Culture

Culture

Sunday

Simon Ings

The art of aging

More than 30 contemporary artists have contributed to the Wellcome Collection’s latest exhibition, which asks what it’s like to age at a time of unparalleled longevity. But as so often happens at the Wellcome’s exhibitions, it’s the ephemera that draw the eye first. “These 2 men are the same age,” says a leaflet advertising Kellogg’s All-Bran breakfast cereal. “One has driving power – energy – the will to succeed. The other is listless – tired all the time – it is an effort for him to plod through each day’s work.” The point being that aging is, to a not inconsiderable degree, something we do to ourselves, and something we do to each other. It is a process, not an event.

aging

Saturday

Lionel Barber

Lloyd Blankfein – guiding light of Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs inspires awe and envy in equal measure. Those who survive the Wall Street investment bank’s annual cull earn fortunes. Leavers join an alumni network that makes the Freemasons look like plodders. The “Government Sachs” roll call includes prime ministers (Mark Carney, Mario Draghi, Rishi Sunak and Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull); US Treasury secretaries (Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson); and central bank governors galore, not to mention two recent BBC chairmen (Gavyn Davies and Richard Sharp). After the global financial crisis, which Goldman navigated more adroitly than rivals, Rolling Stone compared the bank to “a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” New York magazine ran a cover story which asked: “IS GOLDMAN SACHS EVIL?

lloyd blankfein
harry styles
Rod Liddle

Harry Styles has a cute voice

Grade: B In which the foppish Davy Jones figure from the manufactured band One Direction (Zayn Malik being Peter Tork; One Direction didn’t have a Mike Nesmith) sheds the soft-rock pop-lite that has served him so well and goes with what he fondly believes is challengingly funky EDM, a genre which I do not believe plays to his strengths. So what you get is lyrics as fabulously inane as on “Watermelon Sugar” but very little of the pleasant tunes which accompanied that and his many other hits. There are some interesting rhythmic textures for sure, and a surfeit of old-skool playground synths. There is also a surfeit of repetition, a necessity for the oeuvre and a polite nod toward rap.

Friday

Deborah Ross

The Peaky Blinders film is surprisingly literate

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is the film that fans of the television show have long been waiting for, so I must watch what I say. The story follows a group of exceptionally violent Birmingham gangsters operating between the wars and if you see it at the cinema you’ll hear a message before the opening credits. It’s Cillian Murphy imploring audiences not to give away any spoilers and ruin it for everyone else “by order of the Peaky Blinders!” There will be no spoilers here today. I have no wish to get my face slashed. Although I’ve dipped in and out of Peaky Blinders down the years, I’ve never stuck with it and am not steeped in its lore – I can’t stomach all those beatings even if they are highly stylized and set to cool rock music; my fault!

peaky blinders

Thursday

Stephen Sexton

Nintendo and the plumber who conquered the world

It’s not more than a parlor game, perhaps, to speculate about history’s most crucial inventions. One invention often makes the next possible. Electric light revolutionized human productivity, allowing us to work well beyond sundown. The combustion engine and later the turbine engine collapsed our sense of distance, putting other continents within a day’s travel. We’re still debating what the internet’s done; how social media offers the double-edged sword of instant communication and addressability for good and ill; how it encourages the avatarization of ourselves as online presences. We’re both ourselves online and not quite ourselves, entirely embodied and yet psychically elsewhere.

nintendo

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Looking back at Eyes Wide Shut, after Epstein

The constant parade of shocking and disturbing revelations from the Epstein files has been going on for a considerable time now. It shows no signs of coming to an end. Just when we all think that we’ve seen the worst of it, another 10,000 documents enter the public domain. Even though the stories have been widely disseminated, the details of the abuse of young women by the wealthy and powerful remain just as distressing – and scandalous – no matter how many times they are repeated. At some point in the future, Hollywood – or a streaming service, or AI, or however we get our entertainment by then – will probably make a film about the Epstein scandal.

D.J. Taylor

Life lessons from George Orwell

It was the British political journalist Jason Cowley, writing in London’s Sunday Times a month or two back, who posed a query calculated to strike terror into the heart of any self-respecting Orwell-fancier. Were we, Cowley wondered, with the air of one who tosses a Sèvres vase into the air to watch it descend into heap of fragments, approaching peak Orwell? Was the man in whose voluminous output so much of modern political and sociocultural malaise has been refracted losing his sheen? Some Orwellians – myself included – on hearing this would probably respond with a rather handy Latin phrase: si monumentem requiris, circumspice, which loosely translates as, “If you want evidence, buster, then take a look around.

Saturday

Anne de Courcy

Streamlined chic or lacy froth: royal style wars of the 1930s

The semiotics of clothes, especially royal ones, can be fascinating, sending out powerful messages. Think of the jewel-studded, pearl-strewn portraits of Queen Elizabeth I or Princess Diana’s revenge-chic black dress. As a fashion queen herself (Justine Picardie was editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar for more than seven years and has an acclaimed book on Chanel under her belt), no one is better placed to unpick the subtleties of royal public couture. So, judging by this book’s title, I was expecting a shrewd analysis of diplomacy dressing, with perhaps some behind-the-scenes vignettes. What happens if a royal lady unexpectedly gets a run in her tights at a crucial moment? Is there a color code if three of them are out together? How do hats stay on in a gale?

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elvis
Deborah Ross

Fascinating: EPiC – Elvis Presley in Concert reviewed

EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert is a concert documentary that grew out of the 65 boxes of unseen Las Vegas performances discovered by Baz Luhrmann while researching his 2022 biopic Elvis. As I have little interest in "the King" I approached with a heavy heart. But now? I’m abundantly interested. In fact, I’ve shifted from indifference to thinking that if I could see one musical artist live at their peak it would have to be him. He’s that electrifying. A warning, however: it’s a 12A. "Elvis picks up a bra thrown on to the stage during a concert performance and puts it on his head," notes the BBFC. I wish I’d had the chance to throw a bra that he’d put on his head. Hopefully, it would have been one of my nicer ones that day. They are of varying quality.

Friday

Carson Becker

Gavin Newsom, the everyman elitist

Young Man in a Hurry is California Governor Gavin Newsom’s attempt to explain himself to a divided country that may soon find him vying for its presidency. He alternates between candor and wile in answering the book’s central question: who is Gavin Newsom? In these pages he constructs a striking hero’s journey, illuminating an insular world of inherited wealth, hereditary political power and ideological contradiction that few Americans will have been exposed to. But he also casts himself as a struggling underdog, a folksy type whose patrician image belies a life of perseverance and a unique set of emotional and psychological deprivations.

Thursday

James Delingpole

Enjoyably old-fashioned: ITV’s The Lady reviewed

I lasted all of five minutes with Netflix’s tasting menu-length Being Gordon Ramsay. This surprised me, because I’ve long had a bit of a soft spot for the irascible, crevice-faced, sweary old ham. I know that all reality TV is fake but I’ve always quite enjoyed watching carrot-top pretending to lose his rag yet again in some rat-infested culinary cesspit before transforming it, in the space of a month, into a Michelin three-star. Ramsay no longer even pretends that his programs are anything more than extended plugs for his brand But the dishonesty and contrivance and brazen commercialism of this autohagiography are just too much to stomach.

Lloyd Evans

Fans of George Eliot are in for a shock: Bird Grove at Hampstead Theater reviewed

Bird Grove by Alexi Kaye Campbell is a comedy of manners set in 1841. A portly suitor, Horace, arrives at a respectable house intending to propose to a rebellious and brilliant 22-year-old, Mary Ann. Horace’s father is dying and he must find a bride before nightfall or lose a substantial legacy. This ludicrous but very human situation starts the play. It’s instantly gripping. Mary Ann is in the drawing room being treated for headaches by a French mesmerist along with two wealthy radicals, Mr and Mrs Bray, who encourage her political activism. Her father, Robert, introduces his guests to each other and invites them to stay for tea. This fascinating glimpse of her early life shows George Eliot as a surly, arrogant, spoiled and heartless pest A hilariously awkward party ensues.

Hermione Eyre

Marvelous but repetitious: Gwen John – Strange Beauties reviewed

A pilgrimage to Cardiff Central, sorry, Caerdydd Canolog (according to the signage in the station, which also had my return train’s destination ‘Lundain Padd’ton’) to see the new Gwen John show. She is being lauded as Wales’s greatest artist, but she left Tenby at 18 in 1895, and never went back. After studying at the Slade she moved to Paris, fell in love with Rodin, and adopted the Catholic faith.

Richard Bratby

‘I didn’t expect to love Wagner’

By the end of Siegfried, the third opera in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the king of the gods is in freefall. In the first opera, Das Rheingold, Wotan is a confident protagonist; a world-builder. In Die Walküre, we’ve seen him discover the limits of power, and felt his heart break. Now, in Siegfried, he’s a haunted figure; the solitary Wanderer, searching the world for answers that his all-powerful wisdom can no longer supply. He confronts the young hero Siegfried, and his law-giving spear shatters on the sword of a reckless, clueless boy. "All he can say is, 'Go, then. I can’t hold you any more,'" says Christopher Maltman, who has sung the role of Wotan throughout the Royal Opera’s current Ring cycle, and brings it to completion when Siegfried opens later this month.

Ian Thomson

The Venice Ghetto was a landmark in the history of Jewish persecution

The word "ghetto" is said to derive from the Venetian dialect term for "foundry": ghèto. In the early 16th century, on the orders of the Doge, Jews were herded en masse from the center of Venice to the Ghetto Nuovo, or New Foundry district, where metal workers had long cast cannon for the Venetian fleet. The Ghetto – the first of its kind on the Italian peninsula and anywhere in the world – became a model for segregated Jewish quarters throughout Europe. It was soon blighted by poverty, malnutrition and disease. The Ghetto Nuovo was a landmark in the history of Jewish persecution. In this fascinating history of the New Foundry and its inhabitants, Alexander Lee conjures the Adriatic seaport in all its strange glory.

gold asante
Tim Butcher

The curse of gold for the Asante nation

As a metal, gold never corrodes. As a possession, the reverse is too often true. It has the power to warp morality, destroy decency and tarnish humanity. This duality – entrancing beauty alongside corrupting potency – lies at the heart of this magnificent book that engagingly blends African history with a current relevance that reaches far beyond the continent. The history is laid out with clarity and conviction. The Asante nation (Barnaby Phillips wisely settles on this spelling over a variety of homophones including Ashante, Ashanti and Achantis) is a component part of the modern west African nation of Ghana. Much like the Zulus in South Africa, their foundational history dates back only a few hundred years and is underscored by military prowess bordering on barbarism.

Monday

Alexander Larman

Has SNL gone too far?

It has been a very long time since Saturday Night Live was in the headlines for a good reason (probably Nate Bargatze’s first hosting stint in October 2023), and those who have been wishing that the increasingly beleaguered show would be put out of its misery now finally have their opportunity to say so. In last weekend’s episode, one sketch in highly questionable taste revealed a gang of canceled celebrities – including Bill Cosby, Armie Hammer and Mel Gibson – as coming forward and explaining that their various controversial or criminal activities had been driven by their having Tourette’s.

SNL

Wednesday

Gareth Roberts

The BAFTAs N-word scandal has been very revealing

At the BAFTAs on Sunday night, John Davidson – whose story of living with Tourette’s syndrome is dramatized in the (very good) film I Swear – shouted out the N-word when black actors Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan were on stage to present an award. You’d hope that by now people might understand the mechanics of Tourette’s symptoms – that the tics are totally involuntary, and consist of erupting with the worst possible things at the worst possible times; the imp of the perverse dialed up to 11. But no. The cruel and ideological politics of identity still have a grip on the mediocrities of the creative industries This was another one of the increasing number of events in this century that feel almost comically demonstrative.

Saturday

Amelia Butler-Gallie

Carl Jung, the man behind the psychobabble

A surefire way to alienate people is to talk about the dream you had last night. In polite society, we’re generally told nobody cares about the goings-on of our subconscious and that it’s probably best to keep quiet. Nothing, then, quite prepares one for the oneiric delights to be found in Jung’s Life and Work, a new edition of the collected interviews between Professor Carl Gustav Jung, the renowned Swiss psychiatrist and founder of modern analytic psychology, and his former student, Aniela Jaffé. The tone is set in the very first interview, where Jung recalls a childhood dream involving a gigantic “erect phallus” reaching “almost to the ceiling” equipped with an all-seeing eye and seated on a plush golden throne.

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ann lee shakers
Damian Thompson

Ann Lee deserves better than her biopic

Ann Lee was a sharp-tongued woman from the back streets of 18th-­century Manchester who joined a maverick Protestant sect that became known as the Shakers, or “Shaking Quakers.” In fact their shaking was the least of it: they howled, gurned and gibbered while flirting with the notion that God would return to Earth in the form of a woman. All sexual activity, even between man and wife, was forbidden. Ann then had a series of visions that, according to subsequent Shaker accounts, identified her as the “woman clothed with the sun” whose appearance in the Book of Revelation heralds the end of the world. In 1774, “Mother Ann” and a small band of faithful emigrated to America.

Friday

Clare McHugh

Love Story’s counterfeit Kennedys

Last June, Jack Schlossberg, the Kennedy nepo baby currently running for the open seat in New York’s 12th Congressional District, called out the television mini-series, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette. Executive producer Ryan Murphy was, Schlossberg declared, exploiting this couple’s courtship, marriage and death, and “profiting off of it in a grotesque way.” On a key point, Jack can rest easy. Love Story, now airing on FX/Hulu, treats his uncle John F. Kennedy Jr. reverently. Elizabeth Beller, Bessette’s biographer, praises the show for “honoring the legacy of everyone involved.” If JFK Jr.

bowie
Anne Margaret Daniel

The many David Bowies

Alexander Larman is the author of a biography of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and of Byron’s Women. Reading Larman’s new biography of David Bowie, one gets the sense that this could have been the end of a trilogy, given all three men’s talent and excesses. In fact, Bowie once considered playing Byron in a movie. Larman’s focus in Lazarus is on Bowie’s career from the end of the 1980s through to his final works: the musical Lazarus and the album Blackstar, the artist’s last gift to his fans, released on his 69th birthday – two days before his death from liver cancer in 2016.

Thursday

Diane Cole

The auteur Eugène Atget

Few connoisseurs of the image are unfamiliar with the great French photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927). But his name is, unfortunately, unfamiliar to the lay person. This is a shame: his gloriously detailed, sharply focused black-and-white images of late 19th- and early 20th-century Paris evocatively conjure the shadows and lights of the boulevards, parks and alleyways of the Belle Époque. His astonishing close-ups of finely crafted architectural details are as striking as his sometimes surreal views of storefront windows and food-stall displays. Whether training his bulky large-format view camera on scenes interior or exterior, he reveals an aesthetic sensibility exquisitely sensitive to the world around him.

Harry Cluff

Marilyn Monroe, poetic muse

The year 1959 was a particularly productive but especially depressing year for Sylvia Plath. She toured the length of America, attended a series of stimulating literary seminars and wrote some of her most beloved verse. While outwardly active and energetic, her diary reveals she was struggling all the time to sustain her few fleeting fits of happiness. One entry in October describes a vivid dream she had, in which Marilyn Monroe appeared as a kind of fairy godmother. Monroe gave Plath a manicure and promised her a “new, flowering life,” before wishing her well and inviting the troubled poet over for Christmas. The image of Monroe clearly consoled her. Plath was hardly the only poet to be mesmerized by Monroe’s outward magnificence and fascinated by her perturbing private tragedies.

Clare McHugh

Inside the Murdoch family fallout

Terrific scripts, marvelous acting and glamorous locales – plus that haunting theme song – made HBO’s Succession superlative television. The show also took the sheen off being a billionaire. Who among us, watching Logan Roy (a barely veiled stand-in for media mogul Rupert Murdoch) mess with his children’s psyches, didn’t think “Isn’t it perilous to be quite so loaded?” Journalist Gabriel Sherman’s new book prompts a similar, aversive recoil. Every family has squabbles, but the Murdochs have fallen out with shocking animosity. Though it’s hyperbolic to claim, as the author does, that the struggle for control of News Corp broke the world, his gruesomely detailed account reveals how shattering the battles have been to those who fought them.

Alice Cockerell

The literary appeal of the English upper classes

“However British you are, I am more British still,” said the American expatriate novelist Henry James, explaining his fascination with all things aristocratic and Anglo. It’s a type of fascination that’s only gathered steam over the years. A grand representative of the establishment, Lady Anne Glenconner, sold thousands of copies of her first book, Lady in Waiting, in the US, and recently discovered that her (admittedly predominantly homosexual) American fanbase has taken to throwing Lady Glenconner-themed costume parties. Meanwhile, Carla Kaplan, whose biography of Jessica “Decca” Mitford, Troublemaker, went on sale at the end of last year, discovered that Decca, known as “the Queen of the Muckrakers,” has a manic following among cowboys and long-haul truckers.

Sunday

Cockburn

The end of Will Lewis’s Washington Post experiment

And now his watch is ended. Sir Will Lewis fell on his sword last night, resigning as CEO and publisher of the Washington Post. “After two years of transformation at the Post, now is the right time for me to step aside,” Lewis said in an email to staff. In his note, Lewis thanked only the Post’s proprietor Jeff Bezos. Cockburn hears that least one journalist replied to Lewis’s email, “Bye, bitch.” Lewis had a troubled and confusing tenure. In his final week, the Post cut 30 percent of its staff, including the full books section and scores of foreign reporters. The publication also folded its vaunted sports section into features.

Owen Matthews

How the Washington Post became a liability for Bezos

What does Jeff Bezos’s gutting of the Washington Post say about America’s sense of itself and of its place in the world? Bezos has scrapped much of the paper’s foreign coverage, as well as the books and sports sections. Over three hundred reporters and editors have been fired – including publisher Will Lewis. The Ukraine bureau has been closed, along with Berlin and the entire Middle Eastern and Iran team. You’d think there wasn’t much going on in the world. Does that mean that American readers are no longer interested in books or foreign news? That doesn’t sound true. The numbers of literate, educated and interested readers in the US who were devoted followers of the Post’s world-class books section and prizewinning foreign coverage haven’t collapsed.

Saturday

Christopher Sandford

Why does Taxi Driver still resonate?

Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you probably know the macabre legacy of Martin Scorsese’s early masterpiece Taxi Driver. Released 50 years ago this month, the tale of the eponymous cabbie Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, still has something potent to say about what can happen when a brooding loner finds himself adrift amid the menace and jammed chaos of New York’s streets with a .44 Magnum for company. Perhaps one of the reasons Taxi Driver resonates with so many people is because of this human void that lies at its center. At one time or another, we’ve all felt as alone as Travis Bickle.

Taxi Driver