Culture

Culture

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

Damian Thompson

The filthy side of Dame Myra Hess

Classical

The photograph on the cover of Jessica Duchen’s magnificent new biography of Dame Myra Hess shows a statuesque lady sitting at the keyboard, hair swept back into the neatest of buns. Add a pair of half-moon spectacles and she could be Dr Evadne Hinge, accompanist to Dame Hilda Bracket. This isn’t to imply that Dame

James Delingpole

I’m warming to Meghan Markle – only joking

Television

You know that urge when you’ve got friends coming for the weekend and you just have to spend the previous week putting together all the essentials for a successful stay: personalised bags of truffle-flavoured popcorn and pretzel nibbles for their bedside; hand-blended, sensually curated bath salts; layer cake flavoured with honey from your private hives;

Irresistible: Osipova/Linbury reviewed

Dance

One of the few indisputably great ballerinas of her generation, Natalia Osipova is a magnificent exemplar of the Russian school, her training at the Bolshoi furnishing her with a steely security of technique, powerful stage personality, and spirit of dauntless daring. Happily based at the Royal Ballet since 2013, she’s now also one of ours.

The true birthplace of the Renaissance

Arts feature

The baby reaches out to touch his mother’s scarf: he studies her face intently, and she focuses entirely on him. There is connection; there is familiarity; there is love. It could be one of the pictures on my phone from last weekend of my daughter with her six-month-old. In fact, it dates from Tuscany c.1290,

The greatest paintings are always full of important unimportant things

Exhibitions

Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, at the Courtauld, consists of a selection of 25 absorbing paintings chosen from 207. I was disappointed but not surprised that one of the greatest paintings in the world, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Die Anbetung der Könige im Schnee’ (The Adoration of the Kings in the

Finneas has little to offer without his sister Billie Eilish

Pop

No truth is more self-evident than that there are those whose best emerges only when they are paired with others: Lennon and McCartney, Morecambe and Wise, Clough and Taylor. And it’s perhaps even harder for a behind-the-scenes collaborator to step out in their own right. Jack Antonoff, for example, is one of the creative powerhouses

Cartoonish, sub-Armando Iannucci comic caper: Mickey 17 reviewed

Cinema

Mickey 17 is the latest film from the South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho, who won an Oscar for Parasite and made Snowpiercer and Okja. It’s a dystopian sci-fi satire starring Robert Pattinson twice over (all will be explained) but while it initially kicks some decent ideas around, it eventually descends into a cartoonish, sub-Armando Iannucci

A blast: Leigh Bowery!, at Tate Modern, reviewed

Exhibitions

Tate Modern’s latest exhibition is a bizarre proposition on so many levels. Its subject, the Australian designer, performer, provocateur and club scenester Leigh Bowery, was by all accounts inescapable in London for much of the 1980s and early 1990s. Standing at well over 6ft and weighing 17st, he would have been a conspicuous presence on

Real artists have nothing to fear from AI

Arts feature

Christie’s is making digital-art history again – or at least trying to. Between 20 February and 5 March, it is hosting Augmented Intelligence, the first major auction dedicated solely to AI-generated art. This follows a series of headline-grabbing stunts, including the first major sale of an AI-generated artwork in 2018 – ‘Portrait of Edmond de

James Delingpole

I think I’ve found the perfect TV series

Television

Drops of God is one of those gems of purest ray serene that cable TV prefers to keep hidden in its deep unfathomed caves because it thinks you want something more lowbrow. Try finding it by accident: you won’t. When I looked for it on Apple – which doesn’t have all that many shows –

In defence of deaccessioning

Arts feature

There’s more than a grain of truth in the popular caricature of a curator as a mother hen clucking frantically if anyone gets too near her nest – not that her eggs are about to hatch, let alone run. The recent threat of the British Council to ‘deaccession’ – to put it more bluntly, sell

Lloyd Evans

Tedious and threadbare: Unicorn, at the Garrick Theatre, reviewed

Theatre

Unicorn, Mike Bartlett’s new play, involves some characters in chairs discussing a sexual threesome. That’s the entire show. Polly (Nicola Walker) is a drunken crosspatch who wants to spice up her loveless marriage to Dr Nick (Stephen Mangan) by bringing a blonde lesbian into the bedroom. Nick, a dithering twerp, doesn’t care if it happens

How to write a piano concerto

Classical

My Piano Concerto, The World of Yesterday, began with an email during one of the darker days of the pandemic: would I like to write a score for a movie about a concert pianist writing a piano concerto. As I looked at my concert diary, blank but for Zoom calls, it seemed like a wonderful

The White Lotus is off to a shaky start

Television

The White Lotus, now back for a third series, could perhaps be best described as Death in Paradise for posh people. Most obviously, this is because its plots revolve around murders in an idyllic location – only with a far bigger budget, a much starrier cast and several episodes per story. But there’s also the

Jenny McCartney

Soothing and glorious: Fashion Neurosis reviewed

Radio

Sometimes the mind needs to take a break. And I can’t think of a better stopping-off place than the soothing, gloriously bonkers discussions on the Fashion Neurosis podcast, hosted by the British fashion designer Bella Freud. Its premise is that Freud, daughter of Lucian and great-grand-daughter of Sigmund, encourages guests to recline on her couch

Regents Opera’s Ring is a formidable achievement

Opera

I saw the world end in a Bethnal Green leisure centre. Regents Opera’s Ring cycle, which began in 2022 in Freemasons’ Hall in Covent Garden, has found its culmination and completion at York Hall, a rundown public bath better known for championship boxing. Tower Hamlets security staff scan you for concealed weapons on the way