The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
It’s Bloomsday. If Joyce is your bag, then here is a link to the Bloomsday page on the official James Joyce website. Joyce is an acquired taste and can be bitter when you’ve got it. Ulysees is too great a slog to contemplate for some. But an old drunk in Soho once told me that
Close the nominations. Unless someone publishes proof of Shergar pulling a plough in the Yemen, it must be a good bet for William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011. Twirlymen is the absorbing maiden work by Amol Rajan, a journalist at the Independent. His aim is to celebrate spin bowling’s impressive survival in the
As Dr Johnson famously observed, ‘No man but a blockhead wrote, except for money.’ But even the wisest don’t write for all that much these days. The prevailing view is that the market for serious non-fiction is wilting. Therefore the publicity of prizes counts for double. Yesterday, the shortlist for the BBC’S Samuel Johnson Prize
Michael Powell, of Powell and Pressburger fame, replies to a script, titled ‘Wiseguys’, sent by Martin Scorcese for the master’s prognosis. The screenplay had been based on Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy (1986). ‘Wiseguys’, of course, became Goodfellas. Hat-tip: Letters of Note.
‘Hollywood was different back then.’ For a start, the Awards ceremonies of the ‘60’s weren’t dominated by ‘very small young men who had just been in a vampire film’. Soirees brimmed with the gravitas of Beverley Hills’ most statuesque, those around whom a youthful Michael Caine gawped and assimilated anecdotes until, all of a sudden,
1.) Clive James has returned to TV criticism. He was poached out of retirement by the Telegraph who proudly billed their latest catch as the ‘world’s greatest TV critic’. It sees him resume where his groundbreaking Observer column, written between 1972-82, left off. Widely cited as turning TV criticism into serious art, James collected his
The literary world is paying homage to Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has died aged 96. Here is an excerpt from the Times’ obituary (£). ‘The curtailment of his formal education was compensated by his intellectual curiosity and by the civilising influence of his mother who introduced him to the pleasures of art and literature. His
One of the most irritating things about the launch of a Jeffrey Archer book is the high pitched whine of indignation and scorn from that small, bitchy and endangered species, the literary community. Well, after God knows how many years and the sale of 350 million books, they have been remarkably reserved about his latest,
I met a Distinguished Old Rock Critic at a party recently, and was delighted to find that the obvious acronym didn’t apply. I met a Distinguished Old Rock Critic at a party recently, and was delighted to find that the obvious acronym didn’t apply. We chewed on this and that: CDs vs downloads, the blackboard-scraping
This year, the sequence of galleries has been subtly altered, and for a change we enter the fabled Summer Exhibition (sponsored by Insight Investment) through the Octagon rather than Gallery 1. This brings the visitor straight into the heart of the show, and it’s quite a good idea at this point to turn right into
The J.B. Priestley flame is kept alive today by his son Tom, who resides in the same Notting Hill flat he has lived in for more than 50 years. His father — novelist, dramatist, scribe, broadcaster, socialist (who died in 1984) — was glad that Tom, now 79, hadn’t chosen the same life. ‘The only
Laura Gascoigne on how the Venice Biennale is searching for its place in art history Picture one of the world’s largest private yachts moored at the quayside of the Riva dei Sette Martiri, protected by a metal perimeter fence and a security detail. Now imagine two battered sea freight containers dumped in the shape of
DAC has written some dreadful and awful songs but also some mighty fine ones. Though I prefer the stripped-down version of Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone) this is still a pretty decent version and definitely from the Good DAC School:
Puccini’s last, incomplete opera Turandot is a work that I usually find disgusting and boring, so much so that it is one of the very few repertoire works that I avoid seeing. Puccini’s last, incomplete opera Turandot is a work that I usually find disgusting and boring, so much so that it is one of
I’ll say this for DreamWorks: when it latches on to a concept it doesn’t let it go. I’ll say this for DreamWorks: when it latches on to a concept it doesn’t let it go. There have been four Shreks (with a spin-off, Puss in Boots, due in November), it’s preparing a third Madagascar, it has
It’s all in the voice. It’s all in the voice. Whether or not the person speaking is seeking to engage the listener, or just saying what comes into their head without much thought of what they are trying to get across, or of who they are talking to and why they might want to listen.
The Duke at 90 (BBC1) was another engagement in Prince Philip’s ongoing war against the media. The Duke at 90 (BBC1) was another engagement in Prince Philip’s ongoing war against the media. As usual, he won this skirmish. There was a difference between this programme, presented by Fiona Bruce, and the earlier ITV effort with
Can a documentary ever be as entertaining as a fictional feature film? And, if it can, does that mean it cannot be a serious contribution to public debate? Inside Job, director Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-winning account of the origins of the US subprime mortgage debacle and the 2008 banking crisis, is a case in point. It
It is 1979. You are a 15-year-old boy starring in a hit US television show. You’ve seen the crowds of screaming girls outside the gates as you arrive for work, and are therefore very excited to have received your first fan letter. You open it eagerly and begin to read: ‘Dear Mr Rob Lowe, You
If you thought that bust of Lenin you had on your desk as a teenager was the ultimate in radical chic, think on. Infatuated with the French Revolution, Lord Stanhope proclaimed his solidarity at a banquet at White’s Club. Announcing that he was thenceforth to be known as Citizen Stanhope, he ordered the coronets to
Two centuries ago, Edmund Burke famously mocked the intellectuals of revolutionary France for trying to devise a perfectly rational constitution for their country. The Abbé Sieyès, he wrote, had whole nests of pigeon-holes full of constitutions, ready made, ticketed, sorted and numbered, suited to every season and every fancy . . . so that no
Prince Philip’s childhood was such that he had every right to be emotionally repressed and psychologically disturbed. Prince Philip’s childhood was such that he had every right to be emotionally repressed and psychologically disturbed. Born sixth in line to the Greek throne, at the age of 18 months he was hounded from what, in name
Some of the best writing about sport in recent years has been done by journalists who tend their soil, so to speak, in another parish. Peter Oborne’s biography of the Cape Town-born England cricketer Basil D’Oliveira was a deserved prize-winner, and another political scribe, Leo McKinstry, has done justice to Geoffrey Boycott, the Charlton brothers
Christopher Howse describes Spain as ‘the strangest place with which Westerners can easily identify’. Christopher Howse describes Spain as ‘the strangest place with which Westerners can easily identify’. He has certainly written one of the strangest books on the country in recent years. His approach is gloriously and provocatively unfashionable. Whereas other authors on Spain
In the patriotic mythology of British arms 1759 may be the one true annus mirabilis, the ‘year of victories’, the year of Minden, Quebec and Quiberon Bay, but has there ever been a year comparable to 1918? In that year 20,000 British soldiers surrendered on a single day, 31 March, and yet within six months
Rupert Everett doesn’t care for critics. Rupert Everett doesn’t care for critics. ‘You see them coming into the theatre,’ he says, ‘like the homeless who’ve lost their soup-kitchen, shuffling in with their plastic bags, deranged and vacant.’ After watching him play Henry Higgins in Pygmalion the reviewers have dumped poor Rupe in the poop. ‘Sad
Mark Mason has written the Bookend column in the latest issue of The Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog. It is 1979. You are a 15-year-old boy starring in a hit US television show. You’ve seen the crowds of screaming girls outside the gates as you arrive for work, and are therefore
An exciting new bookshop that shut down after three weeks (on purpose). A young man who helped a branch of the previous bookshop go out of business. The logical (but not necessarily pleasant) conclusion of the “Jane Austen remix” trend. A short history of the heavy-metal umlaut. Imaginary movie posters for David Foster Wallace fans.
The hardback edition of D.R. Thorpe’s Supermac is 626 pages in length (not including endnotes and index), 24cm x 16cm x 6cm in girth, and weighs in at more than one kilogram – on first appearances, not a book for a beach holiday. Or so I thought, because despite the corporeal hardships of reading this