The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Sometimes music speaks not only to your mind and heart, but grabs at your very viscera in the most primal way imaginable. Such was the experience of last night’s world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur at the Royal Opera. Demanding and disturbing, the overture, played against the backdrop of dark and menacing waves, warned
Entity Random Dance, Sadler’s Wells Paradoxical as it might sound, ballet’s rebirth is happening thanks to (and within) modern and postmodern choreography. Over the past 20 years, classical dance, considered by many to be a dead art, has attracted the interest of many non-classical dance-makers. While some have successfully revised and reinterpreted the narratives of
Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons Soho The Internationalist Gate The Black and White Ball King’s Head You can tell when a culture has lost its way because it starts handing out awards. There’s a small club of annual prizes that have some legitimacy. Oscar, Bafta, Booker, Olivier, Nobel — all provide worthwhile verdicts on the
You might think that the revival of the 1950s radio classic Journey into Space was a desperate move by Radio Four to cash in on the success of the new Dr Who. Even the title sounds incredibly dated. Who now cares about space? But when the serial first hit the airwaves via the Light Programme,
Nigel Hall: Sculpture + Drawing 1965–2008 Yorkshire Sculpture Park, until 8 June As you drive into the 500 acres of 18th-century parkland which provide the magnificent setting for this retrospective of Nigel Hall’s work, you are met by a tall sentinel-like sculpture, which stands near the entrance. Called ‘Crossing Vertical’ (2006), it’s a dynamic column
Laura Knight at the Theatre Lowry Galleries, until 6 July Ascot racegoers whose binoculars wandered from the track in 1936 might have spotted something unusual in the car park: a Rolls-Royce with its back door open and an artist working at an easel inside. Odder still, the artist was a woman — Laura Knight —
In 1932 a young English art historian recently returned from his travels sent an enthusiastic article to The Spectator about a series of brand new murals he had seen in the courtyards of the Ministry of Education in Mexico City: All these paintings [he wrote] are conscious expositions of Communism. The ultimate object … is
On the morning of Saturday 30 June 1860, the mutilated body of three-year Savill Kent was discovered in an outside privy at Road House, Wiltshire. The circumstances suggested that the murderer was almost certainly a member of the boy’s family or one of their servants. The case became something of a national obsession because of
Mike Leigh. Ground-breaking maverick or pretentious miseryguts? To ask the man himself isn’t perhaps the best way to secure an impartial verdict, but the personality that emerges in this series of interviews (composed with superb fluency by Amy Raphael) is an articulate, engaging, generous, highly original and occasionally peppery creative spirit. No British film-maker since
I must first declare an interest, now almost subliminal, in the subject of this vast, comprehensive, polymorphous and wholly captivating book. I was six when the war broke out and 12 when it ended. I read a lot of the books described new, as well as many more that were older. I remember the Magnet,
Attention Wire fans: if you haven’t done so already you should really make sure you read Peter Mosko’s new book, Cop in the Hood. Moskos, a Princeton and Harvard sociologist actually joined the Baltimore Police Department and spent more than a year patrolling in the city’s Eastern District ghetto (where much of The Wire was
You don’t have to be an Anglican or even especially religious to think that this Oxford Evensong set to jazz is very cool. Beautiful. (You can listen to it again for the next five days by clicking on “Choral Evensong” at the link.)
Difficult not to make comparisons between any number of world leaders and the image of a trapped but powerful figure lashing out in impotent rage, bellowing incomprehensibly, half man, half beast, viewed with a combination of terror and pity. Whether you agree or not, I’d recommend catching John Tomlinson in the title role of Harrison
Lloyd Evans on the extraordinary story behind Trevor Nunn’s ‘Gone with the Wind’ The heart sinks, almost. The brow droops, a little. A yawn rises in the throat and dies away. Another musical has opened in the West End and, yes, it’s based on a blockbuster movie and, yes, that too was based on a
Lost Highway Young Vic Aci, Galathea e Polifemo Middle Temple Olga Neuwirth’s Lost Highway, which was first performed in October 2003 in Graz, gets its first UK outing at the Young Vic in a production by ENO. It is impossible to imagine it being better done, and the roar of applause which greeted it at
It is three years since I last wrote about my iPod. When I first bought the blighter, my then 12-year-old son warned me that it would prove a disaster and he was absolutely right. Unable to cope with the technology required to load the thing I enlisted the help of my nephew, Tom, who agreed
The relentless downgrading of the News to a series of shocking revelations about child abuse, bearded terrorists and the ghastly incompetence of our Olympic pretensions sent me straight to the World Service where even the shortest of hourly bulletins contains enough information to remind us that life goes on beyond our own limited horizons. On
The third volume of Simon Gray’s incomparable ‘smoking diaries’ opens with a bold statement of intent to drop the habit that has sustained and comforted him for more than six decades. The third volume of Simon Gray’s incomparable ‘smoking diaries’ opens with a bold statement of intent to drop the habit that has sustained and
What do they know of Oxford who only Oxford know? Justin Cartwright, a raw colonial from South Africa, arrived as a prospective law student at Trinity in the mid- Sixties. Now, a prize-winning novelist, he has contributed to a series ‘The Writer and the City’ and succumbed for a second time to charms which he
There are two ways of writing a successful book about oneself. The first is to be so successful in life that you command attention regardless of your prose style. The second, adopted by Ferdinand Mount, is to place the author in a self-deprecating way at the centre of a whirling mass of colourful and entertaining
In a recent review of They Knew They Were Right, Jacob Heilbrunn’s book about the neo-conservatives, Mark Lilla began by asking: How many of you are sick to death of hearing about City College in the 1930s, Alcove One and Alcove Two, the prima donnas at Partisan Review, who stopped speaking to whom at which
Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the New York based Earth Institute, has established a formidable reputation as someone who thinks hard, and worries even harder, about the future of the planet. His latest book, Common Wealth, like its predecessor, The End of Poverty, reviews the major issues of international economic development in the early 21st
Jonathan Powell was the most durable of Tony Blair’s inner circle — and, in the affairs of Northern Ireland, much the most influential. Jonathan Powell was the most durable of Tony Blair’s inner circle — and, in the affairs of Northern Ireland, much the most influential. He remained in post long after the other Blairites
Robert Dukes (born 1965) is one of our finest younger artists. Now enjoying his second solo show with Browse & Darby (19 Cork Street, W1, until 2 May), this painter in the great tradition of European realist art proves that he can deliver the goods while continuing to break new ground. The chief joy of
Kate Royal’s name may not be instantly recognisable, but she is fast emerging as one of our great lyric sopranos. At the age of only 29, she has an exclusive contract with EMI and is booked to sing in the world’s major opera houses and concert halls. She is impressing both music critics and audiences
Leatherheads PG, Nationwide Leatherheads is George Clooney’s third outing as a director and the first in which he plays a starring role, and it must have looked good on paper, just as anything with George Clooney’s name attached to it probably looks good on paper. A musical based on the plumbing-supplies aisle in B&Q would
Why is it so difficult to make engaging television programmes about classical music? Time and again I have watched earnest and expensive attempts fail, despite every care in the planning, coming away grateful that the effort was made but aware that nothing lasting had been achieved. I felt like this after seeing the most recent
As a young girl in Athens, Maria Callas would watch the films of the extraordinary Hollywood actress Deanna Durbin, and, entranced by that child-star’s utterly perfect voice, vowed to become an opera singer. A couple of decades later la diva divina went backstage at a New York theatre to congratulate another former child star with
The materialist humanists are winning — or have, perhaps, already won — the battle for possession of the moral conscience of the modern western world. The issues involved should have been brought into focus by public debate over the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill, but in reality all the debate has done is to demonstrate