Niru Ratnam tackles the thorny question of what constitutes British — or should that be English? — art In the past few months there have been two large-scale exhibitions showcasing British art. The first was the British Art Show at the Hayward Gallery; the second Modern British Sculpture at the Royal Academy. On show at
It was in his room in Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1875 that Oscar Wilde said, ‘I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.’ Now, more than 130 years after he left Magdalen, with a double first in classics, the room has been decorated in his memory by Robert
According to a superstition shared by several Mediterranean countries, the frantic buzz of a fly trapped in a room spells the arrival of unpleasant news. I wonder whether the controversial and multitalented Catalan artist Sol Picó knows that, for in her 2009 El Llac de les Mosques (The Lake of the Flies) the annoying sound
Sir Tom and Sir Trevor — Stoppard and Nunn — have teamed up to realise Sir Trevor’s ‘40-year dream’ of bringing Sir Tom’s breakthrough play to the West End. Sir Tom and Sir Trevor — Stoppard and Nunn — have teamed up to realise Sir Trevor’s ‘40-year dream’ of bringing Sir Tom’s breakthrough play to
Tristan und Isolde is one of the greatest challenges that an opera house can take on, in some ways the greatest of all. So it is wonderful to be able to report that at Grange Park it has been mounted with a large degree of success, and that most of the things that are wrong
British poverty is normally a subject for comedy, rather than documentary. Scotland gave the world Rab C. Nesbitt with his string vest and indecipherable accent. Channel 4 had Shameless, the capers of a family ruled by drink and drugs. The BBC has now brought us the real thing: The Scheme (BBC1, Tuesday), a fly-on-the-wall portrayal
There are just 26 drawings and watercolours in the magnificent exhibition at Lowell Libson, but they are all of such quality and interest that the show is a feast of connoisseurship and visual delight. Selected by Libson and Christopher Baker from the National Gallery of Scotland, the range of work gives a distinct flavour of
Larry Crowne is horrible, just horrible, and I urge you to avoid it like the plague. It’s a ‘rom-com’ starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts and if you thought you can’t go wrong with Hanks and Roberts, two of the greatest screen presences alive, here is proof that you can. This is stilted, lifeless, bears
‘To be speaking to you through the BBC has a very special meaning for me. ‘To be speaking to you through the BBC has a very special meaning for me. It means that once again I am officially a free person,’ says Aung San Suu Kyi at the beginning of the first of her Reith
