The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Leo McKinstry on Andrew Hosken’s biography of Ken Livingstone One of Margaret Thatcher’s more bizarre achievements during her premiership was to have transformed Ken Livingstone from municipal hate figure into popular folk hero. When she embarked on her campaign in the mid-Eighties to abolish the Greater London Council because of its perceived inefficiencies, Ken Livingtone, the
In reviewing this book about the social, political and intellectual indispensability of disrespect, I should perhaps declare an interest: I am several times disrespected in it. I hope the author will not conclude, if I fail to take my revenge on this occasion, that I am suffering from the wrong kind of niceness. All my
In honour of the nicest day of the year so far: I wander’d lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o’er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. This afternoon, at home. Though since we’re at the foot
Igor Toronyi-Lalic on the power of animation to subvert and propagate ideas The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the American army, on one of its first assignments, requisitioned Disney Studios and remained there for eight months. It was the only studio to suffer that fate but Walt Disney, ever the patriot,
Location, location, location. On the morning that Christie’s prepared to launch the art market’s latest high-profile, big-buck season of Impressionist, modern and contemporary sales in New York — a series beadily scrutinised by the throng of art-world Jeremiahs who have long predicted the end of this particular art-market bubble — the auction house announced that
Stephen Pettitt celebrates the new wave of masterful British productions Samuel Johnson famously defined opera in his A Dictionary of the English Language as ‘an exotic and irrational entertainment’. It’s possibly the most overquoted quotation concerning the subject, but in 1755, when the dictionary was published, he probably had a point. Opera, which for some
BOOKS If you’re looking to keep up-to-speed with all things Web 2.0, then you could do worse than read Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. Like, say, Wikinomics, it’s replete with information about the power of the internet and mass-collaboration. However, it also pays attention to the problems of the new, social dynamics. Perhaps the key text on all
Roger Scruton hails the glorious achievements of the English composers, and their role in idealising the gentleness of the English arcadia — so loathed by our liberal elite The English have always loved music, joining chamber groups, orchestras, operas and choirs just as soon as they can put two notes together. But it was not
Ainadamar Birmingham Symphony Hall Der Rosenkavalier Royal Festival Hall In a series of concerts in Symphony Hall with the perhaps unlikely title Passion from Birmingham, Osvaldo Golijov’s opera Ainadamar was given a semi-staged performance with the cast that made the bestselling DG recording three years ago. It’s repeated at the Barbican. With few genuine expectations
Charles Moore’s reflections on the week When informed that this was to be The Spectator’s English Special Issue, I happened to be reading a novel by John Buchan called Midwinter. It concerns an unsuccessful attempt by a young Highland laird, Alastair Maclean, to raise English Jacobites for Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745. Like most Buchan novels,
One may make a distinction between two types of novel: the self-enclosed and the open. The distinction is not absolute. Such things never are. Genre fiction may merge with what is called the literary novel, for instance. Still the categories I have in mind are useful, or at least interesting. By the self-enclosed novel, I
The pilcrow is a typographical symbol which looks like this: ¶. It was once used in writing (often of the philosophical or religious kind) to indicate a new line of discussion, before the habit of physically separating work into paragraphs changed its status to that of the exotic and learned yet largely useless. It is
Sometimes music speaks not only to your mind and heart, but grabs at your very viscera in the most primal way imaginable. Such was the experience of last night’s world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur at the Royal Opera. Demanding and disturbing, the overture, played against the backdrop of dark and menacing waves, warned
Entity Random Dance, Sadler’s Wells Paradoxical as it might sound, ballet’s rebirth is happening thanks to (and within) modern and postmodern choreography. Over the past 20 years, classical dance, considered by many to be a dead art, has attracted the interest of many non-classical dance-makers. While some have successfully revised and reinterpreted the narratives of
Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons Soho The Internationalist Gate The Black and White Ball King’s Head You can tell when a culture has lost its way because it starts handing out awards. There’s a small club of annual prizes that have some legitimacy. Oscar, Bafta, Booker, Olivier, Nobel — all provide worthwhile verdicts on the
You might think that the revival of the 1950s radio classic Journey into Space was a desperate move by Radio Four to cash in on the success of the new Dr Who. Even the title sounds incredibly dated. Who now cares about space? But when the serial first hit the airwaves via the Light Programme,
Nigel Hall: Sculpture + Drawing 1965–2008 Yorkshire Sculpture Park, until 8 June As you drive into the 500 acres of 18th-century parkland which provide the magnificent setting for this retrospective of Nigel Hall’s work, you are met by a tall sentinel-like sculpture, which stands near the entrance. Called ‘Crossing Vertical’ (2006), it’s a dynamic column
Laura Knight at the Theatre Lowry Galleries, until 6 July Ascot racegoers whose binoculars wandered from the track in 1936 might have spotted something unusual in the car park: a Rolls-Royce with its back door open and an artist working at an easel inside. Odder still, the artist was a woman — Laura Knight —
In 1932 a young English art historian recently returned from his travels sent an enthusiastic article to The Spectator about a series of brand new murals he had seen in the courtyards of the Ministry of Education in Mexico City: All these paintings [he wrote] are conscious expositions of Communism. The ultimate object … is
On the morning of Saturday 30 June 1860, the mutilated body of three-year Savill Kent was discovered in an outside privy at Road House, Wiltshire. The circumstances suggested that the murderer was almost certainly a member of the boy’s family or one of their servants. The case became something of a national obsession because of
Mike Leigh. Ground-breaking maverick or pretentious miseryguts? To ask the man himself isn’t perhaps the best way to secure an impartial verdict, but the personality that emerges in this series of interviews (composed with superb fluency by Amy Raphael) is an articulate, engaging, generous, highly original and occasionally peppery creative spirit. No British film-maker since
I must first declare an interest, now almost subliminal, in the subject of this vast, comprehensive, polymorphous and wholly captivating book. I was six when the war broke out and 12 when it ended. I read a lot of the books described new, as well as many more that were older. I remember the Magnet,
Attention Wire fans: if you haven’t done so already you should really make sure you read Peter Mosko’s new book, Cop in the Hood. Moskos, a Princeton and Harvard sociologist actually joined the Baltimore Police Department and spent more than a year patrolling in the city’s Eastern District ghetto (where much of The Wire was
You don’t have to be an Anglican or even especially religious to think that this Oxford Evensong set to jazz is very cool. Beautiful. (You can listen to it again for the next five days by clicking on “Choral Evensong” at the link.)
Difficult not to make comparisons between any number of world leaders and the image of a trapped but powerful figure lashing out in impotent rage, bellowing incomprehensibly, half man, half beast, viewed with a combination of terror and pity. Whether you agree or not, I’d recommend catching John Tomlinson in the title role of Harrison
Lloyd Evans on the extraordinary story behind Trevor Nunn’s ‘Gone with the Wind’ The heart sinks, almost. The brow droops, a little. A yawn rises in the throat and dies away. Another musical has opened in the West End and, yes, it’s based on a blockbuster movie and, yes, that too was based on a
Lost Highway Young Vic Aci, Galathea e Polifemo Middle Temple Olga Neuwirth’s Lost Highway, which was first performed in October 2003 in Graz, gets its first UK outing at the Young Vic in a production by ENO. It is impossible to imagine it being better done, and the roar of applause which greeted it at
It is three years since I last wrote about my iPod. When I first bought the blighter, my then 12-year-old son warned me that it would prove a disaster and he was absolutely right. Unable to cope with the technology required to load the thing I enlisted the help of my nephew, Tom, who agreed
The relentless downgrading of the News to a series of shocking revelations about child abuse, bearded terrorists and the ghastly incompetence of our Olympic pretensions sent me straight to the World Service where even the shortest of hourly bulletins contains enough information to remind us that life goes on beyond our own limited horizons. On