Arts Reviews

Truman Capote should have been called Truman Persons. His father, Archulus, abbreviated his first name and introduced himself as Arch Persons. ‘And that,’ scoffed his son, ‘sounded like a flock of bishops.’ The young scribbler was thrilled when his divorced mother married a rich Cuban, Joseph Capote, whose zippy and eccentric name he gladly adopted. He got a job at the New Yorker and found the magazine’s celebrated wits, including Dorothy Parker and James Thurber, were embittered molluscs who hated each other. Capote’s literary life, as related by Bob Kingdom, is a parade of inspired bitchiness. He had the knack of getting to a character’s core problem. For Gore Vidal

The penultimate episode of a season of Game of Thrones is usually the point where something spectacularly game changing happens. In previous seasons, there’s been Ned Stark’s execution, the Battle of Blackwater Bay, the Red Wedding, the wildling attack on the Wall, the dragons in Meereen, and the Battle of the Bastards. It is sensible, therefore, to always enter the penultimate episode with a sense of trepidation and excitement, knowing that the events will not be inconsequential. Last night’s ‘Beyond the Wall’ ended up being less ‘Rains of Castermere’ and more ‘Dance of Dragons’ (i.e. nothing of any huge import happened). The resurrection of the Ice Dragon offered an opportunity

In 1987, the art of opera changed decisively. John Adams’s opera Nixon in China was so unlike the usual run of new operas in its concept that many people, on first hearing about it, assumed it had to be a joke of some sort. Turning the preposterous and reviled figures of Richard and Pat Nixon and Henry Kissinger into operatic heroes — they were all still alive in 1987 — seemed preposterously at odds with the dignity of the form. It was entirely serious. Though the concept was in part that of Peter Sellars, the opera director, the exquisite refinement of treatment was that of the librettist, Alice Goodman. Unlike

In 1988–9, British youth culture underwent the biggest revolution since the 1960s. The music was acid house, the drug: Ecstasy. Together they created the Second Summer of Love — a euphoric high that lasted a year and a half and engulfed Britain’s youth in a hedonistic haze of peace, love and unity. At the end of a decade marked by social division and unemployment, acid house transcended class and race, town and country, north and south. Amid the smoke and lasers, an entire generation came up together. How did it happen? The story starts in Ibiza, which by the mid-1980s had outgrown its roots as a hippie commune and was

For the third episode in a row, Game of Thrones has devoted its final act to the sort of blockbuster battle sequence that would’ve been unthinkable on TV a few years ago. Now it’s a weekly treat, and the dish presented to us in ‘The Spoils of War’ was the most visceral, disarming battle since Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton went head to head in the sludge at Winterfell. Indeed, the sequence – led by a shot of Bronn in the chaos which owes a lot to the opening scene of The Revenant – overshadows all that comes before it. Raised eyebrows abound as Jon and Dany enjoy a deeply flirtatious

Randy Newman is already struggling to keep up with himself. His dazzling new album, Dark Matter, was written before the changes of the last year, and no matter how pointed and current some of it is, there’s something missing. ‘There was a newspaper article that said Donald Trump is like a character in a Randy Newman song,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think there were any real people like the guy in “Political Science” or “My Life Is Good”. But he’s close.’ He’s had a bash at something for the Potus. ‘I just had an idea for a Trump song,’ he says, sounding rather like Yogi Bear’s rather smarter brother. ‘But