The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Ever since I began to serve sentences of imprisonment three decades ago I have preferred not to know too much about what I’m missing outside. Whenever I do find myself receiving a social visit, crammed in amongst squabbling (or more often dysfunctionally silent) families enjoying their monthly 40 minutes together, I tend to steer the
Reviewing recently a new English version of Alain-Fournier’s 1913 novel Le Grand Meaulnes, I was happy and relieved to find that it retains its magic. It has entranced generations of adolescents, not all of them French, but I had wondered if it would still appeal after so many years. It is an extraordinary book, part fairytale
I have yet to capitulate to this series of Big Brother, which is not to say that I won’t. But it does seem very striking to me that the reality TV show seems to have become the canvas upon which we observe the nation’s residual bigotries and (in the case of Shilpa’s victory) our desire
Reading James Delingpole’s fine piece about ‘the best music festival in the universe’ brought it all flooding back. Twenty years ago, buoyed by rave reviews such as James’s, I headed for Glastonbury full of starry-eyed hope and excitement. What followed were three days of unremitting misery, memories of which haunt me to this day. Torrential rain,
My book of the moment is Mark Law’s brilliant exploration of judo, The Pyjama Game (Aurum). A specialist book on a marginal sport? Not at all. There is something about the “gentle art” (in which I used to dabble a little) – throws, hold-downs, strangles, and arm-locks – which absorbs and changes people. Vladimir Putin,
This weekend, as the orchestras of England celebrate the 150th anniversary of this country’s most celebrated composer, is an appropriate time to review the national monument that is Sir Edward Elgar. Does he continue to speak of and for England? Or was he merely a late-romantic nostalgic, whose music was hopelessly outdated when he died
I have been dipping into the Modern Sculpture Reader, edited by Jon Wood, David Hulks and Alex Potts, an invaluable compilation of texts produced by the Henry Moore Institute at £20. It’s a hefty paperback tome determined to give sculpture its rightful place in the anthology stakes — so often dominated by painting — and
It’s always a problem, comparing a new band with others who have gone before. Critics have to do it, defining the new in terms of the old, because there has to be some way of describing the indescribable. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been caught, having read somewhere that someone was
At last ENO has come up with a production which can be greeted almost without reservation, and of a treacherously tricky opera, Britten’s last and for many his greatest, Death in Venice. After a gruelling two weeks in which I have seen major works manhandled beyond bearing at the Royal Opera and at Glyndebourne, I
Right until the end of his life, Euan Uglow remained one of the most elusive English painters. An intensely private man, known only to a small circle of devoted artists, critics, models, collectors and former students, he disliked promotional exposure and the celebrity cult. His reputation has always been high, but it was largely confined
Water opens with a beautiful little Indian girl sitting on the back of a cart joyously chewing on sugar cane. She has luscious hair, pinchable cheeks, dark eyes, a nose-ring and tinkling silver anklets. (So cute; Madonna would kill for her.) A middle-aged man is on the cart, too, lying on his back and groaning.
Very sadly I couldn’t get hold of Sea of Fire (BBC2, Friday), the (reportedly superb) drama documentary about the destruction of HMS Coventry in the Falklands War, because tapes weren’t available till just before broadcast. But not to worry. I think I can still tell you with some confidence how it went. The first thing
I saw Jeremy Paxman lose his languid scepticism a few weeks ago on Newsnight and exhibit what looked like amazement. Michael Rose had just said that if he were an Iraqi he would fight the Americans, or at least he could see why Iraqis did it. Is that, Paxman asked, what you want the families
Another book on Napoleon, or General Bonaparte as the author properly notes, though only because the man had not crowned himself emperor when he invaded Egypt. Insisting on calling him General Bonaparte, as an Englishman should, is now, alas, regarded as mere pedantry. If you type ‘Napoleon’ into the British Library catalogue, the result (13
Three out of the last ten prime ministers have been cricket fanatics. The first was Clement Attlee. In the immediate aftermath of the second world war a newswire service was installed in 10 Downing Street. Attlee ignored it except that during the summer months he used what he called his ‘cricket machine’ to keep up
Why a book at all? This guide to email etiquette, written by a pair of New York Times hacks, ought to exist as a viral attachment bouncing around the world from computer to computer. It kicks off with Jo Moore’s notorious and oft-misquoted email. Here’s the exact wording: ‘It is now a very good day
When I was a child, an aunt gave my mother a cookery book called 100 Ways with Mince. This made a huge impression on me, because of my mother’s irritation — it was not her idea of a present — but even more so because of the enormity of the title. It sprang into my
The return of the king follows a death. As the Lord Protector of the three kingdoms draws his last breath a great storm rises up, blowing down houses, trees and ships at sea. To Charles Fitzroy it is as if the elements themselves were celebrating Oliver Cromwell’s passing. But it was expected that tempests should
Few have done more than Noble Frankland to dissipate the myths and propaganda that fog our understanding of modern warfare. After serving as a navigator in Bomber Command during the second world war, Frankland went on to become a historian in the Cabinet Office, Director of the Imperial War Museum and adviser to the Thames
The Kite Runner, said to be the first Afghan novel to be written in English, told an epic tale of individuals whose lives were lived across two continents amidst relentless political upheaval. Its author, Khaled Hosseini, stunned the critics with the extraordinary quality of that debut novel which has sold over eight million copies and
Strix would have been 100 on 31 May. Before he had decided on a screech owl as his nom de plume, he had been Moth, and occasionally Scadavay and Apemantus. He had joined The Spectator in 1931 as a bumptious young man with a first in English from Oxford, where he had also been editor
Sergeant Pepper always cheers me up because – aside from its musical brilliance – it is slightly older than I am. Today’s papers are full of readable celebrations of the album’s anniversary, including a Guardian leader and a “where is she now?” piece in The Times on the Lucy of “Lucy in the Sky with
I’m becoming increasingly intrigued by Katie Hopkins, the contestant on The Apprentice who has emerged as a national hate figure. (See Richard Curtis’s aside during his Bafta Fellowship speech.) On last night’s show, in which the six remaining contestants had to sell merchandise on a home shopping channel, Katie was so outrageously snobbish about the
When Günter Grass confessed last year that he had been in the Waffen SS it took everyone by surprise. It seemed like a cynically timed admission coming after he had won the Nobel prize for literature and before his autobiography came out. That slightly odd feeling isn’t shaken by this long essay in the New Yorker
How do you react to the news that Kay Hartenstein Saatchi, ex-wife of Charles, the woman who helped to discover (or invent) the original Brit Art brat pack, is putting on a exhibition of London’s best young artists this week? Perhaps your eyes have already begun to widen with excitement? Perhaps you feel a sudden
Futurism was originally an Italian manifestation in art and literature, a cult of speed and movement, triumphantly urban and dynamic, a sort of souped-up Cubism, which lasted from 1909 until its deathblow in the first world war and final dissolution in the 1920s. It was pretty much invented by the poet Filippo Tomasso Marinetti (1876–1944),
Strange business walking into the Three Sisters at the Barbican. A vast new temporary seating complex has been built over the auditorium, and as you wander along the reverberating walkways you can peer down through the gaps and make out the familiar opulent cushions of the stalls below you, all shadowy and deserted. It’s like
The Glyndebourne season began this year in a striking fashion, with a new production of Verdi’s Macbeth which treats it as a broad comedy — and naturally, from this audience, gets the laughs it is begging for. The production is by Richard Jones, as anyone who has seen one or two of his other operatic
It’s your last chance this afternoon to catch one of the best programmes on Radio Four, guaranteed to come up each week with something a bit different: an unusual voice or opinion or insight. For the last couple of years it’s been infuriatingly easy to miss, broadcast at 5.30 on a Saturday afternoon when you’re