The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
And so we enter the Christmas books season, a phase in the publishing calendar so terrifying, so utterly without hope, that more sensitive bookbuyers may wish to hide in second-hand bookshops, or under their beds, until it’s all over. But amidst the piles of useless non-books in Borders and Waterstones, probably right at the back
Susan Hill knows exactly how to please. This small, smart, elegantly printed little notepad of a book is a delicious Victorian ghost story, nostalgically and expertly comforting. It opens as smoothly as an M. R. James or Conan Doyle short story, over a good fire in a shadowy room on a winter’s night: The story
Rows of black suits filled the China Airlines flight from Beijing to Paris in September 1984. The People’s Liberation Army had ordered its entire delegation of dancers and musicians to wear the same ill-fitting outfit. Only one 17-year-old dancer had disobeyed the order. For this, his first visit to Europe, Jin Xing had bought a
This is a book long anticipated, as much in dread of dire news from Zimbabwe as in expectation of brilliant reporting spiced by mordant wit. It does not disappoint. Judith Todd’s chronicle of Mugabe’s crimes against his people appals, yet the ‘life’ of the subtitle has been a high-spirited crusade for justice, democracy and freedom
It’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves at the outset, as we reach the third volume of John Richardson’s stupendous biography of Picasso, exactly where we are. Picasso died in April 1973, aged 91, and it comes as something of a shock to realise that at the end of this volume, in 1932, he’s a middle-aged man
When the second half of the 19th century began, South Africa was barely even a geographical expression, as Metternich had contemptuously called Italy. It certainly wasn’t a country, but merely an ill-defined area which included two Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, two British colonies, the Cape and Natal, and a number
The Fixed Period is the most un-Trollopian thing Trollope ever wrote. It is a first-person futuristic narrative set in the state of Britannula, an island somewhere near New Zealand, in the year 1980. The President of Britannula, John Neverbend, decides to institute a fixed term of 67½ years for the life-span of his citizens, after
You don’t need to like – or know anything about – rap music or cartoons to still think this is pretty neat*: *Though not entirely safe for work since it would be plastered with warning stickers in the stores. But, sod it, it’s Friday… [Thanks to reader MH for the heads-up]
Memorial services. Difficult to get right but potentially celebratory, contemplative, comforting and spiritually sustaining. Earlier today, St Paul’s Covent Garden saw a gathering that was all of those things, in memory of Edmund Tracey, a wise, witty and gloriously cultivated man, Literary Manager for many years at Sadler’s Wells, then at English National Opera. He
Has there been enough about Wagner in the Spec lately? Well, just one tiny snippet more. Last night at the Royal Opera House saw what was possibly John Tomlinson’s farewell performance in the role of Wotan/the Wanderer in Siegfried, the third opera in the Ring cycle. Taking the place of Bryn Terfel he has proved
I was lucky enough to see Shadowlands at the Wyndham’s Theatre this week and, if you haven’t been, you really should. William Nicholson’s play, originally a TV drama now best known for the movie version starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, is powerful stuff, a demanding distillation of C.S. Lewis’s personal battle with the problem
The magic of Pixar films – especially the Toy Story duet and The Incredibles – is that they appeal to adults as well as the children at whom they are primarily aimed. The latest creation of the CGI giant, Ratatouille, is arguably the best so far, and I certainly enjoyed it as much as my
BOOK Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek: The double biography is a genre that, in the hands of a master, can shed fresh light on the most familiar materials. Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin is the example nonpareil and, more recently, Andrew Roberts has produced splendid volumes on (for example) Napoleon and
One of the great things about having an area of specialism is the discovery of a new aspect to it. Since my teens, I have developed a particular interest in 20th-century British art, encouraged initially by a brilliant art teacher and by the writings of Sir John Rothenstein, quondam director of the Tate Gallery. Well,
Olaf Street sounds as though it should be in some Scandinavian city or other. No doubt there’s a street so named in several Norwegian towns, but there is also an Olaf Street in London W11, of mysterious origin. Could King Olaf II of Norway, fresh from asserting his suzerainty in the Orkneys, have decided to
Bill Clinton looks down at me with that famous, lazy grin. His perfect American teeth show bright white and his blue eyes lock on to mine. I take a few steps forward (who wouldn’t?) but as I draw closer something odd happens to Bill: his face blurs, its outline distorts, wobbling as if underwater. A
Big date for Bohemians next month: 28 November marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake whose memory is honoured by every moth-eaten visionary, every babbling poet and every garret-bound artist flinging paint at a canvas. Nowadays, Blake’s eminence is universally accepted but the great mystery of his career is that his achievements,
Exhibitions 2: L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti: Collection de la Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti In terms of body shape, the week of the Rugby World Cup final was an odd choice for the Pompidou Centre to kick off a new exhibition of Alberto Giacometti, an artist whose attenuated vision of humanity seems better suited to Paris
Tons of sterilised domestic and industrial waste lay strewn across the gallery floor. Against one wall mounds of unidentifiable detritus are shrouded with ribbons of black tape like seaweed on rocks. Beyond, the work of sifting and sorting and baling recyclable material has begun. Despite the sanitisation, the place reeks. All around are the sounds
Here’s your starter for ten. What’s the most famous unfinished piece of classical music in the world? Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony, his Symphony No. 8, of course, which is usually played as a two-movement torso, bereft of the Scherzo and finale which a symphony of its provenance would normally include. Usually, but not always. The latest
This is either a seriously good film with some flaws or a seriously flawed film with some good elements. I am hoping to work out which it is by the finish of this, otherwise I will have denied you a proper ending, and we all know how irritating that is. Eastern Promises opens with a
Here’s something new to ban. Writers who use the Great War as an emotional backdrop to their stories. It’s embarrassing to see so many authors marching up the alley marked ‘failure of invention’. And it dishonours the dead to use their blood as wallpaper. Sadly the subject is just too tempting. It’s our equivalent of
‘Where were you when they crucified the Lord?’; when news of Waterloo was brought, or the Mutiny, or the Charge of the Light Brigade, or the death of Victoria? Thence into living memory and universal communications — when Edward VIII announced his abdication; when Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich with ‘peace in our time’; when
Dance: Thierry Baë: Journal d’inquiétude, The Place: Robin Howard Dance Theatre; Shen Wei: Connect Transfer, Barbican So far, the two most thought-provoking performances I have seen in this year’s Dance Umbrella have both been French. But Compagnie Beau Geste’s duet between a man and a digger, which I reviewed enthusiastically two weeks ago, and Thierry
Opera: Das Rheingold; Die Walküre Halfway through the second cycle of the Ring at the Royal Opera, I’m feeling far more positive than I could have expected. When I saw the separate parts of the work I found Keith Warner’s direction cluttered and confusing, Stefanos Lazaridis’s sets ugly and evidently unsafe, Antonio Pappano’s conducting wayward
I wish Mary Whitehouse were still among us. In my teenage years, she was an invaluable guide to where the filth could be found on television — though to be frank most of what she disliked was disappointing: hardly titillating, and far from filthy. I suspect that if she were invited back to earth to
Sex is never any good on radio. Think of all those excruciating scenes in The Archers — Sid and Jolene in the shower, or, for those addicts with a good memory, Shula on a picnic rug with that seamy journalist from the Borchester Echo. On radio, without the carefully crafted images of a film-maker and
The first time I came across John Mortimer was while I was working as a gossip columnist. I had for some reason or another to telephone him in search of a quote, and did what dozens of my kind had done before, and dozens have done since. The telephone was answered by an elderly lady’s
It is a mark of how various are Jane Gardam’s interests that this collection of short stories does not read as a collection at all, but more as a very agreeable hotch-potch. Only place unites them, for several take place in leafy London suburbs, Hampstead, perhaps, or Wimbledon. The stories are unalike in subject, length