I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling a bit sorry for Mike Harding. The long-serving host of BBC Radio 2’s ‘folk, roots and acoustic’ show was given the heave-ho last month, and the far-from-underemployed Mark Radcliffe took his place last week. One might ask what Harding had done wrong, and indeed Harding has been asking
Being wary of men who wear novelty braces is one of those rules of thumb I’ve always tried to adhere to. So when I’m introduced to Ben Lewin, the writer and director of the lauded new film The Sessions and spy his bright-yellow braces, designed to look like a tape measure, my heart sinks for
If I wake up at too rude an hour to get up — before four o’clock, let’s say — Through the Night is my reward: I switch on the radio and find it to be inhabited not by humans but by music. This six-hour programme, which runs every night on Radio 3 from half-past 12
Filmic structures are always tricky on stage. David Mamet, an exception, can get away with writing long chains of scenes that last a couple of minutes each. But the theatre prefers to relax, to snuggle down, to linger slowly over every morsel of a many-layered spread. Encountering a screenplay on stage is like receiving a
Opera has naturally made no start at all in 2013 in the UK, the month surrounding Christmas being a culture-free zone. By contrast the New York Met has entered the new year with a thrilling production, revived from 2003, of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, a resounding success in all major respects except one. Lovers of this
Some people say TV is a bad thing for families but I say don’t knock it. It was thanks to TV this school holidays that I almost got vaguely, slightly, accepted by Boy. Fathers of young teenage males will know exactly what I’m on about here. There comes a point — quite often bang on
Francesco Clemente (born Naples 1952) began his rise to prominence in this country with two exhibitions at the Royal Academy — the famous New Spirit in Painting of 1981, when figuration was officially relaunched on London (though for some it had never gone away); and Italian Art in the 20th Century eight years later. A
Les Misérables is one of the longest-running, most popular stage musicals in history, having been seen by 60 million people in 42 countries — sit on that, Cats! — and although I can’t comment on the live show, as I’ve never seen it, I can tell you this film, which comes in at around 140
Radio 4’s Book of the Week sounded so promising, pertinent, perfect for these gloomy first days of January. Maybe listening to it day-by-day could help to banish those demons of despair and disillusion which become so virulent after festive over-indulgence and the onset of the New Year? What better antidote to the dank outside than
