The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Lancaster: The Second World War’s Greatest Bomber, by Leo McKinstry Leo McKinstry’s Lancaster: The Second World War’s Greatest Bomber offers more than is promised by the title. As in his last book, Spitfire: Portrait of a Legend, McKinstry has taken an iconic airplane and, in telling its history, gives not only the technical dimensions of
A Writer’s Britain: Landscape in Literature, by Margaret Drabble This is a book about the inner landscapes of writers, or the ones they inhabited when young, and how these informed their work and affected their readers. In the process of describing these, Margaret Drabble makes lively connections, parallels and distinctions. The languor and melancholy of
The habit of dividing the past into centuries or decades might be historiographically suspect, but by now it seems unavoidable. And it is possible that, because we now expect decades to have flavours of their own, they end up actually having them. We change our behaviour when the year ends in 0. Can there be
Ordinary Thunderstorms is a thriller with grand ambitions. It is set in contemporary London, much of the action taking place on or near the Thames. The timeless, relentless river represents the elemental forces which subvert the sophisticated but essentially temporary structures raised by modern man to showcase his ambition, ingenuity and greed. William Boyd has
Ermyntrude and Esmeralda was written in 1913 but not published until 1969, long after Lytton Strachey’s death. The delay was not surprising: the book consists of an exchange of letters between two naïve 17-year-old girls who are determined to find out where babies come from. Ermyntrude theorises that ‘it’s got something to do with those
The New York Times actually paid someone to write this about a new video game: Luckily Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with the widows of George Harrison and John Lennon, seem to understand that the Beatles are not a museum piece, that the band and its message ought never be encased in amber. The
The Church of Country is a broad brotherhood (and sisterhood) and it’s fair to say that Lyle Lovett, like many others, has sometimes left it to worship elsewhere. But, again, like others that sometimes stray, he’s always welcome back for the Church of Country is a forgiving house that espouses tolerance, an open mind and
Away We Go 15, Nationwide Away We Go is a comic drama directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road) and it’s sweet, I suppose, but it’s also oddly inconsequential, fake and annoying. It’s a sort of road movie, following the journey of an expectant couple who travel the US in search
Linda di Chamounix Royal Opera Così fan tutte Opera North Four years ago the Royal Opera opened its season with concert performances of Donizetti’s Dom Sébastien, which came as a near-revelation to many of us, and subsequently appeared on Opera Rara. This year it opened with the scarcely better-known Linda di Chamounix, which was no
All my adult life I have wondered how people write about music, and how their efforts are received by the public. It has always struck me as being an uncertain business, more miss than hit, and more miss than writing about other artistic endeavours. It seems to be more difficult for a writer to find
If Dr Johnson, who was born 300 years ago on Friday (at least according to the post-1752 Gregorian calendar, which overnight lost 11 days from British life), had been around today he would most probably have been a radio star, and been paid a fortune for it, unlike the pittance he earned as a writer.
Mary Wakefield talks to Angus Jackson about directing David Hare’s latest play If I’m never quite content with a glass of water in an interview again, it’s Angus Jackson’s fault. There we were in a soundproofed meeting room on Friday evening, the National Theatre a whirl around us: jazz in the foyer, gossip in the
Punk Rock Lyric Hammersmith Judgment Day Almeida In rolls another bandwagon. And who’s that on board? It’s Simon Stephens, the playwright and panic profiteer, who likes to cadge a ride from any passing controversy. His latest play is about a teenage psycho who enacts a gory shoot-out at his local school. What a strange choice.
Utmost Fidelity: The Painting Lives of Marianne and Adrian Stokes Penlee House, Penzance, 19 September– 28 November, and the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, 19 September–21 November The first thing that needs pointing out is that the artists reviewed here were a husband-and-wife team painting around the turn of the 20th century, with no connection to
In July 1967, a young artist named John Nankivell, living in Wantage, plucked up the courage to knock on John Betjeman’s front door, in the same town, to show the poet (whom he had never met) some of his architectural drawings. In July 1967, a young artist named John Nankivell, living in Wantage, plucked up
Free association underpins the comedy of Lorrie Moore’s writing — or perhaps the verb should be ‘unpins’, since her prose spins off in tangential, apparently affectless riffs. Free association underpins the comedy of Lorrie Moore’s writing — or perhaps the verb should be ‘unpins’, since her prose spins off in tangential, apparently affectless riffs. Even
It is becoming difficult to say anything new about Churchill as a war leader. The basic facts about the conduct of allied strategy have been known for many years. Diaries and memoirs, and the occasional loose anecdote, still dribble into the public domain, adding spice but nothing fundamental to our knowledge. What remains is analysis
Anticipate the demise of Gordon Brown. Imagine Labour’s search for a leader with voter-appeal. Picture a younger Shirley Williams, but with the experience and affection she already commands. Wouldn’t she be a powerful contender? Couldn’t a new Shirley Williams, updated for the 21st century and reinserted into the Labour Party, give the rest a run
Journalists’ memoirs tend to be as transitory as the great stories they so lovingly recall. Journalists’ memoirs tend to be as transitory as the great stories they so lovingly recall. Even the best of them — Arthur Christiansen’s Headlines All My Life, Otto Friedrich’s Decline and Fall, about the death of the Saturday Evening Post,
Set in the future, The Year of the Flood tells the story of the build-up to and aftermath of a pandemic known as the Waterless Flood, which all but eradicates the human race. The environment the survivors are left with is extremely inhospitable: Earth’s natural resources are long depleted, and the flora and fauna that
The Rake’s Progress; Il signor Bruschino Peacock Theatre Just before the opera season gets under way each year, British Youth Opera puts on a couple of operas, or this year three, with three performances each, at the newly comfortable Peacock Theatre, off Kingsway. Few people go, since BYO treats the enterprise as a jealously guarded
Sad, but for the most part the newly published edition of Orwell’s Diaries is a bore. Not altogether, of course, but much of what is interesting — some of the wartime stuff — isn’t new, but has already appeared in the Collected Essays, Letters, Diaries etc. And what is new, the Domestic Diary, a record
An Empty Death (Orion, £18.99) is the second instalment of the series Laura Wilson began with her previous book, the award-winning Stratton’s War. An Empty Death (Orion, £18.99) is the second instalment of the series Laura Wilson began with her previous book, the award-winning Stratton’s War. Time’s moved on to 1944, and Hitler’s doodlebugs are
From the Department of Criticism: the Irish Times handed my old Dublin University Players contemporary Peter Crawley the unenviable task of reviewing Chris de Burgh in concert. It’s fair to say that his notice was less than generous… Certain toes will never uncurl after this experience, but it is almost admirable how unaltered de Burgh
I do wish English National Opera would remember what it’s called and, mindful of its status as the only English-language opera company we have, translate opera titles into English as well as singing them in that language. There was no reason for Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin not to be given as Love from afar,
Transfiguration Guildhall Art Gallery, until 4 October Transfiguration Guildhall Art Gallery, until 4 October Complaining the other day in these pages about the crowded nature of public exhibition spaces in London, I had momentarily forgotten the secret charms of the Guildhall Art Gallery. This museum, specialising in London subjects, receives scant attention in the press,
Fathers Inside Soho Too True to be Good Finborough Oh, great. It’s one of those. Fathers Inside is a workshop-based outreach project directed by an actor/facilitator. Those last nine words encircle my heart like the clammy fingers of death. But the play is a surprise and offers a big, warm, manly handshake. It starts quietly.
You wouldn’t necessarily have guessed this from the quality of commemorative programming on TV this week. You wouldn’t necessarily have guessed this from the quality of commemorative programming on TV this week. But just recently, we’ve marked the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of an event that used to be considered quite important and interesting.
In the 1950s, when I was 14, I spent a winter fortnight with my parents at the Villa Mauresque, which Somerset Maugham had lent to them to entertain the recently widowed Rab Butler and his daughter, Sarah. It was an uneasy holiday setting for two teenage girls. As I wrote a little apprehensively in my