The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
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
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
Frances Ha will make many spit ‘Frances…Bah!’ but I won’t be among them. Yes, it is rather kooky, and highly self-conscious, with its New Wave references and its Woody Allen influences (it’s a serious, black-and-white, Manhattan comedy), but it’s also sweet, endearing, touching, and features proper women you can actually believe in, and who aren’t
West End producers are itching to get their hands on the new show at the Bush. Mama Mia’s director, Phyllida Lloyd, takes charge of a script written by the Torchwood actress Cush Jumbo about the world’s first black female celebrity. Josephine Baker was born to wow the crowds. A child cabaret artiste from St Louis,
There has been much positive comment about the rehang of the Tate’s permanent collection, which sees a welcome return to the great tradition of the chronological hang and thus gives the visitor a chance to see the development of British art from 1545 to today. At last we are permitted a rest from themed displays
‘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’
When I was in my late twenties I discovered the joy of drinking alone. Well, perhaps ‘joy’ is putting it too strongly. I’d been thrown out of the flat I shared with one of my closest friends from university after a series of drunken rows about his social-climbing girlfriend. I was living in a converted
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
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 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
Richard Strauss’s operatic swansong Capriccio made an elegant and untaxing conclusion to the Royal Opera’s season. It was done in concert, but there was a fair amount of acting, more from some of the participants than others. Renée Fleming as the Countess, who feels she has to choose between a poet and a composer, wrung
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
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
One more anniversary, one more cache of commemorative books. This time we are celebrating the half-millennium since Niccolò Machiavelli produced his notorious work, The Prince. He wrote it after a significant career blip in 1512, when the Florentine Republic fell and the Medici regained power. Machiavelli was not merely sacked from his job — secretary
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
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
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
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
Edward Jay Epstein is an American investigative journalist, now in his late seventies, who has spent at least half a century trying to find answers to the troubling theories and nagging questions that always swirl around notorious crimes. The more famous the crime, the harder it is to get at the truth, especially if the
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
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
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
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
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
Wadjda is the first feature-length film to come out of Saudi Arabia, and was shot by the country’s first female director – but those aren’t the only things that are great about it, says Deborah Ross. It’s also ‘fascinating, involving, moving, and an entirely excellent film in its own right’. The story might be simple,
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
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
I sincerely hope you’re not watching television. With the glorious summer sun we’re having, you should be having picnics and swims, not sitting in front of a screen. So this is my recommended viewing for the week: nothing. Get out. Still, if you must look for something, why not look for shows about looking? There
Wadjda is the first feature-length film to come out of Saudi Arabia, and was shot by the country’s first female director, and although people will talk about how it breaks boundaries and how pioneering it is, that’s not what you most need to know. What you most need to know is that it’s fascinating, involving,