The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Robin Holloway on César Franck Once so sure in the pantheon, esteemed by composers and critical taste, beloved by players and audiences, César Franck appears nowadays to be almost universally reviled. Of the late handful of indubitable masterpieces, only the Violin Sonata still enjoys the affection, admiration and performances previously accorded the Piano Quintet, the
L’incoronazione di Poppea (Glyndebourne), Der Rosenkavalier (English National Opera) Monteverdi’s last opera L’incoronazione di Poppea was the first opera I saw at Glyndebourne, in 1962. I saw it there again in 1984, once more ‘realised’ by Raymond Leppard, but in a version more complete and somewhat more austerely orchestrated than the first time. And now
The light pollution at Chequers can’t be that bad in semi-rural Bucks, so perhaps someone should suggest to our troubled PM that next time he has a weekend off he should take a look upwards to the night sky. It might help him to realise that the petty squabbles and ambitious pretensions of his Cabinet
Hard to remember an occasion when an author has aroused such unanimous distaste as Cherie Blair’s revelation that the birth of her son Leo was due to her unwillingness to take her contraceptive kit to Balmoral, where the royal butler would unpack her suitcase and see it. ‘Ugh!’ or ‘Oh dear!’ were the universal responses;
When I was a young doctor working in what was still Rhodesia, I read a book by a nun who was also a political economist. She demonstrated that land reform was not only a requirement of social justice but would lead to greatly increased agricultural output, since African peasant farmers cultivated their land more intensively
Since the first political trial in modern history — that of Charles I in 1649 — not a single one has ended in the aquittal of the accused. That tells us everything. In no other category of trial would a perfect record for the prosecution be conceivable. In this important, timely, and cogently argued book
William Brett reviews Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s new novel Do we carry the sins of our fathers? This sentiment may seem archaic — reminiscent, for instance, of the revenge cycles that play out in Greek tragedy. But in the Colombia of Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s The Informers, the notion of generational retribution is all too contemporary. In
Honor Clerk on Siri Hustvedt’s latest novel Born into a second generation Norwegian immigrant family, Erik Davidsen is a divorced New York psychoanalyst with his fair share of sorrows and with a close circle of relations and acquaintances who in turn have their sorrows too. He is a compassionate and sensitive man and the troubles
Judith Flanders reviews Stephen Galloway’s novel about the siege of Sarajevo Many novels about war deal with the horrors of the front line, of the terrors of battle. Steven Galloway, in this accomplished, gripping book, instead explores what happens to people who are caught up between warring factions. What happens when you wake up one morning
How would you like your Africa? Sweet and smiling or bold and bloody? A reassurance of a fundamental human goodness or a suspicion that we are all rotten to the core? Whichever you want, you can find it in one of these two very different books. The Swedish author Henning Mankell is best known for
A fortnight ago Sam Leith, reviewing Neil Powell’s book on the Amises, father and son, wrote: Powell is insistent — and for all I know dead right, but that’s hardly the point — that Kingsley was a sufferer from depression. Of the last sentence of The Anti-Death League (‘There isn’t anywhere to be.’), he writes:
Clive has a nice little musical tribute up to mark the tenth anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s death—and no, it is not someone singing My Way. Do check it out.
John Hoyland dislikes being called ‘one of Britain’s leading abstract painters’. He thinks it’s lazy thinking, and over-reliance on labelling. ‘They don’t say: “Lucian Freud, leading figurative painter” — he’s just a painter. Or “Francis Bacon, leading melodramatist”.’ Mention of Bacon sends him off on a tangent, one of the digressions that make Hoyland’s conversation
This ought to be a hit. The Les Mis team are back in the West End with another French classic. The Lady of the Camellias, by Alexandre Dumas fils, is the play that inspired Verdi’s La Traviata and the Garbo film Camille. Retitled Marguerite the story has been parked in wartime Paris where the leading
Sex and the City 15, Nationwide I do know that not everyone gets Sex and the City. Bubbles, for example, does not get Sex and the City. ‘I don’t know what you see in this crap,’ he would say, whenever I watched it on television, and before going off to do something pointedly manly in
This is a book from beyond the grave — the last that Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote, and though it is unfinished, there is no mistaking the sting in the tale. There was nothing the Regius Professor of History at Oxford enjoyed more during his lifetime than annoying the Scots. From time to time he would break
A few years ago a friend of mine, a writer, attended a conference with Kurt Vonnegut. During coffee breaks and intervals my friend would sneak outside with Mr Vonnegut, Vonnegut to smoke his famous unfiltered Pall Malls and my friend to smoke a couple of Marlboro Lights. ‘What was he like?’, I asked, as if
The Battle of Britain and the campaign by the French Resistance make ideal settings for fiction, since they are full of potential for conflict, romance, adventure, heroism and moral dilemmas. In this first novel, Patrick Bishop has exploited these rich possibilities to produce a gripping story. He has already proved himself a fine military historian,
Mirabel Cecil reviews Judith Mackrell’s biography of Lydia Lopokova . Judith Mackrell describes her subject as ‘a star whom the world almost forgot’. Lydia herself lamented, on the death of Pavlova, that ‘a dancer can leave nothing behind her. Music will not help us to see her again and to feel what she could give us, nor
When the planes flew into the Twin Towers many rushed to declare it the end of the end of history. But it was not. All the plans that emerged immediately afterwards about how to remake the Middle East were premised upon the assumption that history was at an end; that the world was moving inexorably
I’ve been meaning to rave about and recommend Gene Healy’s terrific book The Cult of the Presidency for some time. Now George Will saves me the trouble of doing so. His Newsweek column this week is a useful precis of Healy’s case. Will makes the obvious point that the expectation that the President be some
Robert Gore-Langton talks to an irreverent Dominic Dromgoole about the Globe A few months ago I was at a literary festival on a drama panel which featured a senior actress of the stage. She was holding forth about working with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford when I suggested that Shakespeare’s Globe was just as
Leon Kossoff: Unique Prints Art Space Gallery, 84 St Peter’s St, London, N1, until 21 June Paintings of Stockport by Helen Clapcott Stockport Art Gallery, until 28 June Leon Kossoff (born 1926) is best known as a painter of people and buildings, rendered in thickly meshed paint surprisingly full of light. He trained at the
Royal Ballet: Double Bill Royal Opera House Theatre magic has a lot to do with the unpredictability of the performed event. Regardless of the alluring promise of an all-star cast or the doubts raised by daring artistic choices, there is no certain way to forecast what any live performance will be like. Indeed, it is
The Deep Blue Sea Vaudeville The Birthday Party Lyric Hammersmith Pygmalion Old Vic Osborne crushed Rattigan. Crudely stated, that’s what we’re told happened in 1956 when Osborne’s demotic new voice displaced Rattigan’s classier, cosier manner. Even now Rattigan’s reputation hasn’t fully recovered and The Deep Blue Sea, which premièred in 1952, is the first of
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 12A, Nationwide After a 19-year break, Indiana Jones, the world’s greatest adventurer and probably the world’s worst ever archaeologist — listen, even I know you can’t go around ripping open ancient mummies whenever you so fancy — is back. He is back because he has to
I used to have one of Alan Sugar’s old Amstrad computers; in fact I wrote two books on it. The great advantage it had over modern computers was its slowness; you could literally make a cup of tea while it saved a page of text, and prepare a three-course meal while it saved a chapter.
The press launch of the Sex and the City film in the Plaza in New York a few weeks ago took the form of a junket very like the one Hugh Grant blunders into in Notting Hill, made surreal by the fact that Sarah Jessica Parker was ill and cancelled her whole first day of
Anyone who has been stuffed down a foxhole at a young age to pull out a hound, and has come back out attached to a hound attached to a fox attached to a badger, deserves to be read. Is it any wonder townies do not understand country folk you ask yourself as you read this