Culture

Culture

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

Saving Italy, by Robert M. Edsel – a review

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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

The People’s Songs, by Stuart Maconie – a review

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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

The Long Shadow, by Mark Mills – a review

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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

Accidental dictators

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

Alexander Pope, mock-epic, modernity and misogyny

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

The week in books | 12 July 2013

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

Are rugs becoming the new must-have art objects?

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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

James Delingpole

Brainwashed from birth: the cult of the BBC

Television

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

Opera review: Verdi should be as controversial as Wagner

Opera

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

The last taboo in pop: fat old men

Music

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

Lloyd Evans

Wanted: a producer for Peter Nichols’s four new plays

Arts feature

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

Gusto galore from Boston Ballet

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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.

Nicolas Roeg interview: ‘I hate the term “sex scene”’

Features

‘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

how to get a life

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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

Rousseau and the Tiger

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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

The Authors XI, by The Authors Cricket Club – review

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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

She Landed by Moonlight, by Carole Seymour-Jones – review

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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

Seaweeds, by Ole G. Mouritsen – review

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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-