The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
‘The 20th century was not kind to Pakistan’, Tariq Ali says in the first sentence of his latest book on his native land. ‘The 20th century was not kind to Pakistan’, Tariq Ali says in the first sentence of his latest book on his native land. The glib opener is a taste of what’s to
And Then There Was No One, by Gilbert Adair And Then There Was No One is a metaphysical murder mystery, a deconstructionist detective story, a post-modern puzzle — all of which could, very, very easily, become as arch and wearisome as persistent alliteration. But Gilbert Adair — though fantastically clever-clever, and horribly addicted not only
James Scudamore is evidently fascin- ated by borderline personality disorder. His characters veer between moments of machismo-fuelled rage, extravagant eloquence and intense introspection. The Amnesia Clinic (2007), which earned him the Somerset Maugham Award for writers under 35, was set in Ecuador and depicted the tribulations of adolescence. For his second, bolder novel, he crosses
Land of Marvels, by Barry Unsworth Land of Marvels is so topical, and so cute, that its title can only be read with some irony. A tale of oil, archaeology, and impending war in Mesopotamia (it’s the first world war, but Barry Unsworth clearly intends us to ponder the parallels with more recent history), it
For anyone who’s having a last-minute Christmas present panic, or who simply wants to hear something utterly delectable instead of the unending stream of noxious news being poured into our ears as if we were so many unsuspecting old Hamlets, I strongly recommend nipping out to buy Opera Rara’s new recording of Offenbach rarities, Entre
Ronald Blythe examines William Blake’s influence on the work of the 19th-century artist Samuel Palmer Samuel Palmer was in his early twenties when he wrote in his notebook, ‘The Glories of Heaven might be tried — hymns sung among the hills of Paradise at eventide…’ As a subject for a painting he means. Just before
Books I’m just coming to the end of Ahmed Rashid’s compelling book on the conflict in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, Descent into Chaos. It’s an essential brew of fine research, persuasive analysis and lively prose – all in all, it feels definitive. The best work of fiction I’ve read and re-read this year – John
By the time you read these words, Elliott Carter — save for a wry ‘act of God’ — will have passed his 100th birthday, in full productive spate as he enters a second century. As Stephen Pettitt remarked (Arts, 29 November), every new Carter work appeared to be summatory; but there’s always been more. And
While Ian Hislop went in search of the Three Kings for Radio Four, and surprise, surprise, came up with an English solution to the enigma of the merchants of gold, frankincense and myrrh, World Routes on Radio Three took us to Nazareth to experience the music that might have been heard by Mary and Joseph
It has been a good motoring year, save in two respects, and even if this proves to have been the last such on earth and next year we’re back to 1209 and riding Shanks’s pony, memory will sweeten privation. First among the highlights was driving a Routemaster bus (Spectator, 24 May). What a creation they
This is the time of year for dutiful appraisal of current garden books. The heart sometimes sinks at the thought of conning the same old material in a newer and glossier arrangement, but Ronald Blythe’s Outsiders is a genuinely original find. Like Akenfield, his portrait of an English village, his latest work breaks the mould.
A Book of Silence, by Sara Maitland The BBC sound archive has a range of different silences: ‘night silence in an urban street’; ‘morning silence, dawn, the South Downs’; ‘morning silence, winter moor’; ‘silence, sitting room’; ‘silence, garage’; ‘silence, cement bunker;’ ‘silence, beach’. You only have to read those phrases to know, viscerally, that their
‘Blinker’ Hall, Spymaster, by David Ramsay The first world war admiral, ‘Blinker’ Hall — so-called for the obvious reason — is less widely known than Jellicoe, Beatty & Co., but his contribution to victory and history was arguably greater. He was the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) who ensured the success of Room 40, the
As mentioned in this post on the best newspaper corrections of the year, the Guardian acknowledged that Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude not, as the paper suggested, One Hundred Years of Solicitude. A shame, really, since this latter would seem a more entertaining, lively read. In that spirit, readers are invited
Matthew d’Ancona talks to the quintessentially English pop star about growing up, her longing to have children, celebrity culture, US politics and her new album I am sitting opposite a demure young Englishwoman, sipping on jasmine tea, who would like nothing more, she says, than to settle down and have children. Young people and their
Time for another occasional series. And since it’s Christmas, how better to honour the true spirit of the season than by recalling some classic TV advertisements from the past? Come to think of it, that’s what Gordon Brown and his cronies would want you to do: nothing like a spot of stimulus spending is there?
Damian Thompson says we can learn a lot about Beethoven if we look beyond the symphonies Beethoven Unwrapped is the title of the year-long musical celebration marking the opening of Kings Place, the new ‘creative centre’ at King’s Cross. But does Beethoven, of all composers, need unwrapping? The answer is yes, more than ever, if
The Sleeping Beauty English National Ballet, Coliseum Forgive me the lame pun, but although The Sleeping Beauty is performed worldwide, there are not that many great Beauties around. One exception is, arguably, the one staged under Kenneth MacMillan’s supervision, first seen in Berlin in the Sixties, then reworked for American Ballet Theatre in 1986 and
We have a super-efficient friend who has all her Christmas shopping both purchased and wrapped by the end of the summer holidays. It drives Mrs Spencer — who regards the approach of Christmas with the panic-stricken horror of a hedgehog who spots an oncoming truck — almost mad with jealous rage. In an attempt to
It’s not a job I could do now that I’m supposedly mature, let alone when I was in my twenties. To take charge of a prison full of angry young men plus a team of disgruntled, de-motivated staff officers. But on Radio Four this week and next we heard from four prison governors, most of
Flying to Athens on one of his last visits to Greece, Simon Gray started reading a novel by C. P. Snow, one of those old orange Penguins. After 50 pages he ‘still had no idea what the story was about’. It seemed foggy, ‘but an odd sort of fog, everything described so clearly, and yet
In these hard times it is gratifying to find one Christmas present which has remained virtually unchanged in price for the last seven or eight years — the children’s book. Most of the illustrated books for the very young and the increasingly elaborate pop-ups and stories incorporating various pockets, inserts and DVDs are produced in
The Reader 15, Nationwide (2 January) The Reader is based on the novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink which, in turn, is one of those books that’s been read by about a zillion people in a billion countries proving that, sometimes, a great many people can be entirely wrong in all the languages
Susan Hill reappraises Charles Dickens’s classic You may be sure you have done more good by this little publication, fostered more kind feelings and prompted more positive acts of beneficence than can be traced to all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom. So wrote the Edinburgh critic, Lord Jeffrey — not an easy man to
Every year, when winter descends on the country, one of English literature’s great works always finds itself pulled down from my bookshelf: namely, William Thackeray’s immortal Vanity Fair. The reason is simple: no degree of chilliness in the air can extinguish the book’s incredible warmth and humour. It is a tonic. Being an accepted classic,
The Allure of Chanel, by Paul Morand, translated by Euan Cameron Should anyone ever ask me that daft magazine question about who you’d invite to your dream dinner-party (‘anyone in the world, alive or dead’) my answer would be short: Mademoiselle Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, on her own, with only an ashtray between us. And maybe
James Patterson likes rape, torture, mutilation and death. So do his readers. Who doesn’t? It has been estimated that Patterson’s lifetime sales of thrillers have now topped 150 million, and that one in every 15 hardbacks bought in the world in 2007 was a Patterson novel, which means that we must all like rape, torture,
The Pursuit of Laughter: Essays, Articles and Reviews, by Diana Mitford, edited by Deborah Devonshire Nancy was the only one of the six Mitford sisters who, throughout her life, bitterly complained of the fact that she had not been sent to school. Her younger sister, Diana, on the other hand, dreaded the very thought of
This unassuming book is in fact a valuable addition to the Proust bibliography. The author, himself a painter, has had the apparently simple idea of extracting all references to works of art in the great novel in an attempt to demonstrate Proust’s knowledge of, and reliance on, paintings to give resonance to his characters and