Culture

Culture

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

A magpie proves a troublesome pet

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With his swashbuckling gait, ominous associations and garrulous demeanour, the magpie is the dandified razor boy of our avifauna and provokes ambivalent feelings (the ‘pie’ part signifies many a mixture). His pilfering reputation has inspired work from Rossini to the prog-rock band Marillion, and in lab tests he’s one of the few creatures brainy enough

Friendships and rivalries in the golden age of Oxford philosophy

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Though it is startling to think of it now, analytic philosophy was once considered a promising subject for satire on mainstream television. When Beyond the Fringe was broadcast in 1964, the viewing public could apparently be relied upon to recognise the archetype of the post-Wittgensteinian linguistic philosopher being impersonated by Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett.

The farming year in 18th-century Sussex

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You may (or may not) already know this, but researching the long 18th century in 2023 is rarely a life-affirming, paradigm-shifting conversation over wine with Plato in the groves of academe. It is seldom, even, a couple of tins of warm lager on the train home after guesting on an episode of Start the Week.

Caught in a web of lies: The Guest, by Emma Cline, reviewed

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This deeply unpleasant novel kept me reading all night. Alex, 22, preys on rich men as an upmarket prostitute, formerly in New York and now in resorts such as the Hamptons. She is a thief and addict, sneaking her boyfriend’s sleeping pills, his valuable watch, a former room-mate’s medication, random jewellery and any available alcohol,

Triumph and disaster in the War of Jenkins’ Ear

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It all began in 1731 when Robert Jenkins, the captain of the Rebecca, had his ear sliced off by Juan de León Fandiño of the Spanish patrol boat La Isabela. Storming the British brig in the Caribbean, Fandiño accused Jenkins of smuggling sugar from Spanish colonies. He would cut King George’s ear off too, Fandiño

A born rebel: Lady Caroline Lamb scandalises society

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At the beginning of her biography of the novelist, ‘fairy sprite’ and proto-feminist Lady Caroline Lamb, Lady Antonia Fraser hints that this may be her final book. Not for her a dramatic, Prospero-breaking-his-staff exit; instead, she writes mildly in the prologue that ‘this book… can also be regarded as the culmination of an exciting and

Jim Ede and the glories of Kettle’s Yard

Lead book review

Jim Ede started early. At the age of 12 he used £8 of his hard-won savings to buy a Queen Anne desk. No bicycle, air pistol or football for him: this solid piece of old furniture was the thing, the first step in a long life of acquiring objects that lived, breathed and spoke to

The sadness of Britain’s seaside resorts

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Now the exhilaration kicks in, the lightness of heart, a joyfulness surging along the warmed blood vessels and tingling extremities: every cell feels as if charged with new life. There has been a ritual, a sacrifice, an offering to the waves of flesh and pain, and in return, there is restoration, life given back. Thus

Milan Kundera feels the unbearable weight of disappointment

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If you’re looking for a towering intellect to dispense guidance and illumination on current events, particularly one from Central Europe, the hearth of gravitas, piano sonatas, polyglotism, the reading of Hegel etc, Milan Kundera, in A Kidnapped West, will be a bit of a disappointment. This isn’t Kundera’s fault. The volume contains a short speech

Bad boy on the run: Shy, by Max Porter, reviewed

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Shy concludes Max Porter’s informal trilogy of short, poetic novels powered by pain and polyphony. First, in 2015, came Grief is the Thing with Feathers, in which a widowed Ted Hughes scholar is both shocked and comforted by the arrival of a croaking, crouching crow. Then, four years later, Lanny, which followed a young boy

Desperate for love: Very Cold People, by Sarah Manguso, reviewed

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‘My parents were liars,’ the narrator Ruthie says at the beginning of Sarah Manguso’s unsettling debut novel. Looking back on her abusive childhood in a New England town near Boston in the 1980s, she recounts how her father wore a fake Rolex that didn’t work, and her narcissistic mother was obsessed with social climbing, pinning

If the Nazis had occupied Britain, how many of us would have collaborated?

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Those of us who have never endured occupation can find it difficult to judge the behaviour of some who have. The lines between survival, passive cooperation and active collaboration are not always clear. Following the second world war, the myths of resistance, especially in France, were deliberately inflated in order to hide the humiliation and

The secret of the Tories’ long domination of British politics

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No other country, wrote Karl Marx in 1854, was so ripe for revolution as Britain. How wrong can you be? Despite two world wars, innumerable booms and busts, not to mention the extension of the franchise to the lower orders, 170-odd years later Britain’s ruling class are (or were until recently) almost as firmly in

A passion for moths – and the thrill of the chase

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Over the years, I too have regularly been meeting with moths. So far, I have encountered 891 species just in my own garden in Sussex. But most of these moths came to me: I have an ancient metal Robinson trap, inherited from my grandfather, which lures them to a mercury vapour bulb. Katty Baird, how-ever,

The intricate stories timepieces tell

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Humans live rigidly by the ticking hand of the clock, but few notice the passing of time with such precision as a horologist. Horology is the science of measuring time, and Rebecca Struthers is the first watchmaker in British history to earn a doctorate in antiquarian horology. After the Black Death, a wave of memento

Tanya Gold

The complex genius of Mel Brooks

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Students of Mel Brooks – who has a more important place in American comedy than we, and I suspect even he, have acknowledged – have had thin gruel so far. The emphasis has always rested on Woody Allen, the other New York-born Jewish comic and film-maker who wrote for Sid Caesar – at least since

Box of tricks: The Imposters, by Tom Rachman, reviewed

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The Imposters is Tom Rachman’s fifth book in just over a decade. It is also his best – full of twists and surprises. Each chapter follows a different individual and captures their life in just a few pages. Many of the characters then weave in and out of other chapters. As the book unfolds there