Interesting news from the world of conjuring. Magicians don’t believe in magic any more. Marc Salem, one of the new breed of sceptical illusionists, isn’t a clairvoyant or a mind-reader but a ‘professor of non-verbal communications’. And he boosts his university income by sitting in on CIA interviews to help the spooks decide when a
British Youth Opera is an institution which I have somehow not come across until now, to my loss. They, or it, are at the Peacock Theatre until 11 September, alternating Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and Mozart’s Cos
The Canadian painter David Milne (1882–1953) is not known in this country. His name is shamefully overlooked by the Yale Dictionary of Art & Artists, and there has never before been a show of his work here. The fact that there is one now is largely due to the vision and enthusiasm of Frances Carey,
You were probably expecting me to watch Celebrity Shark Bait (ITV1, Sunday) but I didn’t because I was feeling a bit ‘been there, done that’ and, short of filming the celebrities actually being eaten, I couldn’t see how they could possibly have made it exciting. I expect there was lots and lots of build-up as
The revival of interest in what was called ‘early music’ in the 1970s and 1980s was a cultural event which went beyond a new way of making sounds. There was, for example, the dress code and the eating habits which were said to go with it. There was even a political resonance: Thatcher and Reagan
