The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
For more than 40 years, Scottish Ballet has been one of the most vibrant and interesting companies on the UK dance scene. It is a ballet company born of a well considered vision and the desire to prove that there can be good ballet without grandiose spectacle. Indeed, for many years it has been notable
I take no pleasure in saying this but the director of the National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner, appears to have lost his sense of propriety. Or possibly the balance of his mind. He’s asked John Hodge (author of the Trainspotting screenplay) to write a sitcom about the Great Terror. And, rather than bunging it in the
As a major admirer of all writer/director Andrea Arnold’s previous work — Wasp, Red Road, Fish Tank — I was looking forward to her version of Wuthering Heights more than I can say, and? Wow! Or, at least, mostly ‘wow!’ It is a ‘wow’ with a few reservations. It is two thirds of a ‘wow’,
I only very recently began going to live Met relays in the cinema, but if you can get in it’s very well worthwhile. In Cambridge, where the sound is so-so, as I discovered going to Siegfried, there is no hope of getting in except on the day booking starts. In Huntingdon, where the sound is
It occurs to me sometimes that this column is, essentially, one long and painful confessional. I admit to enjoying all this unfashionable and uncool music so others don’t have to. ‘Ah, the man who likes Supertramp,’ someone once said to me at a party, just before he was stabbed by an unknown assailant. No one
A further selection of our reviewers’ favourite reading in 2011 Richard Davenport-Hines Amidst the din, slogans and panic of modern publishing, my cherished books are tender, calm and achieve a surpassing eloquence by dint of tightly controlled reticence. Anthony Thwaite’s Late Poems (Enitharmon, £10) are written by a man of 80. Each of them is
The Go-Between was L.P. Hartley’s best novel, Joseph Losey’s best film, and probably Harold Pinter’s best screenplay. In the novel, the Norfolk house and estate are fairly incidental but, as Christopher Hartop’s charming and generously illustrated Norfolk Summer: Making The Go-Between (John Adamson, £12.99) reminds us, they dominate the film. As a local historian and
Cross the soaring Foyle Bridge from the East and take the route to Donegal. Shortly before you cross the border — now completely imperceptible — you will find the grand, imposing gates to a country house. As you descend the drive, the hum of traffic subsides and the years, centuries, roll back. Had it been
Basil Peyton-Crumbe is a multi-millionaire landowner. An embattled man known to all, even his dogs, as ‘Banger’, he claims to have despatched at least 41,000 pheasants with the cheap old 12-bore he’s had since childhood. Shooting pheasants, he believes, is ‘an exquisite accomplishment’, as complex as writing a sonata or designing a cathedral. On the
The novels of Jane Austen have much in common with traditional detective fiction. It is an affinity that P. D. James has herself explored, notably in her essay ‘Emma Considered as a Detective Story’, which she included as an appendix to her memoir, Time to Be in Earnest. Both types of fiction operate within enclosed
Emily ‘Fido’ Faithfull, a stout, plain, clever Victorian, founder-member of the feminist Langham Place group, manager of the ground-breaking Victoria Press which extends employment possibilities for women, has her story lightly fictionalised in The Sealed Letter. The action starts with the return from a posting to Malta of Fido’s erstwhile best friend, Helen Codrington, a
If David Cameron and his friends wish to know why they and their policies are so despised by some Conservatives of high intellect and principle, they should read Robin Harris. His book is a marvel of concision, lucidity and scholarship, with penetrating things to say about Peel, Disraeli, Salisbury, Baldwin, Churchill, Macmillan and the rest.
‘Of making many books there is no end’, particularly when the subject is Queen Elizabeth II. It is less than ten years since Ben Pimlott and Sarah Bradford independently produced authoritative and excellent biography-centred books on the Queen. Since then a fair number of minor studies have appeared. Can enough have happened in the meantime,
This is a raw, untidy, ragged book. Well, grief is all of those things. On the other hand, Didion wrote about the death of her husband in an iconic memoir, A Year of Magical Thinking, which apart from being raw was none of them. So she knows how it can be done. That book was
It is where cookery is involved that tele-vision gives perhaps the greatest succour to the book trade. After Jennifer Paterson’s death in 1999, the remaining ‘Fat Lady’ barrelled into view with Clarissa and the Countryman, Clarissa and the King’s Cookbook, as a gamekeeper in an episode of Absolutely Fabulous and as presenter for a documentary
With all the advances of science, we may be no nearer to understanding ourselves than before, says Anthony Daniels — but we shouldn’t dismiss the possibility outright Some years ago I had a patient who believed that his neighbours, unskilled workers like himself, had developed an electronic thought-scanner whose antennae they could, and did, direct
The Divinity School at the Bodleian library was the setting for the Clutag Press‘s 10th birthday party celebrations this evening. Several of Clutag’s authors from down the years convened to read excerpts of their work to a large public audience. Andrew Motion was the star attraction, although you wouldn’t have known that from his unassuming
Edward IV was a conflicted man. He was a prodigious boozer and wencher, and a voracious reader and thinker. The bon vivant founded the English Royal Library: an assortment of illuminated books from England and continental Europe, some of which were bound before the Norman Conquest. It was a treasury of 100s of years of
A change from the usual format this week, as it is Armistice Day. This clip is taken from a documentary made in conjunction with Simon Armitage’s 2008 war collection, The Not Dead. The veteran is quoting from Armitage’s poem, ‘The Malaya Emergency’. It speaks for itself. Later today, Radio Four’s afternoon play will be devoted
P.D. James has already said a great deal about her love of Austen, her love of the mystery genre and her new book Death Comes to Pemberley. She was in London earlier this evening, talking again about how her enthusiasms became manifest in a book. She is a self-effacing and hugely erudite speaker; a natural
Next off the shelf is actor Tom Hollander. He tells us what children ought to read at school, which party from literature he’d most like to attend, and that his dream is to play Victor Hugo’s most tragic hero. The first episode of the new series of ‘Rev.’, in which he stars, airs tonight at 9pm on
‘Christopher Hitchens in conversation with Stephen Fry’ this wasn’t — Hitchens had been struck down with pneumonia. No matter, ‘Stephen Fry and friends on the life, loves and hates of Christopher Hitchens’ at the South Bank didn’t disappoint. Sean Penn was the first to offer his memories, fittingly complete with cigarette – an irony it
Do you read at mealtimes? And if so, what? The fact you’re looking at this blog in the first place leads me to believe you may be a fan of books. And while there is the odd person around who doesn’t like food, they are just that – odd. Surely most of us would agree
Literary festivals are a very big deal in India, if Vikram Seth is to be believed. Seth made an impromptu appearance at the Mumbai literary festival last week. “The whole thing was pretty chancy. I was supposed to be in England for the launch of The Rivered Earth yesterday. I was in Mumbai for the
Jane Asher is second in the hot seat. She tells us how to get children reading; who she would have a literary fling with and what exactly would make her end a friendship. 1) What are you reading at the moment? Inspired by seeing her interviewed recently, I’m catching up with Diana Athill’s collected memoirs:
The four-hundredth anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible has produced some great books. Almost all aspects have been covered: the general histories of Melvyn Bragg and Gordon Campbell ranged over the politics and history, while David Crystal’s Begat showed how its idioms and phrases have percolated through our language. Now, in The
Back on the mainland after a magical week on Jura* and, frankly, reacquainting oneself with whatever’s been happening in the rest of the world is a pretty grim business. Must be done however, so expect a measure of catch-up blogging here soon. What happened last week that mattered? *Should you be tempted to visit the
Yesterday, American bookstore Barnes & Noble launched its latest crusade against the Kindle. At a special conference at its New York headquarters, it unveiled the ‘Nook’ tablet to a raucous fanfare. The Bookseller reports that “everything about the press conference was an aggressive counter-punch to its main rival and its tactics”. The Kindle was compared to a
Richard Bradford styled his biography of Martin Amis as ‘The biography’, an odious gesture that would tempt fate on even the busiest day. Are there any scoops? With the exception of a few mild indiscretions from Christopher Hitchens — no, there are not. Early in the piece, Bradford thanks Amis for his ‘co-operation’, which amounted to five