The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Fay Maschler has written the Bookends column in this week’s magazine. Here it is for readers of this blog. Sticky at Christmas, packed in serried rows around a plastic twig in an oval-ended paper-wrapped box with a picture of a camel train; dates in childhood were exotic. The mystery words Deglet Noor were as sweet
As a pleasant distraction from a busy work schedule, I’ve been reading a recent collection of twenty essays (or are they short stories?) about death. Edited by David Shields and Bradford Murrow, The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death approaches that tall, dark stranger from a variety of perspectives. David Gates opens the series with a
The worth of long words in children’s books (the comments thread is the main bit). Academic criticism: still worth reading. A long view of librarianship. Words only used in exam answers. The aftermath of the great Oxford comma blogstorm. An American view of the questions English newspapers ask Alan Hollinghurst.
The Booktrust has cancelled the John Llewellyn Rhys prize this year because it is suffering a ‘lack of funds’. £13m was cut from the Booktrust’s annual grant from the Department of Education was cut earlier in the year and the organisation has been forced into retrenchment. Now, it is a pity that this widely respected
Book reviewers are, on the whole, a polite bunch, and rarely say what they really think. Instead they use a clever code, whereby “her most experimental novel yet” means “an utter mess”, “exhaustive and scholarly” = “I fell asleep”, “draws heavily on previous studies” = “the scoundrel has copied and pasted his entire book”, and
The text that codified the old legend of the learned man who sells his soul to the devil, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is one of the most influential plays in English history. It’s also one of the worst, from the point of view of the director. Scenes of intense religious struggle are intercut with the
Writer Giles Milton talks to Daisy Dunn about the relative who inspired both his family’s artistic passions and the narrative of his most recent book, Wolfram: The Boy who went to War, reviewed in the Spectator last month by Hester Vaizey. You note that the book grew out of many hours of interviews. How long
Once upon a time there was a future. H.G. Wells had seen it. Apparently it was going to be naked. Well that’s certainly the impression one gets from the dollops of sex folded into David Lodge’s novel on Wells’ life, A Man of Parts. I call the book a novel because it’s called one on
The Telegraph has an exclusive extract from Alan Hollingshurst’s The Stranger’s Child. And Hari Kunzru reviews the novel for the Guardian. ‘As an accounting with class and history, Hollinghurst’s novel will inevitably be compared to Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Ian McEwan’s Atonement. It is at its strongest when teasing out
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), diminutive aristocrat and radical artist, was roundly travestied in John Huston’s 1952 film Moulin Rouge, and at once entered the popular imagination as an atrociously romanticised figure doomed for early death. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), diminutive aristocrat and radical artist, was roundly travestied in John Huston’s 1952 film Moulin Rouge, and
How should we measure the value of a work of art? Let’s take, for example, Michelangelo’s statue of David in the Accademia in Florence. How should we measure the value of a work of art? Let’s take, for example, Michelangelo’s statue of David in the Accademia in Florence. The 17ft marble figure attracts a huge
Michael Tanner says that the Wigmore Hall, celebrating its 110th birthday, combines Edwardian grandeur with contemporary appeal The Wigmore Hall is so expert in advertising itself with taste and discretion that it manages to give the impression, simultaneously, of belonging to a previous era and thus having all the charm of the Edwardian age at
The resident ravens of the Tower of London seem to croak a little louder these days. A few yards from their gathering spot, a golden eagle, traditional symbol of power and kingship, perches on a military standard, keeping watch. It is one of several exhibits on display at the newly refurbished Fusilier Museum in the
It has to be Glen Campbell this week what with the announcement that, on account of Alzheimer’s, his forthcoming tour will be his last. So here he is with a lovely stripped-down (no bloody strings!) version of Wichita Lineman. Jimmy Webb’s song is still a mighty one and Campbell does it justice here: [This post
It’s the small things that drive you mad. It’s the small things that drive you mad. Every so often I start worrying about the big stuff — God, or lung cancer or early-onset Alzheimer’s — but a cigarette and a cup of coffee usually puts me right, even if it makes cancer a little more
I bumped into a restoration expert last week. ‘What’s new in heritage these days?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, same old, same old,’ he told me. I bumped into a restoration expert last week. ‘What’s new in heritage these days?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, same old, same old,’ he told me. In similar vein, London has
Bridesmaids isn’t directed by Judd Apatow, the reigning champion of American comedy, but it might as well be. Bridesmaids isn’t directed by Judd Apatow, the reigning champion of American comedy, but it might as well be. In addition to establishing himself as Hollywood’s leading comedy director — The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People —
All eyes will be on Andy Murray this week and perhaps next, but 50 years ago it was British women tennis players who were on top, with two of them fighting for the trophy in the final at Wimbledon. Christine Truman lost by a narrow margin but only after she fell and hurt her ankle.
I watched Rory McIlroy win the Open Golf last weekend (it was on Sky, so there was no Peter Allis and his reminiscences of clubhouse banter past; to my surprise, I missed him). What sportspersons need is ANF — attraction to non-fans. You might be a great admirer of, say, Ashley Cole, but his ANF-rating
A good column by Johann Hari on the distractions – many of them wonderful but distractions nonetheless – of the wired age and how that has changed his ability to just sit down and read a bloody book: In his gorgeous little book The Lost Art of Reading – Why Books Matter in a Distracted
Books about Venice are almost as numerous as gondolas on the Grand Canal, but Robin Saikia is the first to write one about the Lido. The subject might be thought too insubstantial for a book of its own, and so it proves: excluding its index and appendices, The Venice Lido (Somerset Books, £6.95) runs to
The title of John Mole’s poem, printed in last week’s issue, should have been ‘The Whole Thing’, and the lines ‘But it was after dinner/ So I let it go’ should have been italicised (being an alleged quotation from Winston Churchill). We apologise for these errors. The title of John Mole’s poem, printed in last
In the autumn of 1984, after an unexplained fall, I found myself in a hospital in Rome acutely head-injured and disorientated. I had been found sprawled on the floor of my flat on Via Salaria; the police suspected an intruder, yet nothing apparently was stolen. Bloody handprints covered the walls where I had tried to
The early 19th century was the age of the dandy, and the essence of dandyism was cool self-control. The dandy shunned displays of feeling. There is feeling a-plenty in both these books; yet they may fairly be described as novels which bear the characteristics of dandyism. Though not short of action — something the dandies
The intern is everywhere, slowly but surely, infiltrating every office on the planet. But while the internship is now ubiquitous, having become the standard first rung on most career ladders and the most frequent stepping stone between education and a career, it remains a largely unexamined and unregulated sector. Somewhere between an apprenticeship and a
In these days of growing concern at the methods of factory farming and the welfare of the animals which are raised and killed for our consumption, it is instructive to compare the life of domestic beef cattle with that of a Spanish fighting bull. The cattle may have less than two years of life in
This is a state of the nation novel or more accurately a state of Mumbai novel. Behind the tale of a struggle by a developer to acquire, for flashy redevelopment, the three towers of the lower-middle-class, crumbling Vishram Co-operative Housing Society, lies a colourful and ambitious novel about the changing standards and habits of the
English patriotism was still a force in 1914. On the first day of the war, my mother’s three brothers, and my father and his two brothers, all joined up together, in the Artists’ Rifles. On the first day of the second world war, which I remember well, there were some similarities, but they were superficial.
If you know anything at all about Cynthia Ozick — an officially accredited grande dame in America, less famous in Britain — you won’t be surprised to hear that her new novel is influenced by Henry James. If you know anything at all about Cynthia Ozick — an officially accredited grande dame in America, less