The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Opera Chic has all you need to know about Luciano Pavarotti’s death, including a collection of terrific YouTube clips. If only the Washington National Opera’s forthcoming Boheme could feature a voice such as this… But, of course, the point is that it can’t.
Last night’s GQ Men of the Year Awards were, as ever, a glittering occasion and a tribute to the talents of the magazine’s editor, Dylan Jones (whose most recent Spectator Diary you can read here). Plenty of excellent choices for the 10th annual ceremony, including the editor of the year, Will Lewis, editor in chief
Researchers confirm that rock’n’roll stars lead unhealthy lives and die young. Shockerooni!
I’m just back from Edinburgh, my 20th successive year at the festival for the Daily Telegraph, which makes me feel very old indeed. How times have changed. When I started going, the paper put us up in the luxurious Sheraton Grand and no questions were asked about the size of your bar bill, which in
Dublin. Terrific to write about, terrible to experience. This was the verdict of Patrick Kavanagh, poet, alcoholic and failure, born in 1904 and now brought back to life in Russell Kennedy’s enjoyable show at the Old Red Lion. Kavanagh’s assessment of Dublin would be better applied to himself. He cuts a shambolic, repellent figure in
Next time you’re bemoaning the TV licence fee, check out the BBC’s World Service. Next time you’re bemoaning the TV licence fee, check out the BBC’s World Service. A different quality appears to prevail in their making of radio documentaries — more time spent on research, less on presentation. No tricks, no smoochy music. Just
I have a piece in today’s Independent on the downfall of Amy Winehouse, an extended version of my post earlier this week. Which just goes to show that where Coffee House leads, the press follows.
There is something more than usually grotesque about the slow-motion downfall of Amy Winehouse being played out daily in the media. As the singer and her appalling husband holiday in St Lucia, their respective parents are fighting a shameful proxy battle at home, with her father-in-law, Giles, calling on Amy’s fans to boycott her records
In the theatre programme notes for the new play based on Pedro Almodóvar’s film, All About My Mother, the playwright Samuel Adamson observes that the play’s protagonist, Manuela, is drawn towards the world of theatre by an unexpected event. Back in 1999, although I didn’t know it at the time, my own life was about
Exhibition; Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour How diminished our lives would be if suddenly we could only see in black and white. ‘Colour is the first revelation of the world,’ exclaimed Hélio Oiticica (1937–80), a Brazilian artist with a mission to liberate colour and help it to embody itself in other guises. He thought
The most egregious example of cheating in wildlife photography was the 1958 Disney film Wild Wilderness. They wanted footage of lemmings throwing themselves off cliffs into the sea — heaven knows why, since lemmings do no such thing. Since the crew were in Alberta, where neither sea nor lemmings can be found, they bought the
If you want to know what’s coming up in the arts this autumn a good place to look is today’s G2, where critics have chosen the ‘50 hottest acts’. The film Atonement, based on Ian McEwan’s novel, with Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, opens on 7 September (I’ve seen a preview and loved it). Other
V.S. Naipaul’s essay on Derek Walcott, the great St. Lucian poet, in today’s Guardian review is as eloquent and insightful as one would expect. What caught my eye is a point that Naipaul makes about the whole idea of the Caribbean as an island paradise. As he writes, that idea of the beauty of the islands
Forty years after his first drug bust in 1967, Keith Richards is still testing the limits of the law. But, as one would expect of a 63-year-old, the substances in question have changed over the years. So it was that, before an enraptured audience at the O2 Centre on Tuesday night, the pirate-captain of the
Perhaps unwisely, the museum at Gloucester prominently displays a large aerial photograph of the city, revealing in one what the shocked pedestrian discovers slowly on foot: the huge proportion of the centre flattened for ghastly car parks, more devastating in their seeming permanence than the recent flooding, of which little trace remained on my four-day
A few years ago, the director of a London-based ballet company publicly challenged the way ballet is taught in Britain. More recently, additional havoc was caused by an article by an equally prominent journalist who lamented our schools’ apparent inability to produce first-rate stars. In each instance, British ballet teachers and directors of prestigious ballet
Shakespeare, as we all know, served up English history as entertainment and instruction for the Elizabethans. Factual accuracy was subservient to a view of the jungle truths of sovereignty and political ambition that was as uncomfortable and relevant then as it remains today. The eight major Histories from Richard II to Richard III have been
TV or not TV, that is the question pondered by Edinburgh every year. An unseen faultline divides the audiences from the performers. Audiences want to get away from TV while performers — especially comedians — want to embrace it. Les Dennis, who has done telly already, transcends the rift in his new hybrid show which
If you feel strong enough to postpone for a while the pleasures of the bookshop and the restaurant (without which it seems no self-respecting art gallery can exist these days), proceed upstairs at Camden Arts Centre into the light and welcoming hall, where the visitor is offered an introduction to the work of Kenneth and
At Edinburgh this year I caught a show I usually miss. The festival attracts a shifting underclass of cadgers, dodgers, chancers and scroungers, and each has a tale to tell that’s as fascinating as any of the ‘real’ entertainment. The show is free. All it takes is a little inquisitiveness. There’s a cobbled lane just
In the spirit of Not Reading Books, it’s time to move on to Not Watching Movies. Megan kicks matters off by confessing that, despite loving Marlon Brando, she’s never actually seen On the Waterfront. Not a bad contender. For my part, I’ve never actually seen Gone With the Wind. Or, even more oddly, Taxi Driver.
The hunt is on for the missing first edition of Radio Four’s Today programme, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in October. The hunt is on for the missing first edition of Radio Four’s Today programme, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in October. Radio Four has been broadcasting invitations to the on-air party for months already
As part of its reopening season the Royal Festival Hall is staging a month-long run of Carmen Jones, the 1943 musical by Oscar Hammerstein II adapted from Bizet’s Carmen. The show is far more successful than the production of Sweeney Todd which preceded it, partly because a fair amount of progress has been made with
Tony Blair — the Musical / Gilded Balloon; Tony! The Blair Musical / Chambers St; Yellow Hands / St George’s West; Jihad: the Musical / Chambers St; The Bacchae / King’s Theatre Here’s the formula for satire at the Fringe. Take a scary concept, stick ‘the musical’ after it and you’ve got a catchy title
Whatever happened to the good, honest practice of sticking numerals after a sequel’s title to indicate what number it was in the series? I grew up in the days of Jaws 2, Superman III and Police Academy 7 and, whatever the shortcomings of those pictures, at least you knew where you stood. Generally speaking, the
Venice and Islam: 828–1797 Gazing up at the walls of the Sala dello Scrutinio in the Doge’s Palace, at the enormous canvases depicting tumultuous scenes of colliding fleets, flashing armour and swords, flying arrows, broken spars, burning and sinking ships, and waters congested with enemy dead and dying, you could be forgiven for thinking that
Taking the train from Paddington to Bristol can be hazardous if you coincide with an exodus of holidaymakers on summer excursions. I travelled down on a Thursday morning and the Paignton express was not only packed to the gunnels (if trains can rightly be said to have gunnels), but even picked up more passengers en
Whatever happened to poor old Blackpool? The last time I went it was alive, busy and reasonably full of life. The place today is a windswept vision of destitution and bleakness, home to roaming bands of stag and hen weekenders, fat people with limps and aimless geriatrics waiting to be mugged. A town once synonymous
This Tim Luckhurst piece for (who else?) The Guardian may be the dumbest thing even this professional contrarian has ever written. Apparently Elvis made “dull music for duller people” and “affection for Elvis is a workable predictor of anti-intellectual attitude”. Mr Luckhurst concludes that: The only credible claim that can be made on Elvis Presley’s