Culture

Culture

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

High hopes

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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

Lloyd Evans

Blood-stained humour

Theatre

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

Bleak and bold

Cinema

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’,

Skirting the sensational

Opera

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

Books of the Year | 12 November 2011

More from Books

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

Bookends: About a boy

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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

The legacies of Jennifer Johnston

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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

Bird Brain by Guy Kennaway

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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

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

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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

The Conservatives: A History by Robin Harris

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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.

The Diamond Queen by Andrew Marr

More from Books

‘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,

Susan Hill

Blue Night by Joan Didion

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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

A History of English Food by Clarissa Dickson Wright

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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

The Brain is Wider Than the Sky by Bryan Appleyard

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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

A mark of respect

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

Shining light on a dimly lit world

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

The art of fiction: Armistice edition

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

A woman with a cause or two

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

Shelf Life: Tom Hollander

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

An evening for Christopher Hitchens

‘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

Reading more than just the menu

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

Vikram Seth shows the way

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

Shelf Life: Jane Asher

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:

A quirky dish

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

Alex Massie

Back to the Mainland

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

Watch this space, Amazon

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

Briefing note: Richard Bradford’s Martin Amis biography

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