Vacation time
Books and ArtsThe enduring popularity of the Vacation series reflects not just the American appetite for travel, but also that old American virtue of gung-ho optimism
Culture
The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
June 15, 2021
Steve Austin and the age of the antihero
Stone Cold was foul-mouthed, sadistic and mean — and people loved him
The rising cost of remembering the Fab Four
A forthcoming George Harrison box set will sell for $1,000. Do we still love the Beatles enough to care?
June 1, 2021
Bo Burnham flirts with post-comedy
A lot of Inside is not even attempting to be funny
May 31, 2021
Friends: The Reunion turned out to be a pointless nostalgia-fest
The much-hyped comeback was a waste of time
May 26, 2021
Fifty years of ‘Imagine’
Perhaps the real secret to the song’s eternal popularity is that it taps into our modern obsession with feeling good about ourselves
May 19, 2021
The last American video store
Books and ArtsVideo killed the video store
Along came Bill Evans
Books and ArtsNo matter his personal woes, Evans almost always vouchsafed his listeners something not merely to dig but to cherish
May 17, 2021
Meet the Medici at the Met
Books and ArtsBad politics often make good art. That’s especially true when the art is tasked with making sense of political senselessness
Van Morrison is a sane man in a mad world
The Morrison cancel mob are dancing to the tune of the oligarchy that is trashing American democracy
May 16, 2021
Take a trip with Hawkwind
Books and ArtsHawkwind played notes from underground, but they had a global influence
May 11, 2021
The end of the awards ceremony
Diversity drama at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association could prove fatal
May 9, 2021
Even Elon Musk couldn’t make SNL funny
Everything seemed so dated
May 4, 2021
Elon Musk is too funny for Saturday Night Live
Still, I hope he kills it
April 30, 2021
A film festival fiasco in Narrowsburg, New York
Books and ArtsCastellano and Castaldo descended upon Narrowsburg with a gust of wind, declaring that they would open an acting school, start a film festival and make it ‘the Sundance of the East’
Korean film has mastered the supernatural horror genre
Books and ArtsFor those of us who have followed Korean film for many years, the triumph of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden or the living-dead series Kingdom on Netflix came as no surprise
Cousteau was the boulevardier of the oceans
Books and ArtsFor Cousteau, scientific investigation, combined with the potential for good image-making, presented an unavoidable hazard to sea life
April 27, 2021
I’m turning Japanese
Books and ArtsIn the Eighties, Japan had prosperity, optimism, loads of bizarre porn and the solace of technological gadgetry
April 26, 2021
Messing up Beethoven’s Ninth
How do you rein in the overactive bits of Manfred Honeck’s imagination without driving him away?
April 24, 2021
The Decemberists are the only band I adore who have a number of songs I actively despise
Part of what makes them special is the depth of their catalog
April 22, 2021
Why do theatres think audiences want Covid-related drama?
Hats off to the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. They’ve discovered a new form of racism. Some people say we have enough ethnic division already but in south-west London they’re gagging for more apparently. A new play, Prodigal, examines the prejudice endured by a Ugandan chap whose mother moved to London when he was a
April 15, 2021
Dark days for Britain: London, Burning, by Anthony Quinn, reviewed
Not long ago, a group of psychologists analysing data about national happiness discovered that the British were at their unhappiest in 1978. Reading Anthony Quinn’s enjoyable novel set in that year and early 1979, it’s not difficult to see why. In case you’ve forgotten, strikes were spreading like wildfire. The National Front were reaching a
Spectacular invective: Jonathan Meades lets rip about Boris and Brexit
The title alludes to Jonathan Meades’s first collection of criticism, Peter Knows What Dick Likes, and to the album by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their scabrous personae of Derek and Clive. Meades explains the title in his introduction: ‘It’s akin to “Two-Hour Dry Cleaners” where the operative, out of her head on perchloroethylene,
An unsuitable attachment to Nazism: Barbara Pym in the 1930s
Novelists’ careers take different paths, and sometimes don’t look much like careers at all. It’s true that some start publishing between 25 and 35, and write a novel respectably every two or three years until they die, like Kingsley Amis. Others don’t start until they are 60, like Penelope Fitzgerald, or stop abruptly without warning,
April 14, 2021
The decadence of Taylor Swift’s re-recorded record
Shouldn’t my tastes have evolved in the past 13 years?
April 12, 2021
Dark knight of cool
Books and ArtsPoor Chet Baker. He really was born to be blue
Pictures at an exhibition
Books and ArtsAs he collects nearly two decades of essays and criticism, Marco Grassi recalls a life in the art world
Sundance memories
Books and ArtsRobert Redford’s film festival goes virtual
April 9, 2021
The old man and the documentary
Ken Burns’s Hemingway is a pleasant surprise
