The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
‘Aerial’ ballets were all the rage in late-Victorian London. It mattered little that they were more circus acts than actual ballets; their female stars, swinging from either a trapeze or sturdy ropes, were worshipped on a par with the greatest ballerinas — as in Angela Carter’s novel Nights at the Circus. I often wonder what
It’s a bit of a surprise to discover that my young nephews are huge fans of radio. Since Radio 4 abandoned programmes designed for children, and CBeebies disappeared from the airwaves, radio has become a kids-free zone. What on earth do they find to listen to? Why, of course, Radio 4 Extra, and especially the
There’s a game you have to play at the BBC and Jeremy Paxman plays it very well — which is why he is currently still the most famous Old Malvernian after C.S. Lewis whereas I’m way down the list at maybe fourth, fifth or sixth. The rules are very simple: no matter how great your
This week A Separation, Asghar Farhadi’s deceptively simple domestic drama, added the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film to its trophy case. Its success abroad has been attributed largely to its universally recognisable premise; unlike much Iranian cinema, Farhadi’s film feels modern, offering an intimate snapshot of social divisions in present-day Tehran. Most Western audiences
It was always William Wilkie Collins’s good luck — though in later life something of a humiliation — that he was dragged along on Dickens’s coat-tails — not least in this bicentennial ‘year of Dickens’. In December, the BBC will be showing a dramatisation of The Moonstone. T. S. Eliot (no less) called that tale
As schools are for education, so universities are for higher education. In a civilised society, children should leave school literate, numerate and with some knowledge of science, history and culture. But society also needs an elite educated to a higher level. Universities are for the preparation of the next generation of doctors, United Nations interpreters,
The British Library’s ‘Spoken Word’ series, drawing heavily on the BBC archives, has already shown quite a range — from Tennyson’s famously crackly reading of ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ to Scott Fitzgerald declaiming a speech from Othello. Now, it moves on to the short story and, despite the curious decision to include two tales
By a fine coincidence, two legendary icons of British art were being feted in London on the same evening last month, and both are primarily famous, to the public at least, for their depiction of the Queen. At the National Portrait Gallery, the director Sandy Nairne hosted a dinner to celebrate the portrait oeuvre of
In January 1992 a container filled with 7,200 yellow ducks and the same number each of blue turtles, red beavers and green frogs, blow-moulded out of plastic for American children at bathtime, broke loose in a storm on the deck of a container ship on its way from China and fell into the Pacific somewhere
Like the dyslexic Faustus who sold his soul to Santa, the life of John Dee was a black comedy of errors. His vain and vulgar efforts to harness the occult for material ends often rendered him ridiculous. But there is a darker tale in Dee’s work for the Tudor state: a story of dodgy dossiers,
Sofka Zinovieff’s absorbing first novel has two narrative voices. Maud is the English widow of Nikitas, whose death in a mysterious accident leads her to contact Antigone, the mother-in-law she has never met. A former Communist freedom fighter, Antigone was forced to leave Greece for the Soviet Union following the Greek civil war. She gave
He was a Persian aristocrat who struggled to make his country a democracy. Given to mood swings and sulks worthy of Achilles, Mohammed Mossadegh was born in June 1882 just a month before Britain bombarded and occupied Egypt. His formidable mother, Najm al-Saltaneh, belonged to the family of Qajar Shahs who ruled Iran from 1794
‘It may be hard to accept that a chaste teenage girl can end up in bed with the President of the United States on her fourth day in the White House.’ In 1962, 19-year-old Mimi Beardsley (pictured above) landed ‘the plummiest of summer jobs’, an internship in the White House press office. On day four,
In April 1982, as the Falklands War got underway, HMS Antrim steamed south through the Atlantic. On board was 28-year-old Lieutenant, Chris Parry. Parry kept a diary for ten weeks which recounted in vivid detail the action at sea and in the air, as well as daily life on board ship. 30 years later Down
The British Empire produced some great books. Both sides of the debate over the empire’s moral worth should be able to agree on that at least. Empire was a major subject the nineteenth century’s great essayists and historians. Macaulay’s History of England is underpinned by the assumption that the history of England was ‘emphatically the history
The English Civil War, the Civil Wars, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms: call them what you will, they are the most important and perhaps the most exciting period in British history and they should be at the core of the school curriculum throughout the UK. That is the conclusion I came to following a
New York — Call me an old curmudgeon, but it seems to me that the only way the description World Book Day would make any sense would be if, in some way, the world was brought together by a book — preferably on the same day. But for that to happen, J.K. Rowling would
March is a strangely active time in the book world. Like plants that have been slumbering through the cold winter, books are beginning to wake up and stir themselves into action for the joys of spring. Please indulge me with the slightly dippy analogy, as I think it’s surprisingly pertinent. After all, spring tends to
There is no stopping ‘the Inimitable’ in his bi-centenary year. The Duff Cooper Prize was awarded last night, and the winner was Becoming Dickens by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. The prize is awarded to the best work of history, biography or political science published in French or English in any given year; it is held at the French
Wilbur Smith is this week’s Shelf Lifer. He tells us which books make him cry, describes the party he wishes he could have attended and lets us in on a ‘highly rewarding but rather sticky experience.’ Apparently, his agent Charles Pick once told him “Write for yourself, and write about what you know best.” He
This week marks Lawrence Durrell’s centenary. Durrell was once the great white hope of British fiction, but the cult has lapsed since his sixties heyday. Richard Davenport-Hines recently reappraised the The Alexandria Quartet, Durrell’s most famous work. He wrote, ‘It is hard now to recapture the impact half a century ago of these novels’ heat, luxuriance
A ‘gigantic confidence trick’ — that is how Jeremy Paxman describes the British Empire. The first episode of the TV series which accompanies his book, Empire: What ruling the World Did to the British, aired last night. Paxman’s thesis can be reduced into a string of his trademark soundbites. British imperialism was a ‘protection racket’,
A new character emerged in popular fiction in the 1890s. He was intelligent, a master of disguise, accompanied by a faithful assistant and unorthodox in every way. But it wasn’t Sherlock Holmes. It was the cricketer — and amateur cracksman — A.J. Raffles. Indeed, Raffles could be seen as a dashing alter-ego to the sober consulting detective. The connection
John Steinbeck was born 110 years ago today. To mark the occasion, here, courtesy of the always intriguing Letters of Note, is a letter Steinbeck wrote to his son Thom, then a teenager. It speaks for itself. New York November 10, 1958 Dear Thom: We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from
Sometimes a usually toxic stereotype can play out harmlessly, charmingly even, before your eyes. It happened to me at Jewish Book Week (JBW) yesterday. I was in a queue at the bookshop, minding my own business as the couple ahead moved to the check-out. They were an odd pair at first glance. He was tall and dishevelled, his kippah
The first thing to tell you about Lars Iyer’s Dogma is that it is very funny. It didn’t make me laugh out loud on the tube, which seems to be the reviewer’s traditional stamp of approval for successfully comic novels, but this is partly because I didn’t read it on the tube. Had I read
It is 30 years since the Falklands war, and a flush of anniversary memoirs is being published. The best of the bunch is Down South, by former navy man Chris Parry. We’ll have an interview with Parry later this week; but, in the meantime, here’s Max Hastings (£), who made his name reporting on the
The actor Ed Stoppard is kicking off the year in some nice period costumes. One of our brightest young actors, he’s back at 165 Eaton Place in the new BBC Upstairs Downstairs (reviewed on page 60) playing the diplomat Sir Hallam Holland. It’s got gas masks, the Munich Crisis, cocktails, a dead pet monkey, the
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) cast a very long shadow over the 20th century, not least in England. Although he did not visit this country often, he apparently had a high regard for it, despite his somewhat sketchy knowledge of its contemporary painters. He once complained, ‘Why, when I ask about modern artists in England, am I