The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
During the civil war, the Puritan iconoclast William Dowsing recorded with satisfaction his destructive visit in 1644 to the parish church of Sudbury in Suffolk: ‘We brake down a picture of God the Father, 2 crucifixes and pictures of Christ, about an hundred in all.’ The Taleban’s decision in 2001 to blow up two gigantic
For Stuart Maconie fans, this book might sound as if it’ll be his masterpiece. In his earlier memoirs and travelogues, he’s proved himself a fine writer: sharp, funny, tender and thoughtful — often all at the same time. In his previous book to this, Hope and Glory, he made a creditable if slightly heart-on-sleeve attempt
Mark Mills is known for his historical and literary crime novels, including The Savage Garden, The Information Officer and House of the Hanged. The Long Shadow is written in a different mode. It is set in a highly recognisable present; it is a clever, teasing hybrid of genres (psychological thriller, dark comedy, Pardoner’s Tale and
Two flashpoints have emerged recently, threatening regional wars and pitting global powers against each other. They happen to be run by accidental dynastic heirs, each representing a new generation of dictatorship whereby sons inherited jobs which they might never have wanted. One is North Korea, which draws in the competing wills of Beijing and Washington
Is it okay for struggling authors to talk about promotion and marketing and how they are dealt with by publishers? Apparently so. The aspiring novelist Robert Galbraith knew rejection. His first novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, was rejected by Orion and other publishers before it was printed in April by Sphere, a prestige imprint of Little
from The Rape of the Lock And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed, Each silver vase in mystic order laid. First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers. A heavenly image in the glass appears, To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears; The inferior priestess, at
This May, David Goodhart’s latest book, The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-war Immigration, earned him the title of ‘too hot for Hay’ when he was ‘shunned’ by the literary festival. The festival director, Peter Florence, went on to describe the book as ‘sensationalist’ and ‘not very good’. But all was not lost. As
Deborah Ross reviews two films for us this week. The first is Pacific Rim, a ‘giant monsters v. giant robots’ film, and to be perfectly honest, that’s about all she has to say on the matter. If you do want to find out more, here’s the trailer: Her second film this week is ‘The Moo
The latest issue of the Spectator is full to bursting with sparkling and varied book reviews. Here are some extracts from those reviews: Sam Leith reviews two new books (one by Douglas Hurd and Edward Young, the other by Dick Legend) that, to some extent, debunk the Tory legend of Benjamin Disraeli. ‘Disraeli…, as Hurd
Tapestries once had a place of honour in fine art, but that was during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Oil paintings, for a time, were viewed as the poor man’s tapestry. Now, that equation may be turning round. ‘Tapestries serve a lot of purposes,’ said Donald Farnsworth, president of Magnolia Editions, which has produced
Out and about in Surrey on Sunday I happened upon a scene that could have been played out 77 years ago. It was mid-afternoon on that glorious sunshiny day. Lunch just about over. The pub had a large garden with tables neatly shaded by leafy pergolas. A family group had finished their meal but were
Last week I was on holiday with my family on the Algarve. The good news was that, thanks to the BBC’s widespread availability in Portugal, we didn’t miss out on Murray at Wimbledon. The bad news was that, for the same reason, we couldn’t escape The Apprentice. But this isn’t an anti-Apprentice column. It’s an
It’s always a problem with Macbeth: what accents to use? The Globe is applying the traditional remedy. Lord and Lady Macbeth come from Epsom. Everyone else comes from Glasgow. This is a highly entertaining production — one of the best at the Globe in recent years — but it’s not entirely perfect. Joseph Millson has
What exactly are the ‘secrets of the royal bedchamber’? That the actual bed was seldom if ever slept in let alone used for romping sex (the latter took place in private bedchambers, often barred off by an ingenious system of locks). But the royal bedchamber was, as the organisers of this exhibition state, ‘the equivalent
As more time elapses since the regrettable fracas over Kitaj’s 1994 Tate exhibition and his tragic suicide in 2007, he comes more and more into his own as a great but still underrated artist. When I last wrote about him in this column, back in April, I had not yet seen the portion of his
Pacific Rim is a giant monsters v. giant robots film and although written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, who made Pan’s Labyrinth, which was sublime, it’s still just a giant monsters v. giant robots film, and now we have dealt with that, we can move on to The Moo Man. The Moo Man is
I’m not the first person to remark that Verdi is getting oddly little attention in this his bicentenary year, especially when compared with his contemporary Wagner who, despite the usually much greater demands his works make in almost all respects, is not only receiving plenty of performances, but is also the subject of even more
Don’t worry, I’m not going to go on about Glastonbury. I wasn’t there, I never have been and, unless forced at gunpoint, I never will be. It has been a source of great comfort to discover that rock critics far more professional than I detest festivals as much as I do. My friend Andrew Mueller
Gosh. I wouldn’t mind being Peter Nichols. Eighty-six this month and still enjoying the easy domesticity and professional stimulation he’s benefited from since the 1960s when he was propelled to stardom by his play about raising a disabled daughter, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. He lives in a penthouse flat in north
Invisible hand that jangles the lantern over the porch and tells the leaves on the pond to imagine they are clippers and wrenches the shed door , and makes leylandii lurch, unnerving the cat, wobbling the elderly; that viciously clobbers pedestrians at the corner, then snatches up bills and payslips put out for recycling and
Those who lament sluggishness in contemporary stagings of Balanchine’s ballets — and those who are responsible for it — should have seen and learnt from Boston Ballet last week. Forget the funereal tempi we, in the old world, are forced to accept because of the killjoy aesthetics favoured by artistically challenged ballet directors and teachers.
‘Oh, some of my films have been attacked with absolute vitriol!’ said Nicolas Roeg, 85, and still one of the darkest and most innovative of post-war British directors. We were sitting in his study in Notting Hill; nearby in Powis Square is the house Roeg used for his 1968 debut, Performance, starring Mick Jagger as
just to tell you there is nothing better almost nothing better than getting into bed in the middle of the afternoon when the sun shines down outside and you are perfectly well shedding your clothes one arm under pillow having no sense of ambition beyond this experiment with quiet having learned something from the cat
This is the Tiger and this is Rousseau. This is the picture I painted to show That this is the Tiger, so supple and eager. And this is the customs man, suited and meagre, And what do we wonder and what do we know? This is the Tiger and this is Rousseau. I am Rousseau
We were never going to get ‘come to the party’ or ‘a hundred and ten per cent’ from The Authors XI by The Authors Cricket Club, with a foreword by Sebastian Faulks (Bloomsbury, £16.99). Instead there’s ‘Passchendaeleian’ and ‘Ballardian’ (of pitches), ‘burst-sofa torsos’ (of themselves) and the observation that the French revolutionaries’ cry of ‘Aux
The subtitle of Carole Seymour-Jones’s quietly moving biography of the brilliant SOE agent Pearl Witherington is ‘the real Charlotte Gray’. As quickly becomes evident, the real thing was more than a shade superior. Like the fictional Gray, Witherington had determined to serve behind enemy lines in France with the dual aims of fighting the Nazi
On 14 April each year, nori fishermen gather on a hillside overlooking Ariake Bay on Kyushu in southern Japan to pay homage to ‘the Mother of the Sea’. There is a shrine and an altar for votive offerings but this is not a religious rite. The mother in question is Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker, a Lancashire-
The Charleston Bulletin was a family newspaper produced between 1923 and 1927 by the teenaged Quentin Bell and his elder brother Julian — who soon dropped out, leading Quentin to recruit his aunt Virginia Woolf. At that time enjoying her most prolific period as a novelist, she collaborated with him on special issues which they
‘Who the hell is Disraeli?’ This, as a gleeful footnote in Douglas Hurd and Edward Young’s new book reminds us, was the response of John Prescott when asked on television what he made of Ed Miliband’s speech last year extolling the virtues of Dizzy’s world-view. Actually — as their book goes on to make clear
