Culture

Culture

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

The Special power of the printed word

A few weeks ago, three colossal boxes of new books from Penguin arrived in the bookshop. I made myself a strong cup of tea and then began the lengthy task of unpacking them, taking out the books and piling them up in neat stacks, ready to tick them off the invoice before zapping them on

A Time by the Sea, by Ronald Blythe – review

More from Books

I first encountered Ronald Blythe at Benton End, a glowing oxblood farmhouse above the river Brett, poised on the edge of Hadleigh in Suffolk. This was the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, run by Lett Haines and Cedric Morris, and known locally as the ‘Artists’ House’ and for ‘every vice under the sun’.

Memoirs of a Leavisite, by David Elllis – review

More from Books

As the author of this wise, patient and delightful book wryly reminds us, Stephen Fry — who, of course, knows everything — has recently written F.R. Leavis off as a ‘sanctimonious prick’. The phrase is probably typical of the way that today’s literary intelligentsia caricatures this tragically lonely, embattled and complex figure. ‘Hairshirt paranoiac’ I’ve

Nijinsky, by Lucy Moore – review

More from Books

The first biography of Vaslav Nijinsky, which appeared in 1934, was written by his wife Romola with the help of two ghosts — the young Lincoln Kirstein and Little Blue Bird, an obliging spirit called up by a psychic medium to provide information from beyond the grave. Needless to say, the book wasn’t entirely accurate;

Bedford Park, by Bryan Appleyard – review

More from Books

Nothing in Bryan Appleyard’s Bedford Park betrays the fact that it is his first period novel: not its deft characterisations, its virtuoso dialogue, its dry and economical wit, or its choice of a narrator and material quite outside the author’s own experience. The 19th century is closing and the 20th is opening in a London

A Place in the Country, by W.G. Sebald – review

More from Books

Within a few years, and in four books — The Emigrants (1996), The Rings of Saturn (1998), Vertigo (1999) and Austerlitz (2001) — W. G. Sebald achieved a reputation as a major international author. He was tipped for the Nobel, seen to supply heartening proof that ‘greatness in literature is still possible’ (John Banville) and

Tales of Two Cities, by Jonathan Conlin – review

More from Books

In Jonathan Conlin’s Tales of Two Cities the little acknowledged but hugely significant histoire croisée of two rival metropoles gets a long overdue airing. For, like it or not, London and Paris would be much duller places if neither had deemed fit to discover the other. Oddly, up until now no historian has ever explored

Consolations of the Forest, by Sylvain Tesson – review

More from Books

In this book, the French writer Sylvain Tesson spends six months, mostly alone, in a log cabin in Siberia. ‘Cold, silence and solitude are conditions that tomorrow will be more valuable than gold,’ he tells us. So, Tesson grabs these things while they are still relatively cheap. He is, you might say, a modern-day Whitman

Sam Leith

The birth of modern Britain

Lead book review

‘Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce?’ asked Julian Barnes in A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. ‘No, that’s too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.’ Reading David Kynaston’s densely detailed new book

Amy Winehouse and the 27 Club, by Howard Sounes – review

As an early dedicated fan of the Doors, who ran away from boarding school just so that I could catch my idols playing the massive Isle of Wight festival (a gathering of the Hippie tribes that in retrospect marked the end of the peace ‘n love era) I approached this book with more than casual interest.

Anon’s Baby Song; a lullaby for your baby tonight

Writing, as I have done, about the Bodleian’s holdings of Jane Austen or Byron is all very well, but our most prolific author is Anon. He (or she) leaves his (or her) elusive  traces everywhere – in ancient papyrus fragments, clerkly rolls of the middle ages, early-verse anthologies, copperplate accounts of long lost estates. Or,

The fatuousness of a scientist. Steve Jones edition

It’s refreshing to hear an eminent scientist like Professor Steve Jones concede that their discipline has delivered less than it promised, and to hear him voice scepticism about the pace of technological development. Society’s reverence for the digital, the technological or the scientific often reaches unnerving degrees; so it’s instructive to hear someone at the

Professor Steve Jones: Why I think religion is a bad thing

Steve Jones is Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London. Some of his previous books include: The Language of Genes, Y: The Descent of Men, The Single Helix, and Darwin’s Island. Jones’ latest book is called The Serpent’s Promise: the Bible Retold by Science. The title suggests that Jones uses the Bible as a

Tom Sharpe nearly killed me

I was on a train when it happened. I was bent double with my head between my knees, gasping for air and unable to speak. The Surrey matriarch sitting opposite leant forward to ask me if she could help. I imagine she thought that I was choking, or perhaps suffering cardiac arrest. In fact, I

Exhibitions: Leon Kossoff, The Bay Area School

Exhibitions

Paint is but coloured mud, pace scientists and conservators, and it can be said that the human animal comes from mud and goes back to it. Thus are the activities of painting and being human linked at a fundamental level, which can be raised by consciousness to impressive heights. As the philosopher T.E. Hulme wrote,

Seals (Iona)

Poems

No angels listen when you cry out here, but seals rise up to see, and criticize perhaps, as you intone the omega (their favourite vowel) or the medical alpha (sticking your tongue out) for these gods of ocean. Words wouldn’t do. There are no consonants in the mouths of seals. They can appreciate only the

Has music died? If not, where are the new decent pop tunes?

Music

I am suffering, as we all do from time to time, from a shortage of decent new tunes. Of course, ‘suffering’ may be a slight exaggeration here. Very little physical pain has been involved. But research has shown that music obsessives need a constant upgrade of their personal tunebanks in order to perform at full

Radio review: Coronation Day Across the Globe

Radio

Coronation Day 1953 could have marked the end of radio as we know it. No one wanted to listen to the commentary from Westminster Abbey. Everyone wanted to see what was going on. Hearing could not, it was thought, be as effective an act of witness as viewing the glittering diamonds, the gleaming satin, the

The Straw Manikin

More from Books

after Goya The hooded penitents have passed – the shackled Nazarenos holding their long candles – and the altar boys, carrying the trappings of the Passion on their pillows: the hammer and nails, the crown of thorns, the chalice and the pliers; the soldiers’ flail, the soldiers’ dice. What shall we give him? The straw