The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
When, after his exertions on behalf of the love-struck Gussie Fink-Nottle, Bertie Wooster hears himself compared to Cyrano de Bergerac, his literary knowledge rises to the occasion: ‘the chap with the nose’. It was Edmund Rostand’s play of 1897 that brought Cyrano and his protuberance their modern fame. The 17th-century soldier and writer who gave
‘I’m not going to pay good money’, Groucho Marx famously quipped, ‘to join a club that lets in people like me.’ In the case of the Carlton Club on St James’s Street, whose 175th anniversary last year was marked by this handsome history, requirements were quite explicit. Membership depended on opposition to the 1832 Reform
If you’re after a profound cinematic experience, then you could do far worse than to invest in Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage (1921), which got its first UK DVD release yesterday. The premise of this silent, Swedish film is ripped from a dark fairytale. Anyone who dies at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve
Tom Hollander’s first meeting with a theatrical agent didn’t turn out quite how he expected It was the late Eighties and it paid to be brash. But I wasn’t brash I was green. Just down from university and wearing a second-hand double-breasted suit I had a meeting with London’s Most Powerful Agent. On Wall Street,
From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg Royal Academy, until 18 April Sponsored by E.ON It is a salutary and instructive experience to forego the relatively civilised Press View of an exhibition, when only the denizens of the world’s press and assorted successful liggers are allowed in, and attempt
Die Zauberflöte Royal Opera House A Midsummer Night’s Dream Linbury There is a hard core of central works which any major opera house needs to have, in a production that can survive many changes of cast and conductor, even of obtrusive revival director. Die Zauberflöte is unquestionably among them, a work that we constantly need
Why would anyone want to listen to a programme about the Oscars? Surely the whole point is to see those ghastly frocks and gimcrack smiles, effortfully put on for-the-camera-only? And yet Paul Gambaccini was sent over to Hollywood to recreate the ‘magic’ of the Oscars for a new Radio Four series (Saturday), And the Academy
No one would be allowed to have J. G. Ballard’s career nowadays. When you consider the life of the average English novelist, what Cyril Connolly called the poverty of experience seems almost overwhelming, as the budding writer moves from school to university to a creative writing MA and on to the two-book contract. It is
One frequently reads of chaps for whom their epiphany was the first sight and sound of Julie Andrews. Mine happened a good few years earlier, lying bed-bound with polio, just after the war. Someone had sent my mother a boxed set of the Broadway cast of Annie Get Your Gun. Ethel Merman’s flamboyant voice belted
Grandmother’s Footsteps is about three generations of women. When Evelyn died she left a diary for her daughter, Verity, and granddaughter, Hester, to find. They don’t actually discover the revelatory document until years later when Verity’s husband has died, leaving another mysterious paper trail. The tagline of the book muses, ‘Will the past ever let
‘A satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham,’ in an opinion Flann O’Brien (1911-1966) shared with one of his fictional characters, ‘to which the reader could regulate the degree of his credulity’. Furthermore, the inhabitants of novels should be allowed ‘a private life, self-determination and a decent standard of living’. The distinction between reality and
This book shows how successive cabinets have handled the deadliest secret of modern times, what to do about nuclear bombs, since the first ones went off in 1945. As the subject was so secret, not much has ever been allowed out into the public domain; but Hennessy’s scholarly skills have been such that he has
Things that make you despair: young journalists who have never read Scoop. In a better world that would be a sacking offence. Clive publishes a reminder of the novel’s glories as part of his excellent Notebook feature: “Come to think of it,” he added moodily, “there’s no point in answering anyway. Look at mine.” CABLE
Aside from news programmes, I rarely stay in specifically to watch something on television (as Hugo has written, boxed DVD sets are a very civilised invention). But last night was an exception: as a Life on Mars fanatic, I wanted to see its much-hyped sequel, Ashes to Ashes. No more John Simm as DI Sam
Are books dead? No, just different. Or, rather, story-telling adapts to new technology. To wit, Japan. As the New York Times reports: TOKYO — Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a
…here’s one for all you art-lovers out there: A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas. When asked how
Purgatorio Arcola Happy Now? Cottesloe The Lover/The Collection Comedy Purgatorio. Hardly a seductive title and I confess it was curiosity rather than enthusiasm that dragged me to the Arcola in Hackney to see how Ariel Dorfman (best known for his 1992 play Death and the Maiden) had handled the Medea myth. His update transplants the
There Will Be Blood 15, nationwide Juno 12A, nationwide There Will Be Blood (oh, yes) stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, a late-19th-century American oilman whose own view could not be plainer: find oil, beat off the competition, buy the land, drill it, get rich. And that’s about it, not that it matters. It’s the
Norm’s poll of your favourite English-language novelists has reported its findings. Not a great surprise that Austen and Dickens come first and second. But really, how can Norm’s erudite readers have placed Philip Roth third (albeit a very distant third) and Ian McEwan sixth? This suggests a serious lack of, well, judgement. Wodehouse, for the
Richard Shannon has been writing about Gladstone on and off for almost 50 years. His first book, a study of Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, was published in 1963. He is the author of a major biography of Gladstone in two exceptionally hefty volumes, which appeared to critical acclaim in 1982 and 1999. So why
Forget John McCain – on the evidence of this morning’s Press Conference it is Hillary Clinton who is getting inside David Cameron’s head. Talking about Britain’s UNICEF rankings, Cameron concluded, “We must live by the words of the famous African saying: It takes a village to raise a child.” As any American will tell you,
James MacMillan explains why he hates the assumption that he is a liberal left-winger In my travels I see myself frequently described in foreign media as a ‘left-wing and Scottish nationalist’ composer. The latter label is ludicrous, and I just put it down to a foreigner’s ignorance and justifiable disinterest in the parish-pump tedium of
Where do you find your music? Yes, I know, you go to the CD rack and there it is. Or, if you are as obsessed as some of us, you go into almost any room in the house and there is a pile of the stuff, because you can’t get rid of any of it,
Weimar lasted 14 years, the Third Reich only 12. Yet Weimar is always seen as a prelude to the Third Reich, which appears to have been created by Weimar’s failures. Actually, as Eric Weitz argues, the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was not responsible for the Reich; it was a democratic, socially aware and progressive government, way
However loaded or coded, ‘Greek love’ is one of our more misleading cultural terms of convenience. It refers to an aspect of classical civilisation whose existence many people continue to find either embarrassing or reprehensible. Even now Hollywood chooses to present Achilles and Patroclus as best buddies US-Army style rather than as lovers unabashedly showing
The late Alan Coren once called a collection of articles Golfing for Cats, in order, he claimed, to maximise his sales by tapping in to two profitable markets at once. Michael Moorcock has lavishly adopted this stratagem. The cataloguing data for this book defines it as: ‘1. Detective and mystery stories. 2. Fantasy fiction.’ The
“Too soon!” went the outcry when the films United 93 and World Trade Center were released, some 5 years after the events they depicted. Now – as Peter Bradshaw points out in today’s Guardian – filmmakers aren’t even waiting for the “dust to settle” on a news-story before moving-in with their cameras. A production deal
A Decade of Discovery Esoterick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square, London, N1, until 6 April This year, as the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art celebrates its tenth anniversary, garlanded with plaudits for the loan exhibitions it has mounted, it is time to focus once again on its greatest asset: its permanent collection. This new display,
Cloverfield 15, Nationwide Cloverfield is tiresome, dumb and horrid, and just in case you didn’t get that I’ll say it again: this film is tiresome, dumb and horrid. Don’t go. Do anything but go. Don’t be swayed, as I was, by the fact that on its opening day in America it grossed $16 million, grossed