The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
I might have to eat my hat, having declared not so long ago that BBC 6 Music would not be much missed if it were cut from the schedules. Recent audience figures from Rajar (Radio Joint Audience Research) have revealed a huge jump in listeners in fewer than three months from just over 600,000 to
As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable shoes ready for a day at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show next week (24–29 May), do spare a thought for the 600 exhibitors of show gardens, plants, floral arrangements, educational exhibits and sundries. As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable
In 1969 John Gross wrote a justly praised book, The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters. The phrase seemed slightly archaic then, and is more so now. I was going to suggest that Gross is the last Man of Letters, but I find that Stephen Bayley describes me as that in the current
‘What’s Taki like?’ is a common response to my telling someone I’m a contributor to this magazine. ‘What’s Taki like?’ is a common response to my telling someone I’m a contributor to this magazine. People seem to think we regular contributors are jolly shipmates together, living out of hammocks in the hold. The prosaic truth
I have seen the last of the things that are gone, brooded the poet Padraic Colum. But then so have we all. We have seen them clustered outside the plate-glass doors of offices or under the flapping canvas awnings ouside pubs, these last irreconcilables inhaling in the wind and rain. And the crazy thing is
A good story is made of bones. It’s the reader’s job to flesh it into intimacy. In Helen Simpson’s adventurous new collection, In Flight Entertainment, the best stories rattle like skeletons; the worst, squelch. The title piece is about a bullying businessman on a plane, up-graded to first class, pontificating: the scam of carbon-offsetting; the
Both the Greeks and the Jews were haunted by the image of a burning city. Indeed, there is a sense in which their radically differing attempts to exorcise it served to define their respective cultures. Among the Greeks, it was believed that everything most glorious about mortal achievement, and everything most terrible about mortal suffering,
The Birth of Love, Joanna Kavenna’s first novel since her prize-winning Inglorious, is clever, ambitious and not wholly successful. The Birth of Love, Joanna Kavenna’s first novel since her prize-winning Inglorious, is clever, ambitious and not wholly successful. It is a tribute to her skill that she handles her four narrative strands without lapsing into
Among writers of history a variety of genres flourish: they include battles, biographies and a significant date, such as 1066, 1492 or 1940. The television documentary maker, Denys Blakeway, has opted for 1936 in the belief that it was a better vintage, so to speak, than 1935 or 1937. Many Britons lived parallel lives, some
This little book of limericks, some as hard and glittering as shards of mica but a few surprisingly pallid and limp, at once presents a puzzle: the real name of an author is no more likely to be Jeff Chaucer than the real name of the author of a play would be Billie Shakespeare. The
The sea, the sea. Land-lubbers who write or read England’s history omit it from its heart. At least, we have done so since the aeroplane and electric communications reduced the maritime components of warfare and wealth and travel. The popular imagination banishes piracy, Adrian Tinniswood’s subject, to romance and comic-strips. So we are startled by
The execution for desertion of a young officer during the first world war goes disastrously wrong. What exactly happened? Who was there, and why have some of those involved met untimely deaths? This is the crux of a novel that is a marriage of who-done-it and commentary on the class-ridden attitudes of the early 20th
Nike’s World Cup ad is great. Let’s see how Adidas counter with Lionel Messi et al. Note too how even in an ad Ronaldo is an egotistical pillock.
Looking south towards Hawick. Quiet times here on account of visiting family. Usual service to resume later in the week. All being well.
Caravaggio’s paintings were inextricably bound up with his life and provide a virtual narrative of his turbulent development, a story fraught with ambiguities and alternative readings. Caravaggio’s paintings were inextricably bound up with his life and provide a virtual narrative of his turbulent development, a story fraught with ambiguities and alternative readings. This almost confessional
The Greek and Roman Collections Sculpture Promenade 2010 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 28 January 2011 Virgil was wrong — don’t be afraid of Greeks bearing gifts, particularly if you’re a British regional museum. While our government has cut its grant to the Fitzwilliam by two per cent, Greek zillionaires have stepped admirably into the breach
Highlands and Islands: Paintings and Poems Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, W1, until 5 June Pictures are usually exhibited with closed-shop segregation from the other arts, so it is a joy to find the bounds broken by this exuberant celebration of one of the oldest and most beautiful places on earth. The show announces the
Juan Diego Flórez Barbican It was an ideal way to spend the evening after Polling Day: a relaxed recital, undemanding and not too long, by one of the most individual of present-day singers. At the same time there was an element of risk: Juan Diego Flórez, the young Peruvian who created a stir singing the
Dirty White Boy: Tales of Soho Trafalgar Studio 2, until 22 May Holding the Man Trafalgar Studio 1, until 3 July Blogs and blogging, bloggers and bloggery. What’s it all about? At first sight blogomania looks like an entirely new literary form. A second glance reveals that it’s the oldest genre of the lot: oral
Triple Bill Royal Opera House, last perf. 15 May There was a time when the thrill of a ballet première could be sensed the moment you entered the theatre. Today, the disillusioned public, tired of the high percentage of choreographic garbage it is frequently subjected to, takes little or no notice. It’s a pity, for
It’s like entering another country, listening in to the BBC’s World Service, and such a relief to escape for a while the interminable chattering about what’s going to happen in Westminster. It’s like entering another country, listening in to the BBC’s World Service, and such a relief to escape for a while the interminable chattering
The closest I’ve come to seeing a ghost was a few months ago when we went to stay in a haunted house. The closest I’ve come to seeing a ghost was a few months ago when we went to stay in a haunted house. We had a deeply uncomfortable night during which it was cold
‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.’ Oren Harman uses this quote from Immanuel Kant to open one of the chapters of The Price of Altruism, and it’s an observation that
If you wanted to write about Marilyn Monroe, how would you go about it? The pile of biographies, memoirs and novels about poor, sad Marilyn is already teetering. How could you make something new of her life? Clever Andrew O’Hagan has come up with an answer: by writing as her pet dog. How the hound
Ever since Edward II’s deposition and grisly murder in the dungeons of Berkeley Castle in 1327, his reign has always been regarded as a particularly embarrassing interlude in English history. Ever since Edward II’s deposition and grisly murder in the dungeons of Berkeley Castle in 1327, his reign has always been regarded as a particularly
The emperor Augustus was the original god/father. Julius Caesar was often referred to as ‘the divine Julius’, but his nephew (and adopted son) was the first Roman to have temples dedicated to him in his lifetime. If uncle Julius had died a natural death, or in some brave battle, the Roman upper class would never
The 22nd Earl of Erroll, Military Secretary in Kenya in the early part of the second world war, was described by two of his fellow peers of the realm as ‘a stoat — one of the great pouncers of all time’ and ‘a dreadful shit who really needed killing’. The 22nd Earl of Erroll, Military
Unlike most financial writers, who are too serious for their own good, Michael Lewis has a sense of humour and he deploys it deftly. In Liar’s Poker, his semi-autobiographical account of the Salomon Brothers bond desk published 20 years ago, the traders always explain a market move they do not understand by blaming it on
The last time I saw Benazir Bhutto was at Oxford, over champagne outside the Examination Schools, when she inquired piercingly of a subfusc linguist, ‘Racine? What is Racine?’ Older and richer than most undergraduates, and as a Harvard graduate presumably better educated, she was already world famous, and was obviously not at Oxford to learn