The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
‘On the whole I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings whom you think are sadly mistaken,’ said Penelope Fitzgerald in 1987. The South African novelist Damon Galgut has reversed this formula — with mixed results. He has written a novel about a fellow novelist, E.M.
Any new book by Lorrie Moore is a cause for rejoicing, but her first collection of short stories for 16 years demands bunting, revelry and tap-dancing. She is one of a handful or two of writers (I’d nominate Anne Tyler, William Trevor, Martin Amis, Kazuo Ishiguro among the rest) whose work is always worth buying.
There are still some sizeable holes in early modern English history and one of them is what we know — or, rather, do not know — about the aristocracy. Of course, peers who held high office under the Crown often have their biographers. But there is still a rooted assumption among scholars that the aristo-cracy
How do you write a new book about T.E. Lawrence, especially when the man himself described his escapades, or a version of them, with such inimitable genius? Scott Anderson’s answer is to intercut Lawrence’s extraordinary story — the camel raids and blown-up bridges, the rape and torture, the lies and shame — with those of
The single most terrifying moment of my adult life occurred at 8.55 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday 5 August 2008. I had a written a novel, Typhoon, in which disenfranchised Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province riot against the Han government. By coincidence, a few days before publication, large numbers of Uighurs started doing
Last summer a National Security Agency (NSA) contractor called Edward Snowden leaked a vast trove of secret information on the mass data-gathering of his erstwhile employer and Britain’s GCHQ. He was widely lauded on the political left and libertarian right as a principled whistle-blower. Elsewhere he was derided as a naïve enabler of America’s enemies
The story of Kim Philby is, of course, like so many English stories, really one of social class. He was one of the most scandalous traitors in history, and from within the security services sent specific information to the Soviets during the early years of the Cold War that resulted directly in the deaths of
I wasn’t going to write about Handel’s Rodelinda, wasn’t even intending to go, but thanks to the kindness of the press office at ENO I did, and it was so marvellous that I can’t resist expressing my delight. Not that it was ideal — no production of Rodelinda is, or, I’m beginning to suspect, can
Two words tell you everything you need to know about today’s announcement that BBC3 is to become an online-only channel: ‘spoiler alert’. The phrase is now part of the cultural language, an everyday reality for consumers of all types of media. And that’s because broadcasting – the notion that we all watch the same thing
There’s a campaign running at the moment to rebrand History of Art and clear up some of the myths surrounding the subject. It’s seen as a posh subject, studied by posh girls, and with good reason too: A-level History of Art is offered at only 17 state secondary schools out of more than 3,000, plus
The Today programme’s early morning audience were roused by a very excited reporter chasing Bono at the Oscars this morning. ‘Bono! BONO!’ he shouted, before the Great Man himself strolled over to offer Radio 4 listeners some, er, unique wisdom. listen to ‘BONO! BONO! on the Today programme’ on Audioboo
Have the Oscar Pistorius defence team been watching The Simpsons? Michell Burger, the opening prosecution witness at the athlete’s murder trial, told the court in South Africa how she woke in the middle of the night to the sound of ‘terrible screams’. Pistorius’ lawyers say the ‘blood curdling’ screams were his and because he was
listen to ‘Fraser Nelson on Britain’s 2014 Eurovision entry’ on Audioboo
Funny how quickly you forget the makeup of the average highbrow pop concert. It’s 96 per cent male, obviously, and very partial to a receding hairline-ponytail combo; last night’s performance by saxophonist and composer John Harle and former Soft Cell singer Marc Almond brought these types out to the Barbican in force. They were here
I yearn for expertise, in the way that only an arts graduate can. At university I learned how to read books (as long as they were written in English). But now, two decades on, people who can read books (as long as they are written in English) are not quite such the hot ticket that
One of the greats of French cinema, Alain Resnais (1922 – 2014), has died. His early films, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and Last Year in Marienbad (1961), which experimented boldly with visuals and narrative, were the key inspiration for the French New Wave, dictating the direction Godard and Truffaut headed in. But where some saw
With a grim global tit-for-tat looking increasingly likely, Crimean secession is no laughing matter. Still, we here at Culture House have slightly different priorities to the people of Ukraine. Slaves to line, form and colour, we have our thoughts locked onto the thrilling prospect of gaining a splendid new flag (see above). Here are some
The Oscars dispenses its wisdom tonight. By tradition the award for the past year’s best film won’t go to the past year’s best film. This means 12 Years a Slave will probably win. Here’s a quick recap of the movies in contention and what our film critic Deborah Ross thought of them. Wolf of Wall
Boy, the crap that opera’s allowed to get away with. The mime, the mugging, the movement, the ideas. Richard Jones’s new production of Rodelinda at the English National Opera seemed to be channelling that heady mix of bullshit and banality that that signer had nailed so well at the Mandela funeral. Theatre wouldn’t have got away with
Spectator literary competition No. 2839 The recent call to coin collective nouns for tweeters, hackers, hoodies, WAGs, environmentalists, bankers, MPs and contrarians pulled in a record-breaking entry and there were lots of unfamiliar names in the postbag. Inevitably, there was also a fair amount of repetition: nest/cacophony/outrage/triviality of tweeters came up more than once, as
A friend and I joke that there are two types of jobs: fun ones, and school fees ones. We (penurious journalists) say this to our friends (pecunious lawyers, bankers, consultants), and find immense comfort in it. Perhaps I should have sacked off my History of Art degree, and done something vocational – ergo ‘worthwhile’ as
Whatever happens to David Cameron, he will have some reading material post 2015. Dr Anthony Seldon has announced that he will be writing about the Cameron years, just as he did for the Blair and Brown premierships. Seldon plans to publish two books: The Cameron Effect, written with Dr Mike Finn, and Cameron at 10,
Artists make good critics, but do critics make good artists? It’s hard to tell, when most are too chicken to try. For over 20 years, Spectator critic Andrew Lambirth has been making collages. He caught the habit from the British Surrealist Eileen Agar in the late 1980s and kept it private, until forced to go
‘Phwhoof!’ exclaimed Evan at 8.27, before reluctantly turning us over to the sport report on Saturday morning’s Today (Radio 4). His intense connection with what he had just listened to in the studio (and we had heard at home while slowly waking up to the day) as Gavin Hewitt and Duncan Crawford reported from the
What if Bonnie Prince Charlie, as he swept down from Scotland towards London to lay claim to the throne, hadn’t lost his nerve at Derbyshire but had instead pressed on — and won? What would Britain be like today? In the year that the Scots vote on whether to stay in the UK, the art
Tracy Letts, of the Chicago company Steppenwolf, has written one of the best plays of the past ten years. August: Osage County is an exhilarating, multilayered family drama whose sweep and power amazed everyone who saw it on stage. His 2008 play, Superior Donuts, has a smaller, cosier canvas. We’re on the north side of
One of the unlooked-for side effects of the financial crisis has been what might be called the desocialising of music funding. Whereas once many arts organisations could expect to survive solely on public money, just recently there has been an almost unseemly rush to tap private sources of cash. The time lag between the original
The Book Thief is based on Markus Zusak’s novel of the same name which, although written for young adults, appears beloved by many, judging from the readers’ reviews on the internet, and the frequent declarations of ‘it’s the best book I’ve ever read!’, and there is our first worrying clue, right there. Over the years,
The difference between lovable, likable and admirable is perhaps more significant in the operatic world than in other artistic spheres — and is often, alas, translatable directly into all-important box-office receipts. The most ambitious production in English Touring Opera’s spring season provides an opportunity to see where Michael Tippett’s second opera, King Priam, fits on