The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
In 1969 an author in his early thirties published his first book. The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters won the Duff Cooper prize, delighted the reading public, introduced them to the name of John Gross, and marked the beginning of what would be an illustrious and fascinating literary career. It ended with
Frank Rich loved it. ‘Noises Off,’ said the great N’Yawk critic, ‘is, was and always will be the funniest play written in my lifetime.’ Michael Frayn conceived the idea of writing a farce about farce while watching one of his early plays from the wings. The frantic hustle-bustle of the actors behind the scenes was
If Time Magazine declared 2011 the year of the protester, then it seems quite fitting that, in a public vote, the Galaxy Book Awards crowned Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman their book of the year. Touted as a modern day feminist call-to-arms, it is also the memoirs of a former music journalist turned Times
The English National Ballet’s performance of the Nutcracker was especially enchanting this year, but I left wondering what the story’s original author, E.T.A. Hoffmann would have made of it all. Hoffmann was long dead when his short story, Nussknacker und Mausekönig (The Nutcracker and the Mouse King) (1816) came to inspire the ballet a
Have you ever wondered how a Nobel Prize committee works? If so, then look no further than Swedish journalist Andreas Ekström, who has disinterred the 1961 literature panel’s minutes, the Guardian reports. There is little mystery: the judges convene to discuss nominees just as any other prize panel would, although with perhaps more self-regard than is customary.
The same question arises every year: what on earth to buy my uncle for Christmas? Crisis was averted in 2011 by the admirable Mark Forsyth, whose book The Etymologicon (Icon) is a jaunty stroll through idiomatic English, guaranteed to tickle the avuncular tendency. The Etymologicon was the sale of the season, so popular that bookshops
Amazon reported that Christmas Day was the ‘biggest ever day for Kindle downloads’. Evidently, this year, many people are going to begin to read eBooks. Shaking off the doom-and-gloom that a seller of printed books inevitably feels at such a prospect, I can’t help but notice the nice timing. All these people are trying out
New Year’s Eve, among its other distinctions, is the date when copyright terms tend to expire: with the beginning of each new year, at least in this country, the public domain gets a little larger. In 2012, this has had a couple of effects in the world of digital bookchat. One was a flurry of
This week, Paul Torday tells us about his fear of appearing on the stage, and reveals what he’d put on the GCSE English Literature syllabus. His new novel, The Legacy of Hartlepool Hall, is published today. 1) As a child what did you read under the covers? I used to read the Narnia books by
The business of cartooning is in a pretty perilous state now that we have lost the captain of the ship. Ronald Searle was a cartoonist who could also draw — a rare thing. After the war, he became famous for a series of drawings he did for ‘Lilliput’ called St Trinian’s. The girls Searle created
E-books can be a strange, parochial beast. As any Kindle-user will know, the content of the Kindle store often varies wildly in terms of design and reading experience. Classics suffer especially from this. A lot of out-of-copyright classics have been digitized by volunteers and are available free, but devoid of any notes, substantial chapter headings
Tessa Hadley is an underrated contemporary novelist; perhaps that will change in time. Her latest collection of short stories, Married Love, was serialised in the New Yorker last autumn. The stories I read there were hugely enjoyable though unsparing insights into the private and often loveless lives of others. Their content confirmed my suspicion that
Devout readers of the Spectator will know Marcus Berkmann well. He is a regular book reviewer and writes a column about music that no one else listens to — he admits as much in public, and does so without a shade of embarrassment. He views the horrendous prospect of ageing in the same breezy manner.
For those seeking refuge from the Olympics, Andrew Lambirth picks out the exhibition highlights of 2012: Freud, Hockney, Turner, Zoffany, Lely, Picasso… In the coming year, when the country will be besieged by all things Olympic, and many people of taste and discernment will (I am assured) be fleeing to spots less barbarous and sports-obsessed,
Michael Grandage says farewell to the Donmar with a farewell play. Richard II tells of a glorious but profligate king compelled to hand over his realm to a workmanlike, Steady Eddie successor. Entirely devoid of romantic interest, and with only teeny-weeny roles for women, this is not a show-stopping Shakespeare favourite. It appeals to specialists
Bernard Levin once wrote an article in the Times called ‘But seriously, how can anyone compare Verdi with Wagner?’ (or something very like that). I can’t remember the article in detail, but its drift was ‘No one can seriously compare them’, something that I had and have always felt. Yet there is the temptation: they
Since the Home Service was relaunched as Radio 4 in September 1967, the station has established itself almost as the ‘heartbeat’ of the BBC. The chance to direct, shape and enhance such a treasure-house of programmes — ranging from Farming Today to ElvenQuest via Something Understood, Classic Serial and The World Tonight — must be
The most watched programme on television this past year was the royal wedding, which is hardly surprising, since we had the day off to watch it. Bagehot said that royalty was the institution that ‘riveted’ the nation, by which he meant bound together rather than fascinated. However, strange as it may seem, most people in
Barry Cryer, defiantly old-fashioned in a dinner suit and red-velvet waistcoat, sits in a director’s chair and addresses his audience as if they are devoted friends. Most of them are: every joke he tells is met with affectionate laughter of a kind given only to national treasures. Butterfly Brain, which is currently touring, is structured
Philip Hensher gives a critical insider’s view of the Creative Writing industry It has always been a challenge to get a novel or poem published. Twenty years ago, I went about it in the traditional way. I read a hell of a lot of books. I did a couple of literary degrees. I got an
There are moments and places in history that one would have paid good money to avoid, and wartime Lisbon was one of them. For those rich enough to afford the Pan Am flying ‘Clipper’ to New York it at least offered a route of escape, but for those thousands of refugees from Nazi Europe left
‘The first monster that an audience has to be scared of is the film-maker. They have to feel in the presence of someone not confined by the normal rules of decency.’ Thus decreed Wes Craven, that maestro of horror who gave us, among other gems, The Last House on the Left (1972), in which a
I opened Futurescapes with anticipation, knowing Tim Richardson to be a forceful commentator, and landscape architects to be in dire need of an articulate champion. The mixed marriage of ‘landscape’ and ‘architecture’ has always been an unfortunate union, blessed by the founding of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1899, whilst Britain followed suit
As a kid growing up in Scotland in the 1950s, Dennis O’Donnell was aware of ‘loonies’, and the men in white coats who were supposed to take them away. Then, as a student, he became one of the men in white coats. At first, he thought he’d find himself in a world of Beckettian absurdity
Why have we forgotten John Bright? In his day he was a massive political celebrity. He could command audiences of 150,000, delivering thrilling impromptu speeches night after night. Perhaps, as Bill Cash suggests, Bright’s eclipse has to do with the decline of conviction politics and public alienation from parliament. Or perhaps, as the novelist Anthony
Juan E. Méndez has a fantastic CV. Mercilessly tortured in Argentina, the country of his birth, when 30, he is now, four decades on, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, in other words, its chief investigator. In between, he has worked for Human Rights Watch for 15 years and been the United Nations First Special
Even by Hollywood standards, Carrie Fisher is pretty crazy. She was born a Hollywood princess, and remembers her parents — Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher — as ‘not really people in the traditional sense’. Nor, obviously, was her stepmother Elizabeth Taylor, let alone her friend Michael Jackson. And nor is she herself, shackled, as she
While the Kindle continues to solve storage problems for the bibliophile on the go, it is the iPad that is actually changing what books are and stretching our definitions of reading. Here is my selection of the ten best iBooks released for it this year: The Waste Land To anyone unconvinced about the appeal of
Alexander McCall Smith shows no sign of tiring, which will come as good or bad news depending on your view. He has numerous titles out next year. There is yet another instalment of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detection Agency: The Limpopo Agency of Private Detection will be published in hardback on March 1. No further