The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
One of the reprinted reviews which make up the bulk of this book opens: ‘I vividly remember when I first read George Orwell. It was at Eton.’ How would it sound, I mused, if I began a review: ‘I vividly remember when I first read George Orwell. It was at Colchester Grammar School.’ It would
Imagine a piece of land: sandy, roughly rectangular, and about the size of the Isle of Wight. It is surrounded on three sides by desert and hostile neighbours, and on the fourth by the sea. Although almost 1.7 million live in this space, nothing except essentials is allowed in or out. It’s under blockade. By
The contending versions of T.S. Eliot on display in the latest bumper instalment of his collected letters are practically legion. To begin with there is the hieratic, if not downright priestly, Eliot, soberly petitioning Father D’Arcy, the correspondence columns of the Church Times, or studious clergymen who may be flattered into taking charge of his
As someone slightly older than Al Alvarez, and also a regular swimmer — although not in the ice-edged Hampstead Heath pools into which he dived for over 60 years — I was initially disappointed by this book. For the first half it repeats too often the pleasures of extremity-numbing, cold, outdoor swimming when one is
It’s a new version of the Yellow Peril. The Chinese are taking over the world, starting with the nasty bits, like Burma, Sudan and Iran, which we are boycotting for all kinds of high-minded reasons. Two Spanish journalists, Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araújo, have returned from an exhausting trip round the globe to tell
Hermione Ranfurly wrote two books. One was called The Ugly One. The other, the first, was called To War with Whitaker. Its success came as a surprise to her, but to none of her legion of friends. It chronicled her war. Recently married to Dan, a Northern Irish peer whose father had lost almost everything,
It is a truth universally acknowledged that secrets are toxic and break up families. Today we look back smugly on the bad old days of the stiff upper lip when skeletons were kept firmly locked in their cupboards. We think we know better. The English, once famous for their secretiveness and reserve, have become addicted
The question of who is going to buy EMI Classics has arisen once again in the past few days with the collapse of HMV. This followed on from the collapse of Comet, Jessops and Blockbuster, the film rental chain — all indicative of a fundamental shift in our purchasing habits. A spokesman for HMV, while
A triple thick dose of chicklit at Hampstead. Amelia Bullmore’s good-natured comedy has three girls sharing a student house in 1983. Those were the days. Back then we received ‘grants’ to attend university, i.e., we were paid to look occupied, like job-seekers and politicians. I’m glad to report that Bullmore accurately evokes the culture and
You would think that asking for and receiving the names of the judges of a set of BBC awards would be a straightforward matter. The corporation’s own awards guidelines, available on its website, demand transparency. So it was surprising that when I asked who chose the winners of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, thinking
In her Times column on Monday (£), Libby Purves valiantly attempted to fit together two things that were obviously on her mind. Discussing Pride and Prejudice, which is 200 years old this week, in relation to the modern permutations of marriage was sure to be a delicate operation. Purves argued that the book’s appeal lies
So, that Gerald Scarfe cartoon, then. I don’t like it much, but then I like cartoons which make me laugh, (and especially so if they have animals in them). McLachlan, Honeysett, Rowson et al – and on a daily basis of course, Matt. I’m always at a bit of a loss with those big cartoons
Hilary Mantel has won the Costa Book Award of the Year for Bring up the Bodies. It saw off contenders: Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner (the children’s book winner), The Innocents by Francesca Segal (the first novel award), The Overhaul by Kathleen Jamie (the poetry prize) and Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary and
Google has mapped North Korea. The Washington Post has useful selection of before and after images. Compare the images for North Korea with a map of the county in which you live and you will get a sense of North Korea’s poverty. Britain is debating the merits of cutting the rail journey time between London and Brum
Abraham Lincoln, in Walt Whitman’s celebrated phrase, contained multitudes. M.E. Synon showed yesterday quite how many there might have been. There is evidence of prejudice, callousness and corruption. Yet there is also the 13th amendment (1865): the basis, whatever the wider context of its adoption, of Lincoln’s right to be called the Great Emancipator. Steven
This post by M.E. Synon is the first in a series about Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln. A counter-argument will be published tomorrow, followed by a comparison of screen and literary adaptations of the last months of Abraham Lincoln’s life. Last week in Dublin there was the European premiere of Spielberg’s film on Lincoln. Why Dublin? Because the star
David Mitchell slaps a big hand on his head. ‘I look back at that kid and think, what were you thinking! How dare you, idiot!’ He is talking about his recklessness as a young writer. ‘Yeah I’ll stop it halfway, five times, and start it again. I’ll pretend I’m a Chinese woman living up a
This essay was shortlisted for the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize. I took a Valium on the plane to Poland. I had run into an old friend at the airport and he gave it to me. I hadn’t planned on taking it, until I heard the girl next to me say to her neighbour ‘So, do
It’s the size of a Hackney bedsit but the ambience is cosily expensive. Sonia Friedman’s tiny office above the Duke of York’s Theatre in St Martin’s Lane has warm, pinkish lighting and elegant armchairs with thick, deep cushions. The dark wallpaper is obscured by framed posters of hit West End shows. Sprawled across the sofa
When collectors want to purchase an expensive work of art, they contact their lawyers to write up a contract with the dealer, spelling out pages of contingencies and indemnity clauses. ‘We have a steady stream of business writing agreements for collectors and galleries,’ said Jo Backer Laird, a Manhattan arts lawyer and a former general
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Estorick Collection and it is fitting that Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964), one of the most consistently popular of the museum’s artists, should inaugurate the celebrations. Although Morandi’s trademark still-life paintings of bottles and jars have been regularly shown in Britain (the last major show was at the Tate
Steerpike is back in this week’s magazine. As ever, here is your preview: ‘While losses mount at the Guardian, the editor, Alan Rusbridger, has fallen in love. He keeps ordering the sub-editors to find space for articles about his new Fazioli piano. Cheeky responses have appeared on the website. ‘We always wondered how you filled
New Yorker music critic Alex Ross published The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century five years ago, earning himself the Guardian First Book Award and a finalist citation for the Pulitzer Prize. Now London’s Southbank Centre is turning the book into a year of concerts, talks, film screenings, exhibitions and even a three-part
The first competition had 30,000 entries; the second more than 74,000. How many will be attracted to this year’s 500 Words challenge, launched by Chris Evans on his Radio 2 morning show on Monday? It’s open to any young person — under the age of 13 — to come up with a winning short story.
`The older I get, the less tolerant I become of being treated by television like a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. No offence meant to Dr Jago Cooper but, if I’m going to consider spending a valuable hour of my fast-diminishing lifespan watching a documentary about Lost Kingdoms of South America, the very last
I cannot tell you about all the things Steven Spielberg can and cannot do. I cannot tell you, for example, if he can make decent goblets from Quality Street wrappers or funny teeth from orange peel, as I can, but what I am able to say is this: he knows how to tell a story;
There is only one test that a performance of Verdi’s Otello has to pass: do you come out of the theatre drained, desperate at the suffering that human beings who love one another can nonetheless inflict, so that they torture or even kill the object of their love? Shakespeare’s play is about other things besides,
Meet Fenton. He’s a psycho. A year or so back he was banged up for murdering a preppy teenage girl in one of America’s less-enlightened southern states. Enter a campaigning congressman, John Daniels, who hopes to teach Fenton to read and write and to help him make something of his ruined life. The opening of
All my life I’ve wanted to be able to write confidently about orchestral performances and I think I may have cracked it. So forgive me while I show off for a paragraph. In the last movement of Bruckner’s Seventh, Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra capture the jauntiness of the opening theme; there’s