The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
You wouldn’t necessarily have guessed this from the quality of commemorative programming on TV this week. You wouldn’t necessarily have guessed this from the quality of commemorative programming on TV this week. But just recently, we’ve marked the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of an event that used to be considered quite important and interesting.
In the 1950s, when I was 14, I spent a winter fortnight with my parents at the Villa Mauresque, which Somerset Maugham had lent to them to entertain the recently widowed Rab Butler and his daughter, Sarah. It was an uneasy holiday setting for two teenage girls. As I wrote a little apprehensively in my
Delicious is a word that keeps coming to mind as one reads Jane Gardam’s new novel. Delicious is a word that keeps coming to mind as one reads Jane Gardam’s new novel. Delicious and poignant. The 81-year-old author’s mood is elegiac, and so eventually is that of Elizabeth, Betty, the wife of Sir Edward Feathers
Julie Powell wrote Julie and Julia, a book (and now a film) in which she described her attempts to cook a huge number of recipes by the cookery writer Julia Child. I haven’t read that book, but I get the impression that Powell, 30-ish and married to her childhood sweetheart, was going nuts, and used
Fay Weldon’s new book is told by Frances, Weldon’s imaginary sister — one she would have had if her mother had not had a miscarriage a few years after Weldon was born. Fay Weldon’s new book is told by Frances, Weldon’s imaginary sister — one she would have had if her mother had not had
Kenneth MacMillan was once described as ‘the Francis Bacon of ballet’ — not an analogy that gets one very far, but there’s something in it. Kenneth MacMillan was once described as ‘the Francis Bacon of ballet’ — not an analogy that gets one very far, but there’s something in it. His obsession with victims, outsiders
Is there anything original left to say about Venice? Probably not, but that doesn’t stop the books from coming, tied in, as they mostly now are, with a television series. Is there anything original left to say about Venice? Probably not, but that doesn’t stop the books from coming, tied in, as they mostly now
At first, the plot of Nick Hornby’s new novel, Juliet, Naked, seems too close to that of his first novel, High Fidelity (1995). At first, the plot of Nick Hornby’s new novel, Juliet, Naked, seems too close to that of his first novel, High Fidelity (1995). We have the no-longer-young man — Duncan this time
The English Bar is no longer immune to the celebrity culture. There are lawyers’ equivalents to Hello! magazine and the Oscars ceremony; lists of the 100 most, top ten, five to follow, proliferate. But peer and public recognition do not always coincide. To that rule Michael (or more usually Mike) Mansfield is a notable exception.
Patricia Highsmith, as readers will know, was the author of the upmarket thrillers Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley, among others. She was also a keen artist, and illustrated (rather than wrote) the rare book Miranda the Panda is on the Veranda, to text supplied by her friend Doris Sanders. Its pages,
Not, I suppose, terribly surprising that Michael Moore’s latest “documentary*” should receive an enthusiastic review from the Guardian, but even by Moore’s lofty standards this new venture sounds exceptionally stupid: Capitalism: A Love Story is by turns crude and sentimental, impassioned and invigorating. It posits a simple moral universe inhabited by good little guys and
Iris DeMent has only made four albums. And since the latest, 2004’s Lifeline, is a gospel record it’s fair to say that she ain’t on the trendy side of Nashville. In fact her style could harly be further removed from the country-pap that you hear on country radio stations and the teevee. DeMent is proper
Igor Toronyi-Lalic talks to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies as he celebrates his 75th birthday A month ago, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies shuffled on to the Royal Albert Hall stage to a wall of sweet applause after a performance of one of his works. It wasn’t always so. Rewind to the 1960s when etiquette dictated that
So which pop radio station do you listen to? It’s a question people who run pop radio stations often feel compelled to ask, without really wanting to hear the answer. So which pop radio station do you listen to? It’s a question people who run pop radio stations often feel compelled to ask, without really
There was, for a while, some debate in academic circles about whether there was such a thing as cannibalism. According to a handful of anthropologists, it was a Western invention — probably unwitting — to discredit ignorant savages. It now seems clear that this view was, to coin a phrase, political correctness gone mad. There
The Golf GTI was unveiled in Frankfurt 34 years ago this month. If the ordinary Golf saved VW — ailing because Beetle sales were in long-term decline — then the GTI was the icing that made millions more want the cake. Planned as a limited edition of 5,000, it has gone on to sell 1.7
Per Kirkeby Tate Modern, until 6 September Last chance to see this intriguing exhibition of paintings and sculptures by one of Denmark’s most original artists. Per Kirkeby (born 1938) is little known in this country, though his work was included in the seminal 1981 survey A New Spirit in Painting, and there were shows at
(500) Days of Summer 12A, Nationwide (500) Days of Summer is a Hollywood romantic comedy with (unnecessary and annoying brackets) in the title just so we know it’s quirky, which it rather is, but it’s so in love with its own quirkiness it gets tiresome after a while. It’s just not as clever as it
The Assault/The Last Days of Gilda Old Red Lion Eye/Balls Soho London in August. It’s the capital’s sabbatical. Theatre is all Edinburgh right now and the London-bound play-goer feels dislocated, irrelevant almost, alienated by accidents of chance and inclination, like a Hebrew at Christmas, a teetotaller on St Patrick’s day, an honest man in the
Exactly ten years ago I visited Battersea Arts Centre to see eight short operas performed by Tête à Tête. Exactly ten years ago I visited Battersea Arts Centre to see eight short operas performed by Tête à Tête. It was a memorable evening, and showed what a good idea it is to encourage young composers
Miranda Carter certainly has a penchant for awkward, often impossible characters. Her fascinating biography of Anthony Blunt explained, as well as anyone could, that strange mixture of aesthete, snob, revolutionary and traitor. Now she turns to the three monarchs who ruled Russia, Germany and Great Britain at the outbreak of the first world war. Nicholas
At the end of his thorough and considered life of William Golding, John Carey remarks that ‘nowadays mention of Lord of the Flies sparks recognition in a way that Golding’s own name does not, or so my admittedly limited market research has indicated.’ Can this really be true? Has Golding’s immense reputation diminished, in the
Noah’s Compass, by Anne Tyler This is Anne Tyler’s seventeenth novel and will be welcomed by her many fans. It will also be familiar, even a little too familiar, to be judged on its own. There is the same Baltimore setting, the same domestic reassurance, the same blameless clueless protagonist, and the same invasive presence
I have read two outstanding books this summer. This is one of them; the other is Summertime by J.M. Coetzee (reviewed on page 42). As I read The Infinities, with its magical, playful richness, its sensuous delight in the power of language to convey the strangeness and beauty of being human, I wondered if J.M.Coetzee
Selina Hastings recalls her visit in 1989 to Lady Beauchamp, mistress of Madresfield Madresfield: the name is now almost as lustrous with literary association as Little Gidding or Adlestrop. To the admirers of Evelyn Waugh, Madresfield is hallowed ground: ‘It’s where Waugh stayed, you know, when he was writing Brideshead Revisited. In fact Madresfield is
I watched Tunes of Glory again last night. It’s one of my favourite films*. During it, Basil Barrow, the newly-arrived Colonel of the battalion, played by John Mills, mentions his experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War: Oh they gave me time, all right. Again and again. When I
It’s a bank holiday weekend, so what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than by watching Zulu one more time? Granted, the movie is riddled with historical inaccuracies but so what? ‘Tis grand, stirring stuff. And the “sing-off” between the Zulus – “Well, they’ve got a very good bass section, mind, but no top
Roderick Conway Morris talks to Peter Greenaway about creating a ‘painting with a soundtrack’ Peter Greenaway is standing against the backdrop of Paolo Veronese’s enormous ‘The Wedding at Cana’ in the Palladian refectory of the Venetian monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore and is in rhetorical mode: ‘When we put art and cinema in the balance,
If we could choose to sound like anyone, Waylon once said, we’d want to sing like George Jones. And frankly, not too many people have ever bothered to disagree with Mr Jennings’ verdict. And like Waylon and so many other country greats, the Possum has not always had his troubles to seek; rather he’s plunged