The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
The President’s Holiday Hampstead The Sea Haymarket The Vertical Hour Royal Court There’s no such thing as a great script idea. Ideas are equally good or bad, what counts is how they’re treated. Take the 1991 coup against Gorbachev. Pretty dramatic, momentous and gripping, I’d say. And here’s Penny Gold to dramatise it. She may
Peter Grimes Opera North Of all Britten’s operas Peter Grimes is the one I have seen most often, and it remains not only the one that I find it hardest to make up my mind about, but also the one which I still don’t feel I know especially well. There are the famous passages, not
‘Pakistan is a dysfunctional state,’ said the writer Martin Amis in a debate about ideologies and ideologues in our post-9/11 world on Start the Week (Monday, Radio Four). He seemed curiously unaware that he was in conversation with a woman lawyer from Pakistan, Asma Jahangir, who has just been released from house arrest after defying
Jonestown (BBC 2); Moving Wallpaper & Echo Beach (ITV); Harry Hill’s TV Burp (ITV) ‘Shut up and drink the Kool-Aid’ is an American slang phrase — tart, cynical and funny — used for telling people to get on with something they must do but would prefer to avoid. It refers back to the mass suicide of 909 members
This book exposes newspapers to the same merciless, lethal and sometimes unfair scrutiny which the press itself has long shone on politicians, the royal family and numerous other targets. The results are devastating. Nick Davies has amassed an overwhelming weight of evidence that the British media lies, distorts facts and routinely breaks the law. It
Jane Rye on William Feaver’s biography of Lucien Freud Lucian Freud describes his paintings as largely autobiographical, which seems to imply some sort of readiness to expose his private life to the public gaze; but he does so on his own terms and is notoriously reluctant to let anyone else poke about in it. At the
Between 1975 and today, under the direction of Professor Wm. Roger Louis, the British Studies Seminars of the University of Texas has organized 60 seminars on the modern history of Britain and has published a selection of the lectures in five volumes of which this is the most recent. It includes personal reminiscence. Graham Greene,
Switch off your radios: I shall be on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme at around 5.45pm talking about, of all things, state-sponsored Gaelic TV. It may not surprise readers that I consider this a perfectly senseless boondoggle. by the standards of government waste it is, for sure, trivial and harmless stuff. To the extent that
‘Mr Hallé’s Band’ began giving concerts 150 years ago. Michael Kennedy on the great orchestra On the wet evening of 30 January 1858 in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, which had been opened only two years previously, the 38-year-old Charles Hallé launched his privately funded series of orchestral concerts. On the same date next week,
THEATRE I can strongly recommend God of Carnage, the new play by Yasmina Reza, which tracks the descent into madness of a meeting between two couples to discuss an altercation between their respective sons. All starts with impeccable manners, stilted conversation and discussion of recipes. And then, in a sort of Moulinex blend of Abigail’s
FILM One of the most remarkable things about Africa is how rare it is to see Africans cry. You meet so many human beings there who are forced to endure the most unthinkable, unconscionable poverty, disease and neglect; and yet invariably they do so with a smile so big and true it breaks your heart.
BOOK I’m just coming to the end of The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser – Jerome Loving’s critical biography of my favourite writer. Loving weaves together three narratives – Dreiser’s personal life; his literary development; and the history of early-Twentieth Century America – to create the definitive account of the genius behind Sister
I have three books on the go at the moment: Charles Leadbeater’s brilliant analysis of web-world, We-Think, The Craftsman, by the Spectator’s own in-house magus, Richard Sennett (another masterpiece), and Marcus Du Sautoy’s intriguing exploration of symmetry, Finding Moonshine. I have known Marcus since we are at All Souls together and as well as being
You were probably expecting me to review Ross Kemp in Afghanistan (Sky One, Monday) this week but I’m a bit off Afghanistan programmes at the moment. Not to the point where I won’t watch them all the time to the exclusion of almost all else. Just to the point where, at the end, I feel
Tara Arts, a troupe devoted to ‘cross-cultural theatre’, are hauling their Tempest around the country. In a minivan by the look of things. The whole production — cast, cossies and props — could easily squeeze into a Bedford Rascal but, as Mark Rylance has already demonstrated, thrift and The Tempest don’t mix well. Rylance bored
It’s been commonplace ever since the widespread dissemination of sound recording, followed by the rapid growth of broadcasting, to deplore ‘the appalling popularity of music’: its inevitable debasement, when available so easily, into something ordinary rather than special, repeatable rather than unique, cursory rather than concentrated, disposable rather than sacral. A background: ‘music while you
I mentioned Norm’s latest poll in which he asks: you to send in the list of your favourite English-language novelists. Note that I ask for your favourites and not for those whom you consider to be the greatest (should the first group not coincide with the second). My selections, in no particular order: PG WodehouseRL
I love books like this. A writer writing about what he knows and what he loves and things he has done, with absolutely no thought as to the marketability of the book when it comes out. This very slight lack of focus has already been reflected in a couple of reviews. What is it, fish
Alan Judd on Marc Sageman’s latest book Marc Sageman is deservedly one of the best-known academics working on terrorism. A clinical psychologist and former CIA officer, in 2004 he published Understanding Terror Networks, a book which enlarged the way the subject was seen. Hitherto, most researchers and governments had located the ‘root causes’ of terrorism
Matthew d’Ancona on Paul Morley’s latest book In 1980, the Manchester pop impresario, Tony Wilson, showed Paul Morley the dead body of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, who had hanged himself. Wilson hoped that Morley would one day write the definitive account of the band and Curtis’s martyrdom. He also knew that Morley’s
J. Robert Oppenheimer, ‘the father of the atomic bomb’, remembered that when he saw the first mushroom cloud rise in its terrifying beauty above the test site in New Mexico, a line from the Bhagavad-Gita came into his head: ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ According to a colleague, however, what he
Norm wants to know your top ten favourite English-language novelists. I ballsed my ballot up by forgetting to include William McIlvanney. No excuse for you not to do your bit however. Votes for this fellow – interest declared! – always permitted…
At the risk of trivialising a tragic death, I have been musing over Heath Ledger’s now-posthumous performance as the Joker (see my earlier post as well as this article detailing the potential fate of Ledger’s incomplete film projects) and the impact that death can have upon the reception of art, literature and entertainment. Here is my thumbnail
As this is the last week of my thirties, I feel entitled to indulge in a spot of pop culture nostalgia (or more than usual, at any rate). In tomorrow’s Spectator, I review Paul Morley’s masterly book on Joy Division, which I recommend to anyone who is interested in the music, ideas and social currents
“Why so serious?” say the teaser posters for the forthcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight. This slogan acquired a bleak subtext last night when 28-year-old Heath Ledger – who plays the Joker in the new film – was found dead in his New York apartment, apparently as the result of a drug overdose (the autopsy is
After the cheerlessness and brutality of No Country for Old Men, I’m not sure a film about a serial killer is just what you want. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 18, nationwide After the cheerlessness and brutality of No Country for Old Men, I’m not sure a film about a serial killer
Rose Hilton: A Selected Retrospective Tate St Ives, until 11 May Rose Hilton was born Rosemary Phipps in the Kentish village of Leigh, near Tonbridge, in 1931. She grew up the dutiful daughter of parents who were strict Plymouth Brethren, but early on she showed distinct signs of artistic talent. Her parents considered that this
Something I didn’t think was possible has happened this last week: I have been strongly moved by a performance of La traviata. That was due very largely, of course, to the way the title role was performed. Anna Netrebko may not have the perfect voice for the part, her vocal technique might be lacking in
When Edgar Allan Poe bumped into a friend in New York in 1845, according to Peter Ackroyd’s brisk new life, the following exchange took place. ‘Wallace,’ said Poe, ‘I have just written the greatest poem that ever was written.’ ‘Have you?’ said Wallace. ‘That is a fine achievement.’ ‘Would you like to hear it?’ said