The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
One of the many things which makes me love Edward Elgar is that both the man and his music are so tremendously unfashionable. No wonder tax-funded quangos set up to ‘promote culture’, and run by New Labour bureaucrats, are refusing to mark his 150th birthday. He does not correspond with their criteria of approval at
Gillian Ayres and David Bomberg: two painters with markedly different visions of the world, but united in excellence. Interestingly, there is a period of Bomberg’s work — the Spanish paintings of 1929 — when his paint surfaces seem to resemble Ayres’s of the late 1970s and early 1980s in their impacted intensity. But apart from
This season’s they-don’t-make-’em-like-that-any-more offering at the Old Vic is Gaslight. The chief reason for going to see it is that it stars the talented young actress Rosamund Pike. Time spent gazing at the astoundingly beautiful Miss Pike is never wasted. But Gaslight has other attractions as an entertainment. It’s a 1938 three-act thriller set in
Until recently I was one of those insufferable prigs who proudly announces, ‘Oh, I never watch television, it’s all rubbish these days.’ But there was little virtue in my self-restraint, and I had no idea whether there was anything worth watching or not. The fact is that when you are out at the theatre four,
Fidelio is so full of wonderful music, and its subject matter is so stirring and so perennially relevant, that it should be a frequent feature of any opera house’s repertoire. In fact it is rather rare, and this new production is the first time it has been seen at the Royal Opera for 14 years.
Stylistic accuracy is one of the most problematic aspects of restaging dance works. ‘Style’ is a fluidly ambiguous notion encompassing a multitude of factors: the training of the choreographer and dancers, particular aesthetic trends, interpretative choices, and so on. Hence the difficulty of getting it right. Stylistic appropriateness goes far beyond any detailed reproduction of
The best way to get serious press coverage for your big show is to provoke the hacks by shutting them out from the first night. It’s a high-risk strategy but in the case of the now famous King Lear with Ian McKellen it’s worked a dream. The director Trevor Nunn and the RSC chief Michael
Channel 4’s Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel (Wednesday) was, as promised, pretty tasteless stuff, though not for the reasons we were told. There are those who still believe the princess’s death was not an accident, and that the royal family, Lord Stevens and both French and British governments are part of a huge conspiracy
The modern crime novel tends to be a serious matter involving body parts and serial killers, sometimes with a spot of social analysis thrown in for good measure. It was not always like this, and Simon Brett is among the handful of distinguished contemporary crime writers who remind us of those far-off days of innocence
Surely the most sought after among what Lord David Cecil described as ‘The Pleasures of Reading’ (a lecture title that lured John Betjeman in the expectation of a paean to the architectural delights of Berkshire’s county town) is the moment when an author articulates a feeling that you imagined was peculiar to yourself, expresses an
Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Talleyrand of our age, was for over 20 years the dominant personality in Arab relations with the English-speaking countries. Born into the obscurest royal poverty, Bandar turned himself into a fighter pilot of dash and elan (if not of the very first proficiency), before serving as Saudi
Some of the best and most effective of 20th-century English posters were designed by the American, Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954). Born in Montana, he was the only child of German and Swedish immigrants. His parents divorced, and young Ted Kauffer was put in an orphanage, where drawing became a release from what he described as
When Starbucks in the United States decided to promote Ishmael Beah’s memoir of life as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone it seemed to many a surprising choice. A Long Way Gone, with its descriptions of atrocities and terror, is a far cry from the daily travails of footballers’ wives and celebratory chefs. But stories
Has there ever been a better time to be alive than the 18th century, provided that one were rich, healthy, literate and European? One would not necessarily have to be a Duke of Newcastle or a Prince-Bishop of Würzburg, although either would be nice. Many of the things which make life agreeable for humbler mortals
In the late 1960s I was reviewing books in the Sunday Times alongside the great Cyril Connolly, and got to know him a bit. He said that the moment which compensated for the acres of tripe he had had to plough through in his career as a critic was when one of Evelyn Waugh’s early
Ever since I began to serve sentences of imprisonment three decades ago I have preferred not to know too much about what I’m missing outside. Whenever I do find myself receiving a social visit, crammed in amongst squabbling (or more often dysfunctionally silent) families enjoying their monthly 40 minutes together, I tend to steer the
Reviewing recently a new English version of Alain-Fournier’s 1913 novel Le Grand Meaulnes, I was happy and relieved to find that it retains its magic. It has entranced generations of adolescents, not all of them French, but I had wondered if it would still appeal after so many years. It is an extraordinary book, part fairytale
I have yet to capitulate to this series of Big Brother, which is not to say that I won’t. But it does seem very striking to me that the reality TV show seems to have become the canvas upon which we observe the nation’s residual bigotries and (in the case of Shilpa’s victory) our desire
Reading James Delingpole’s fine piece about ‘the best music festival in the universe’ brought it all flooding back. Twenty years ago, buoyed by rave reviews such as James’s, I headed for Glastonbury full of starry-eyed hope and excitement. What followed were three days of unremitting misery, memories of which haunt me to this day. Torrential rain,
My book of the moment is Mark Law’s brilliant exploration of judo, The Pyjama Game (Aurum). A specialist book on a marginal sport? Not at all. There is something about the “gentle art” (in which I used to dabble a little) – throws, hold-downs, strangles, and arm-locks – which absorbs and changes people. Vladimir Putin,
This weekend, as the orchestras of England celebrate the 150th anniversary of this country’s most celebrated composer, is an appropriate time to review the national monument that is Sir Edward Elgar. Does he continue to speak of and for England? Or was he merely a late-romantic nostalgic, whose music was hopelessly outdated when he died
I have been dipping into the Modern Sculpture Reader, edited by Jon Wood, David Hulks and Alex Potts, an invaluable compilation of texts produced by the Henry Moore Institute at £20. It’s a hefty paperback tome determined to give sculpture its rightful place in the anthology stakes — so often dominated by painting — and
It’s always a problem, comparing a new band with others who have gone before. Critics have to do it, defining the new in terms of the old, because there has to be some way of describing the indescribable. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been caught, having read somewhere that someone was
At last ENO has come up with a production which can be greeted almost without reservation, and of a treacherously tricky opera, Britten’s last and for many his greatest, Death in Venice. After a gruelling two weeks in which I have seen major works manhandled beyond bearing at the Royal Opera and at Glyndebourne, I
Right until the end of his life, Euan Uglow remained one of the most elusive English painters. An intensely private man, known only to a small circle of devoted artists, critics, models, collectors and former students, he disliked promotional exposure and the celebrity cult. His reputation has always been high, but it was largely confined
Water opens with a beautiful little Indian girl sitting on the back of a cart joyously chewing on sugar cane. She has luscious hair, pinchable cheeks, dark eyes, a nose-ring and tinkling silver anklets. (So cute; Madonna would kill for her.) A middle-aged man is on the cart, too, lying on his back and groaning.
Very sadly I couldn’t get hold of Sea of Fire (BBC2, Friday), the (reportedly superb) drama documentary about the destruction of HMS Coventry in the Falklands War, because tapes weren’t available till just before broadcast. But not to worry. I think I can still tell you with some confidence how it went. The first thing
I saw Jeremy Paxman lose his languid scepticism a few weeks ago on Newsnight and exhibit what looked like amazement. Michael Rose had just said that if he were an Iraqi he would fight the Americans, or at least he could see why Iraqis did it. Is that, Paxman asked, what you want the families
Another book on Napoleon, or General Bonaparte as the author properly notes, though only because the man had not crowned himself emperor when he invaded Egypt. Insisting on calling him General Bonaparte, as an Englishman should, is now, alas, regarded as mere pedantry. If you type ‘Napoleon’ into the British Library catalogue, the result (13