Culture

Culture

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

Some brilliant book reviews

As ever, the Spectator carries some splendid and erudite book reviews this week. There are contributions from stellar writers and thinkers such as Margaret MacMillan, Susan Hill, Alexander Chancellor and John Sutherland. Here is a selection. Margaret MacMillan is captivated by Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, a ‘lovely lush

A secret gallery at Hyde Park Corner

More from Arts

A rare jewel sits in the middle of the Hyde Park Corner roundabout. The Quadrant Gallery, run by English Heritage, occupies the Wellington Arch. The gallery is showing a series of exhibitions to mark the centenary of the 1913 Ancient Monuments Act, a landmark in conservation. The present show (until 15 September) examines efforts to

James Delingpole

What was the point of Burton and Taylor?

Television

Watching Burton and Taylor (BBC4, Monday) I felt a bit like I do when I go to the theatre — or, more often, when friends have kindly taken me to the theatre. ‘Are you enjoying it?’ someone will ask. ‘Oh, yes. Very much,’ I’ll lie. For the truth is, no matter how well done it

Is Richard Rogers still a rebel?

More from Arts

‘Lounge suit’ is normally a reliable signifier of supine gentility. But there it was on the invitation to Richard Rogers’s 80th birthday retrospective. Can this be the same architect once praised by a president of RIBA for his admirable ‘sod you’ approach to the public? The same man the Parisians sniffily called an ‘English hippie’

Lloyd Evans

Interview: David Haig on King Lear and The Wright Way

Arts feature

David Haig is one of those actors who can’t escape the visual identity of his characters. He’s the sad suburban salaryman. He’s the pasty-faced petty bureaucrat. He’s the bungling office curmudgeon with a volcanic temper. He just looks that way. Except that he doesn’t. I barely recognise the suntanned Bohemian figure who strolls up and

Walking

Poems

One moment basking in the sun, the next knee-deep in snow astonished at the way these tracks must have filled to the top of their dry-stone walls during the April blizzards. To walk has been the idea since we were small, and so we go on along new paths and old, the way our parents

The BBC bows to celebrity

Radio

The licence fee is both a blessing and a curse for the BBC. The clue is in that nickname — Aunty — both affectionate and slightly patronising. Aunty implies that the corporation is a friendly family affair, middle-of-the-road and just a teeny bit desperate to stay in favour, like grown-ups attempting the dance moves of

Waiting for the Train

More from Books

Early spring cherry blossom by the tracks — so prim and so dirty, all at once. The bees must be dropping to their knees. For me, it’s after the harvest, only just but even so, a different season. There are elderly women on the platform in beautifully cut coats and expensive shoes. I know that’s

Land of Second Chances, by Tim Lewis – review

More from Books

This is a book about Rwanda. It’s a book about cycling. But it’s not, in the end, a book about Rwandan cycling. Well, it is. Tim Lewis gives us the story of Adrien Niyonshuti’s attempts to qualify for the 2012 Olympics under the tutelage of American cycling legend Jock Boyer. Adrien and his teammates are

Looking at Books by John Sutherland – essay

More from Books

The sexy thing this summer, as the TV ads tell us, is the e-book. Forget those old 1,000-page blockbusters, two of which would put you over Mr Ryan’s weight limit. Sand, sun, surf — and Kindle. The traditional ‘beach book’ is as obsolete as the Victorian bathing machine. The printed codex has had a long

Edwardian Opulence, edited by Angus Trumble – review

Lead book review

She sits there on the cover exuding sex and wealth and a certain knowingness. Mrs Lionel Phillips, who came from a modest background in South Africa, had the good sense to marry one of the ‘Rand Lords’ who made their piles in the new gold and diamond fields. She and her husband bought their way

Summer reading? What about summer re-reading?

What will you read over the summer? The newly announced Booker longlist? A selection of books from newspaper and magazine summer reading lists? A book that a Spectator columnist is taking on holiday? There are so many good new books to read – if not newly published, then at least new to you – and

Susan Hill

The Breath of Night, by Michael Arditti

More from Books

There is always meat in Michael Arditti’s novels. He is a writer who presents moral problems via fiction but is subtle and shrewd enough to know that ‘issue books’, which are tracts not works of the imagination, are dull to read and rarely work as fiction should. He presents us with characters who are fully

Wreaking, by James Scudamore – review

More from Books

An abandoned lunatic asylum, a nasty pornographer in a wheelchair, a bizarre glass-ceilinged viewing dome beneath a scummy lake, a vast henchman, a mother who hears angels telling her she must harm her child: these are some of the places and people to be found in James Scudamore’s new novel. Dickensian excess is the name

Two riveting journeys to the heart of India and Pakistan

50 summers have passed since C.L.R. James asked, ‘What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?’ James’s belief, that this quaint game reveals profound truths of those who play and love it, is alive and well: evident in The Great Tamasha by James Astill, which describes India, and Cricket Cauldron by Shaharyar M. Khan, which

Booker Prize longlist announced

The longlist for the 2013 Booker Prize has been announced (it is below). Most of the commentary surrounding the announcement is about the length of chosen books. Robert Macfarlane, who led the judging panel, has spoken of the thrill of including Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary (112 pages), Richard House’s The Kills (912-pages) and 28-year-old Eleanor Catton’s The

Rod Liddle

What has happened to the deluge of Romanians?

Snoring in the sunshine down Park Lane, in London, last week was the latest gift to Britain from the Great God of Multicultural Diversity, sixty-odd snaggle toothed Romanian gypsies. I went to speak to them for a film I was doing for the Sunday Times. The only English the vast majority knew was ‘grwnka’, which

Stoner by John Williams – review

Faced with a book as simple and true as Stoner, it’s easy to fall into the trap of intentional fallacy. It is the portrait of a quiet farm boy, who receives his Doctorate of Philosophy, teaches literature at the University of Missouri, then dies at the age of sixty-five. His colleagues hold him in no

The week in books | 19 July 2013

The best way to weather the heat wave is to head for the shade with a copy of the new issue of the Spectator, in which you will you find some diverting book reviews to while away an hour or two. Here is a selection: Philip Hensher treads carefully around Winston Churchill’s imperialism, the subject

Bear hunting on Shaftesbury Avenue

More from Arts

Shaftesbury Avenue might not be traditional bear-hunting territory, but young adventure-seekers would be well advised to beat a path this summer holidays to the Lyric Theatre where Michael Rosen’s much-loved classic We’re Going on a Bear Hunt has been imaginatively translated to the stage by Sally Cookson (until 8 September). The story follows an intrepid