The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Everyone loves a private view, and I am no exception. I don’t know how many hours I must have spent trudging around central London’s art galleries in search of warm white wine – my social life doesn’t extend much beyond the confines of that circuit to be honest. Lately, however, I’ve been to some dreadful
Stravinsky’s The Firebird begins in darkness, and it might be the softest, deepest darkness in all music. Basses and cellos rock slowly, pianissimo, in their lowest register; using mutes to give the sound that added touch of velvet. Far beneath them rumbles the bass drum: a halo of blackness, perceptible only at the very edge
The Thing With Feathers is an adaptation of Max Porter’s acclaimed novella about a widower who is left to raise his two sons after his beloved wife’s sudden death and whose grief is embodied in the form of a monstrous, giant black crow. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch, who gives his absolute all, but while the
A male British rapper who is unafraid to show tenderness and vulnerability is not a particularly new phenomenon: Dave, Stormzy, Headie One and Kano have all walked this path in recent times. None, however, has made emotional fragility his USP to quite the same extent as Loyle Carner, who writes about his children, his masculine
Pluribus is another drama set in the dystopian future. But on this occasion the integrity of the entire human race depends not on someone ordinary and likeable who could almost be you, but on a bolshie, misanthropic middle-aged lesbian called Carol. Carol (Rhea Seehorn from Better Call Saul) is so grumpy that when in flashback
The Royal Ballet has scheduled what – on paper at least – looks like one of the most dismally dull and cautious seasons I can recall. The company is hobbled by a £21.7 million government loan (that had tided the place over during Covid), which the Royal Opera House is being forced to ‘service’. One
The Hunger Games is based on a 2008 novel about a despotic regime where brainwashed citizens are entertained with televised duels between teenagers. Not a bad idea. We go behind the scenes and watch Katniss (Mia Carragher) being selected to fight Peeta (Euan Garrett) who secretly adores her. As soon as the plot starts, it
I know where I’m going. I’m on the sleeper train chugging out of Euston and heading to Fort William. A wedding dress hangs on the wall in its transparent cover. I know from my printed itinerary that upon arrival at Fort William, there will be a car, then a ferry from Oban, and finally a
The history of the male ballet dancer is a chequered one. In the early 19th century, he was the star of the show, albeit more as an acrobat and tumbler than fairy-tale prince. The vogue for sylph-like damsels floating in white tulle put paid to that, reducing him to the auxiliary role of porter and
On 7 December 2015 the Kennedy Centre Honours were awarded to Carole King, George Lucas, Rita Moreno, Seiji Ozawa and Cicely Tyson. King sat by the White House Christmas tree during the afternoon reception wearing her medal and laughing as Barack Obama recited the most familiar of her thousands of song lines: ‘You make me
‘When people see the word “chef” on the cover of a cookbook, it can set off alarm bells. It’s intimidating, I get it,’ says Ben Lippett, a former chef. The statement does make one wonder. When does a cook become a chef or a chef become a cook? Recently I sulked, I don’t know why,
At the opening of The Hour of the Predator, Giuliano da Empoli describes Spain’s conquest of the Aztec empire, its doomed ruler Moctezuma II’s response (ineffective vacillation, delaying any course of action), its consequences and its relevance to politics today. It is a striking introduction to a brief, bracing and profoundly alarming book. The author
The fourth novel in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s spooky supernatural series differs from the others in that it is a standalone and doesn’t involve previous characters. Gone, too, are the multiple narrators; and there is only the briefest mention of a new star in the sky – which in the other three books coincided with all
A researcher arrives in Trieste to piece together the life of a well-known literary figure. In cafés, bookshops and hospitals he visits the friends and lovers who were part of the writer’s circle. Now dying themselves, they share echoes of a literary scene that has long since dispersed. Women recall how they were celebrated in
No one likes a pedant. But over the past few millennia, people have shunned pedants, bores and know-it-alls for a wide range of different, often conflicting, reasons. They have been accused of obscuring the path to true philosophical knowledge and of putting learning on too high a pedestal; they’ve been regarded as unfit to be
Simon Winchester has found an excellent subject. While invisible, wind makes itself apparent through its effect on other things. This may mean flying detritus, scudding clouds and the rustle of foliage; or it may mean the ways in which it irresistibly alters and directs larger movements in society and culture. Much of the history of
There’s not much point pretending to be an expert on Elgar (or so The Bluffer’s Guide to Music assures us) because everyone already thinks they are. And there’s definitely no point getting hung up on the historical accuracy (or otherwise) of Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner’s new film The Choral. It’s set in a West
Britain’s heritage is slowly going up in smoke. Medlock Mill was Manchester’s oldest standing textile mill until it burnt down in June. It joins Grade I-listed Woolton Hall – destroyed by a catastrophic fire in August. But it’s not just the buildings that are under threat, but the entire system designed to protect them. Prior
Grade: A Welcome to the Andalusian cadence, the minor fall and the major lift, the descent from Am through G and F to E. Welcome also to Rosalia Vila Tobella, who is not Andalusian, but Catalan, but uses that cadence an awful lot, much as Status Quo prefer to stick to C, F, G. She
Janacek’s The Makropulos Case is a weird and very wonderful opera, but its basic plot isn’t hard to follow. Still, it seems to send directors into a tailspin. One recent production (since revised) had a cast member break character and pull out a flipchart to recap the story so far. Katie Mitchell’s new staging for
Numerous research academics have contributed to this highly cogent show celebrating the craftspeople of Ancient Egypt. My pre-teen companion, though a big fan of Egypt, was still slightly hesitant about whether this would be the most interesting angle. It began with a 4,000-year-old stele, or tombstone, on loan from the Louvre, praising the sculptural and
Yeats famously summarised Ireland in the four words, ‘Great hatred, little room’. But, as Louise Kennedy’s 2022 debut novel Trespasses showed, in 1970s Northern Ireland the hatred had grown even greater and the room even littler. Channel 4’s faithful adaptation began – as it would continue over its four parts this week – with the
Nuremberg is one of those films that falls short on everything it wants to be and everything it could be. It’s a historical drama, set just before the trials, where an American psychiatrist (Rami Malek) is charged with assessing whether Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s second in command, is fit to stand trial and to
Queen Victoria began to experience dark visions after giving birth to her second child. Concerned that she might have inherited the madness of her grandfather, George III, Prince Albert summoned her doctor. Robert Ferguson was not the obvious man for this scenario – he was an obstetrician – but the doughty queen had heard that
On YouTube – and I urge you to look it up – there is a magnificent piece of footage from German TV, in which big band leader James Last leads his orchestra into a medley of hard rock hits, opening with Hawkwind’s deathless space-rock drone ‘Silver Machine’. And damn it if they don’t nail it.
Othello directed by Tom Morris opens with a stately display of scarlet costumes and gilded doorways arranged against a backdrop of black nothingness. This is Venice at night with no hint of sea or sunshine. Crimson-robed senators gather to discuss Othello’s alleged abduction of Brabantio’s daughter. And here he comes, David Harewood as the Moor,
Religious conversions do not, for the most part, make for good anecdotes. An exception can be found in Patricia Lockwood’s memoir Priestdaddy, which describes the author’s father Greg’s road to Damascus experience in a nuclear submarine off the coast of Norway, where he watched The Exorcist 72 times: That eerie, pea-soup light was pouring down,
A beguiling cinema advert back in the 1970s showed a young man with a series of doors closing around him with resounding clunks. First, he was hemmed in by the boredom of school, then work, and finally a mortgage – but as soon as he got the keys to his first motorbike, he could hit
Love Divine, the debut novella by Ysenda Maxtone Graham, is set in the leafy, fictional parish of Lamley Green and weaves together a tableau of stories about the community. The title comes from the hymn ‘Come Down, O Love Divine’; but beneath this bourgeois Church of England world of round-robins and milky tea is a