The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
As Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan opens at the National Gallery, Daisy Dunn looks at his famous Renaissance biographer, Giorgio Vasari. Giorgio Vasari’s book The Lives of the Most Eminent Artists, Sculptors, and Architects, commonly abbreviated to The Lives is not what one might expect of a history, or a biography,
This month, Mike Bartlett’s new play, 13, opens at the National. It follows the success of his play Earthquakes in London. At Paines Plough, George Perrin and James Grieve unveil the prototype for a revolutionary new theatre space, a portable in-the-round auditorium. And, at the Arcola, Tom Atkins brings us How The World Began, which
The regally refurbished St. Ermin’s Hotel in Westminster hosted a party this evening in honour of Robert Hardman and his new book, Our Queen. Hardman, a veteran royal correspondent, broke from the exhausting canapés (which were inspired by George VI and the Queen Mother’s hearty wedding breakfast – lobsters, black pudding, chicken and an array of fish), to
The Man Booker committee has appointed Peter Stothard as the chairman of next year’s judges. What a dreary decision. I’ve nothing against Sir Peter Stothard; the TLS is a fine, upstanding publication — although whether it can be said to ‘zip along’ is a matter of taste. No, it’s more that in picking someone so literary
Tomorrow is E-Day: the publication of Umberto Eco’s latest novel, The Prague Cemetery. The book concerns the fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion and how they were still accepted even after being exposed as a fabrication in 1921. This is natural territory for Eco the semiotician. He told the Times (£): ‘I always had an interest
The Jam were once described as the ‘last great English singles band’. For a group that released such classic chart-toppers as ‘Going Underground’ and ‘Town Called Malice’ that might seem fair enough, but it grievously underestimates their musical canon. The quality of their output on LPs, B-sides and even on recordings that were never released
‘I have to apologise to Jane Austen for involving her beloved Elizabeth in a murder investigation but this fusion of my two enthusiasms – for the novels of Jane Austen and for writing detective stories – has given me great pleasure which I hope will be shared by my readers.’ When you’re over 90 and
I’m standing alongside Angela Rosengart, in a room full of portraits Picasso drew of her, when something spooky happens. Out of the corner of my eye, the old woman beside me becomes the young woman on the wall. It’s over in an instant, but it’s still strange and rather wonderful. For a moment, Frau Rosengart
For far too long, John Martin (1789–1854) has been dismissed as ‘Mad’ Martin, the prophet of doom. In the eyes of many, this unacademic painter was a grotesque curiosity, producing colossal pictures of apocalyptic destruction, crude dramas of catastrophe and tumult, much to the delight of the populace. The mere fact that he was so
Have you ever felt the urge to rush backstage, brushing aside the objections of minders, and introduce yourself to a favourite actor? Or perhaps you’ve fantasised about dressing up in the old clothes of a Hollywood star? Don’t blush and walk away! We can reveal exclusively that you have nothing to be ashamed of. On
One of the useful things about having teen and near-teenage kids is discovering what the vulgar masses watch. Last week, for example, during half-term, I got to see two hugely popular programmes which I would probably never have bothered watching on my own: Undercover Boss USA (Channel 4, Wednesday) and The X Factor (ITV, Saturday,
What’s the best way for a dictator to fall, wondered Owen Bennett-Jones on Saturday night’s Archive on 4 (Radio 4, produced by Simon Watts). Is sending the deposed dictator into exile better for the recovery of the abused nation than execution? Would a domestic trial lead more quickly to justice than an international tribunal? These
There was a time when ‘classical music’ meant something you could put your finger on. It denoted the musical period between roughly 1750 and 1800, when Haydn, Mozart and many others wrote symphonies, concertos and instrumental pieces with a sense of form and grace that were likened to the art and architecture of Classical Greece
The term ‘fusion’ is a trendy one, which hints at the interaction of ingredients from different backgrounds in many areas of today’s culture. In dance, it often refers to the pairing of different genres, such as modern dance or hip-hop and ballet, or to the coupling of a distinctively western choreographic idiom with an equally
Three films for you this week, amazingly, and they are all at the smaller, independent end of the spectrum because I’ve had my fill of mainstream blockbusters, at least for the minute, and probably know all I will ever need to know about evil villains who wish to take over the world. (Just take it
Rameau is the great baroque master who has yet to be properly rediscovered, at any rate in the UK. It isn’t easy to see why, when one contemplates the Handel-mania that has been sweeping the land for the past quarter-century. Rameau is at least as melodically fertile, his scoring is extraordinary and often extraordinarily lovely,
Long may it lie in ruins. Wilton’s Music Hall, in the East End of London, is a wondrous slice of Victoriana which exploits its failing grandeur to the max. All visitors are implored to find a couple of quid for the restoration effort. But decay and dilapidation are the best things about it. Every wrinkled
The title of Boris’s forthcoming book on the people of London claims that it is ‘the city that made the world’. Whoa back, steady on, now. Surely Boris means Rome, centre of a vast ancient empire, not to mention the worldwide Catholic Church? When the poet Martial described the opening of the Colosseum in ad
Our regular reviewers were asked to name the books they’d most enjoyed reading this year. More choices next week • A.N. Wilson Rachel Campbell-Johnson’s Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer (Bloomsbury, £25) is one of those rare biographies which is a work of literature: beautifully written, overwhelmingly moving. A great art critic,
A new book by Ronald Blythe is something of an event. In recent years the bard of Akenfield has mostly published collections of articles, which makes At the Yeoman’s House (Enitharmon £15) especially welcome. It’s an autobiographical meditation on an ancient dwelling-house set in flint-strewn fields: Bottengoms Farm on the Essex-Suffolk border, where Blythe lives.
There are people sent to depress us, and prominent among them is Mark Steyn, whose speciality is apocalyptic predictions. Following his bestseller America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, which was about the collapse of all of the Western world with the exception of the United States, he is now predicting
Penelope Lively’s new novel traces the consequences of a London street mugging. As the culprit sprints away with a handbag, the victim, Charlotte, a retired widow, falls and cracks her hip. Her daughter, Rose, personal assistant to the once-eminent historian Lord Peters, is meant to be in Manchester to help her employer give a talk
In one Capuchin monastery in Sicily, the so-called Palermo Catacombs, locals used to buy a niche where their mummified corpse would one day stand erect, clothed and on display to visitors, the way we might now buy a burial plot. Would-be purchasers would pay a visit to select their niche and stand in it to
Jonathan Franzen. David Foster Wallace. Jeffrey Eugenides. Giant, slow-moving, serious writers, notching up about a novel per decade, all with their sights set on The Big One, The Beast, The Great American Novel. Wallace pulled it off, undoubtedly, with Infinite Jest in 1996, before ending it all by suicide in 2008 — a tragic loss.
‘Conjuring the Literary Dead’ is the sub-title of this outlandish, sometimes beguiling book. Its editor, Dale Salwak, coaxed 19 writers — of the status of Margaret Drabble, Francis King, Jay Parini and Alan Sillitoe — to write essays in which they imagine speaking to dead authors who intrigue them. The resulting chapters are often inquisitive,
There is always a special risk, says Alexandra Fuller, when putting real-life people into books. Not all those who recognised themselves in her terrific memoir of 1960s and 1970s white-ruled Africa, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, had appreciated their transformation. The author’s own mother, Nicola Fuller, was disquieted to find herself as a
In the 26 years since the publication of her highly acclaimed first novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has proved herself a writer of startling invention, originality and style. Her combination of the magical and the earthy, the rapturous and the matter-of-fact, is unique. It is a strange and felicitous gift, as
A pleasingly tactile canvas-like cover adorns this heavy book and proclaims its purpose; the boldly brushed illustration is a detail from ‘Mauve Primulas on a Table’ painted in January 1928 when the artist was in his mid-fifties. He wrote of a ‘painting orgy’ and how he suffered ‘tennis-elbow from holding my brush for 8 hours
America has always idolised its entrepreneurs, even when it has proved a thankless task — if you can glamorise Bill Gates, you can glamorise anyone. Especially Steve Jobs, whose death from pancreatic cancer has been greeted as the loss of Mammon’s Messiah. Is any of this justified? Well, yes and no. Jobs did as much