The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
A long lost book of tributes to Byron has surfaced at a Church bazaar. The Guardian reports: ‘Inscribed “to the immortal and illustrious fame of Lord Byron, the first poet of the age in which he lived”, the memorial book contains accolades to the writer by famous figures of the day, from the American author
Sorry for the lack of posts here lately. That’s what a trip to London, an 11 hour journey home and a weekend of cricket will do. Anyway, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have a new album out and it is as good as you might expect. Here’s a bootlegged clip from a recent gig that
Vorticism is often referred to as the only British 20th-century art movement of international importance, but the work of the Vorticists — Wyndham Lewis, Edward Wadsworth, Gaudier-Brzeska and their associates — has up to now not been widely known. Vorticism is often referred to as the only British 20th-century art movement of international importance, but
William Cook discovers that the clue to Nicholas Parsons’s enduring success lies in his ability to laugh at himself When I was a kid, watching Sale of the Century on my grandma’s colour telly, Nicholas Parsons used to seem like the smartest man in show business. Meeting him half a lifetime later, in a rooftop
After all the splendiferous photographs of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, how about something more subversive? That is what Kew Palace delivers in its exhibition of George III caricatures from the collection of Lord Baker. This is royalty filtered not through the flattering lenses of the modern photographer, but through the sharp nibs of
Is Glastonbury over yet? If not, can it be very soon please? On Jo Whiley’s exciting new evening show on Radio 2, the poor woman can still barely finish a sentence without referring to ‘Glasto’ or ‘the Pyramid Stage’ or whatever it’s called, where everyone who played was brilliant, as everyone always is in Jo’s
What is wrong with Peter Grimes, the central figure of Britten’s eponymous opera? Or should the question be: what is wrong with Peter Grimes? For though there is no question that the opera makes a powerful and disturbing impression in a decent performance, it turns out always to be rather difficult to locate the focus
Was it curvature of the spine? Was it a club foot? Was it just an epic dose of facial acne? We don’t know exactly where, how or in what degree Richard III’s deformities manifested themselves. Was it curvature of the spine? Was it a club foot? Was it just an epic dose of facial acne?
Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is his fifth film in 38 years (what a lazybones!) and travels way beyond what I can think about, or any of us can think about, which may be its point. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is his fifth film in 38 years (what a lazybones!) and travels
My favourite fact of the week is to have discovered that in the UK there are 2,500 species of eyebright, 2,500 different varieties of that dainty, slender-stemmed flower, with its bright white trumpet. It’s so small and yet always stands out, demanding to be noticed. You can tell it’s a plant that’s determined to survive
Like all politicians, Bob Marshall-Andrews is fond of quoting himself, and Off Message (Profile Books, £16.99) includes a generous selection of his speeches and articles on such topics as Tony Blair’s messianic warmongering and David Blunkett’s plans for a police state. Less typically, perhaps, he is almost as generous in his quotation of others, such
If not equal to his best novels, Kingsley Amis’s short stories are still wonderfully entertaining, says Philip Hensher Some writers of short fiction — there doesn’t seem to be a noun to parallel ‘novelist’ — are dedicated craftsmen, like Chekhov, Kipling, William Trevor, Alice Munro or V.S. Pritchett. Others, like Evelyn Waugh or E.M. Forster,
People see William Rees-Mogg as an archetypal member of the Establishment. But this is not quite true. His father’s family had been modest landowners for centuries, but his mother was Irish-American and Mogg was baptised a Catholic. His religion has brought him such happiness as he has enjoyed, including a long and comfortable marriage, but
Many moons ago when I went to Sissinghurst to ask Nigel Nicolson (late of this parish) if I could write about his mother, Vita Sackville-West, he raised his hands, and eyebrows, in horror, ‘Oh! Not another book about my mother!’ These two titles on Italian gardens may provoke a similar reaction, for there has been
This is a humdinger of a tale. You might have thought that journeys into the heart of the Dark Continent with David Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley and the likes of Richard Burton had already inspired so vast and breathless a literature that there were few surprises left to report. But that’s the miracle of this
Archbishop Edward Benson was the ideal of a Victorian churchman. Stern and unbending, he was a brilliant Cambridge scholar and a dreamily beautiful youth. Older men fell over themselves to promote him, and he climbed effortlessly from one plum post to the next, rising almost inevitably to become Archbishop of Canterbury. As Rodney Bolt shows
In Dreams From My Father, his exploration of race and roots, Barack Obama recalled the tales heard in childhood about the man who gave him his name. His father, they said, was a brilliant economist who grew up herding goats in western Kenya, then won a scholarship to the University of Hawaii, where he fell
Each year Genevieve Lee holds an ‘alternative’ dinner party, to which she invites, along with her friends, a couple of people she wouldn’t ordinarily mix with — a Muslim, say, or homosexual. Each year Genevieve Lee holds an ‘alternative’ dinner party, to which she invites, along with her friends, a couple of people she wouldn’t
Do the trees of East Prussia still whisper in German when the wind blows in from the Baltic and across the featureless plain? The Russian poet Joseph Brodsky thought so when he visited in the 1960s. But keen ears, and a very long historical reach, are surely now needed in order to detect that particular
When I compiled a list of the top dozen travel writers of the past century for an American magazine the other day, it required some effort not to come up with an entirely British cast. Freya Stark, Norman Lewis, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Jan Morris were musts. So too were V. S. Naipaul and Colin
Hundreds of thousands of hardy souls are preparing for a few nights under canvas this summer, often facing sunburn or trench foot while giddily jumping up and down in a muddy field as bands maul their better-known hits. And yet, for most of these people, camping is something that they wouldn’t dream of doing except
After watching Troubadours (BBC4, Friday) for about ten minutes, I was close to gibbering with rage. People liked this stuff? Worse, I liked it. I used to play James Taylor, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and even Carole King’s mope-a-thon album Tapestry. I played them a lot. So, by way of apologising to myself for my
It’s a slightly surreal time to be a theatre-goer in London. Two of the most exciting productions running at the moment both trace descents into the more disconcerting reaches of human fantasy. But, while Richard Jones’s production of The Government Inspector at the Young Vic turns Gogol’s political satire into the blithest of comic capers,
Lewis Jones has written this week’s Bookends column in the latest issue of the Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog: Like all politicians, Bob Marshall-Andrews is fond of quoting himself, and Off Message includes a generous selection of his speeches and articles on such topics as Tony Blair’s messianic warmongering and David
Continuing our series of posts marking Mervyn Peake’s centenary, here is a piece written by Peake’s friend, Rodney Ackland, after the former’s untimely death in November 1968. Thit and thefuther by Rodney Ackland, The Spectator, 20th December 1968 Any reader who has once been lost to the world in the stone fields and labyrinths of
As far back as Lucky Jim, if not further, historians and writers of historical fiction have been at each others’ throats. The Historical Writers Association (HWA) was formed in October 2010 with the unique selling point that it is the only historical organisation open to both historians and historical novelists. Other organisations such as the
Frank Dikötter’s history of Mao’s great famine took the Samuel Johnson prize last. The prize is the most prestigious non-fiction award in Britain, carrying a cheque for £20,000. It also gets an hour long special on BBC2’s The Culture Show, worth its weight in pixels to publishers of challenging and largely unmarketable books. The programme
It is Mervyn Peake’s centenary this week and there have been parties thrown in his honour across the country. Gormenghast lours over this revelry, as if a still breathing creation has outgrown its dead creator. This seems only natural: Anthony Burgess once described the Gormenghast trilogy as one of the ‘most important works of the
1) John le Carré recently won this year’s winner of the Goethe Medal. The Medal is for writers ‘who have performed outstanding service for the German language and international cultural relations’. The spymaster honed his German skills while studying at the University of Berne and Lincoln College, Oxford. Traditionally, le Carré has been a reluctant