The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Born in the same year as John Lennon (1940), I was a sucker for the Beatles from the start. They were the accompaniment of my youth, love’s obbligato. I liked their music because it replaced the raw animality of rock ‘n’ roll with sophisticated melody. I think Schubert would have been proud to have composed
Long in the writing, deep in research, heavy to hold, this is the latest of umpteen biographies of Vincent van Gogh (1853-90). But it should be said straightaway that it is extremely readable, contains new material and is freshly, even startlingly re-interpretative of a life whose bare bones are very familiar. The more one reads,
On 31 May 1961 Ian Fleming wrote to Michael Howard at Jonathan Cape, publisher of his James Bond novels: ‘I am now sending you the first two “volumes” of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Heaven knows what your children’s book readers will think of them.’ He ended his letter: ‘I am gradually reactivating myself and I hope to be
London has always loved its animals. James I kept elephants in St James’s Park (allowed a gallon of wine per day each to get through the English winter), while as recently as Live Aid an urban myth arose that the revolving stage was pulled by horses. The capital’s no different from the rest of the
To mark the death of Christopher Hitchens, here is a piece he wrote in June 1986 to commemorate the life of Jorge Luis Borges. Jorge Luis Borges, Christopher Hitchens, The Spectator, 21 June 1986 Christopher Hitchens recalls a meeting with the Argentine poet, who died last Saturday ‘This is my country and it might be
Nicola Shulman’s study of Sir Thomas Wyatt and his times, Graven With Diamonds, is both sparkling and scholarly. Nothing I’ve ever read about the court of Henry VIII has made it so vivid. For the first time one could really grasp Anne Boleyn’s wit and intelligence, both of which she must have needed, to keep
The TS Eliot Prize hedge-fund furore has been making headlines for more than a week. Even the Spectator has devoted space to the controversy caused by John Kinsella and Alice Oswald, whose motives were initially unclear. Kinsella has since taken to the pages of the New Statesman to explain himself. He says that he has
Christopher Hitchens is dead. His reputation as a stylist, polemicist and independent thinker is such that his legacy looks certain to be secure. Here he is talking about the art of writing, and life in general.
It’s no state secret that Britain was outmanoeuvred by France at last week’s European Summit. The Old Foe triumphed and their political establishment has been, in the words of Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, farting in our general direction ever since. President Sarkozy has described David Cameron as an indignant child and the Parisian equivalent
Last week saw poets Alice Oswald and John Kinsella withdraw from the shortlist of the TS Eliot Prize. Their refusal to be in the running for this prestigious award was on the grounds that the Poetry Book Society, which runs it, is sponsored by hedge fund manager Aurum Funds. Oswald said that she thought ‘poetry
Even in translation, Michel Houellebecq’s novels are witty, mad (particularly in translation) and sickeningly funny. I’m reading his latest, The Map and the Territory, which won the Prix Goncourt last year. As expected, author and characters are superb in their disgust with and contempt for the world in general, and especially France, art, tourism and
American author Russell Hoban died yesterday, aged 86. I’ve never read a word of Hoban, nor do I know anything about him: so the obituaries made for very interesting reading. There appear to have been two Russell Hobans. The first was the dreamy writer of children’s books; the second was an émigré in London who
This week Ian Rankin tells us which Jilly Cooper heroine he would sleep with and the title he’d give his self-help book. 1) As a child, what did you read under the covers? Enid Blyton books and lots and lots of comics (Victor, Hotspur, plus annuals dedicated to those same comics). 2) Has a
Naguib Mahfouz would have been 100 years old last Sunday (he died in 2006 aged 94). Mahfouz was the first Arabic writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was renowned for describing, in the words of the New York Times’ obituary, ‘the scent, colour and texture of life in the streets of his
In her biography of William Morris Fiona MacCarthy opened a window onto the brilliantly talented yet curiously anaemic world of the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates. In The Last Pre-Raphaelite she switches her attention to Morris’s once great friend and later stern critic, Edward Burne-Jones. Her scholarship is exemplary; her style fluent; her judgment discriminating; above
‘Castrati were even said to know the ‘secret des Lesbiennes’ when it came to giving women sexual pleasure, cheerfully making up for their cruel loss with improvised dildos made of wax.’ Helen Berry’s The Castrato and His Wife, a broadly biographical study of a castrated Italian opera singer named Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci, describes the sexual
Obviously Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child is a masterpiece. So is Ian Donaldson’s Ben Jonson. But having already said as much in these pages, I mention them only in passing. You’re less likely to have heard about Grant Morrison’s clever, passionate Supergods, but I urge it on you if you have any interest in myth,
Spectator readers have gone where seasoned pros Alice Oswald and John Kinsella feared to tread: by writing a poem about the present ascent of money. The entries for the last online poetry competition were of a typically witty standard, many thanks for submitting them. Particular praise goes to the poems written by Basil Ransome Davis,
The Press Association is reporting that Matthew Crawley (AKA Dan Stevens) will be on the Booker panel next year. Sir Peter Stothard is the chairman of the judges and he will be joined by broadcaster and historian Amanda Foreman and academics Dinah Birch and Bharat Tandon. That’s a heavyweight list. Even Stevens counts as a
Faithful readers of the Spectator will recall that Jeffrey Bernard was frequently ‘unwell’, usually after having dropped by the Coach and Horses in Soho. Bernard is not the only writer to have darkened that particular pub’s towels. A procession of inky soaks has stumbled through its doors over the years: Dylan Thomas, Daniel Farson and
All Hell Let Loose by Max Hastings. However many books are written about the second world war there will always be room for one more — provided that it is first class. Max Hastings has now established himself in eight separate volumes as a master of this subject. He does not glorify war; indeed through
Is it possible to hold a literary award these days without igniting some sort of controversy? The latest storm in an inkwell surrounds the TS Eliot Prize, whose shortlist shrunk after two poets dropped out in protest at its sponsor, the hedgefund Aurum. John Kinsella and Alice Oswald have boycotted the prize, explaining ‘the
Protest and poetry have occupied the literary pages in recent days. The TS Eliot Prize has been rocked by the withdrawal of two nominees, Alice Oswald and John Kinsella, who objected to the prize’s hedge-fund sponsor. The Books blog will examine this curious issue throughout the week; but, for now, here’s Geoff Dyer and William
I had last week the pleasure of lunch with Mark Mason. Between or perhaps while walking (overground) the route of the London Underground for his latest book, Walking the Lines, he has been writing occasionally for The Spectator. I had wanted to discuss with Mark his piece (‘It’s so annoying,’ 5 November) about the viral
Stephen King’s latest novel is a time-travel fantasy about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. At almost 750 pages, 11.22.63 is drawn-out even by blockbuster standards. Critics have bemoaned its surfeit of period detail (bobby socks, Hula Hoops, big-finned cars). I rather enjoyed it. King, now an august-looking 64, is a writer of towering cleverness,
On the subject of e-readers, I suspect the world population divides neatly into two halves. On one side of the chasm, hell will freeze over and Accrington Stanley will win the FA Cup before anyone will even touch one. And on the other, that looks like fun, can I have one for Christmas? I was
We should be grateful to families which encourage the culture of writing letters, and equally vital, the keeping of them. Leopold Mozart, for instance, taught his son not only music but correspondence, and as a result we have 1,500 pages of letters which tell us everything we know of interest about the genius. His younger
As a boy, Brian Sewell was unimpressed by opera but enraptured by pantomime which, he reveals in Outsider, sowed in him ‘an undying ambition, never fulfilled, to play the Widow Twanky in Aladdin’. Panto’s loss has been art criticism’s gain for, his tremendous erudition and exquisite prose aside, Sewell is surely the funniest art critic
Jessica Douglas-Home’s aptly titled book is based on the diaries of her grandmother Lilah Wingfield, who attended the Delhi Durbar in 1911 and then spent some weeks touring India. It is a glimpse of Empire from a privileged position since Lilah was the daughter of a viscount and the grand-daughter of an earl, brought up