempted me out on a frosty night to the Arcola theatre. Bryony Lavery’s new play has a storyline that’s as nutty
The X Factor (ITV, Saturday and Sunday) is the most popular show on television at the moment. I felt I should watch it so that you don’t have to. It’s very loud. There is a lot of clashing and banging and whooping and whooshing. A voiceover booms at you, and the presenter shouts at everyone.