Sum total
More from BooksMidnight to dawn adding one more to the serial tally, love and irritation carried over, borrowed and paid back, all these vulgar fractions seeking to shape a perfection divisible only by one and itself.
Culture
The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Full of sound and fury
More from BooksJohn Knox, Cranmer complained, was ‘one of those unquiet spirits, which can like nothing but that is after their own fancy, and cease not to make trouble and disquietness’. Yet this awkward cuss, son of a merchant in Haddington and initially a young Roman Catholic priest, became a pillar of the Reformation in Europe and
A break from sabre-thrusting
More from BooksAllan Mallinson’s historical series concerning Matthew Hervey, the well-bred, thoughtful soldier, details a world where men are practical and not too clever; where the only sensible vote is Tory; where Moors make ‘uncommonly good cymbalists’. Everything gleams, buffed up to a shining surface: it is a fantasy of empire and glory. Two thirds of the
Blitzed on Benzedrine
More from BooksLore has it that those viewing naughty books in the British Museum could once do so only with the Archbishop of Canterbury in attendance. Such pastoral care may be advisable for any institution ending up with the private archive of letters, diaries and artwork from which Joscelyn Godwin compiles this eccentric and nicely produced account
Sher force of character
More from BooksUnderstandably given its bulk, Antony Sher’s Falstaff in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s recent production of Shakespeare’s two Henry IV plays had a long period of gestation before it emerged, fully formed and laughing, from under the covers of a bed also occupied by Prince Hal and a couple of prostitutes. Sher tells the story in
Songs of innocence and experience
More from BooksWe live in an age of generational turmoil. Baby-boom parents are accused of clinging on to jobs and houses which they should be freeing up for their children. Twentysomethings who can’t afford to leave home and can’t get jobs are attacked as aimless and immature. Both sides of the generational divide should take comfort from
Snow White or black beauty?
More from BooksGod Help the Child, Toni Morrison’s 11th novel, hearkens back to two of her earliest. Like The Bluest Eye, it is a story of internalised racism and paedophilia; like Tar Baby it is a fable about sexual and racial autonomy in the form of a love story between a beautiful, vain woman and a man
A graceful writer and a graceful man
More from BooksI wonder what happened to my first edition of A Dandy in Aspic. I must have been careless about lending it when it could no longer be bought. Derek’s succeeding novels, from The Memoirs of a Venus Lackey (1968) to The Rich Boy from Chicago (1979), are in their place on my bookshelves; seven titles,
The sick man of Europe finally succumbs
More from BooksIn a possibly apocryphal story, Henry Kissinger, while visiting Beijing in 1972 as Nixon’s national security adviser, asked Zhou Enlai, China’s premier on the significance of the French Revolution of 1789. ‘It’s too soon to tell,’ was Zhou’s answer. Zhou was not simply being enigmatic. His answer had a great deal to do with the
The raw material of fiction
Lead book reviewSaul Bellow died in 2005. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. The first installment of Zachary Leader’s exemplary, scrupulous, dispassionate, detailed, well-read, enthralling biography runs to over 800 pages and takes us only as far as 1964. The length is important. It allows Leader to adjudicate calmly, weigh the evidence — sometimes
29 Apr 2015
Revolt on the Right: Award-winning Ukip authors bicker about party’s election chances
At the Political Book Awards earlier this year, Matthew Goodwin and Rob Ford took home the £10,000 top prize for their book on the rise of Ukip, Revolt on the Right. However, word reaches Steerpike that despite their success the literary duo have rather diverging views when it comes to their subject. In fact, the pair’s bickering on social
27 Apr 2015
If the Turin Shroud is the work of a medieval artist, it’s one of the greatest artworks ever created
Last week something rather unusual happened in the quiet Italian city of Turin. Inside the 15-century cathedral, an ancient, stained, and burned piece of medieval linen was removed from its airtight, bulletproof case and put on display. The exhibition will last 67 days. Last time the intensely controversial textile was brought out, in 2010, over 2.5 million people poured into
The arts rely on the generosity of non-doms. We pursue them at our peril
This much we know. If Ed Miliband wins, he will reintroduce the 50p top rate of tax, impose a mansion tax on homes worth over £2 million and abolish rules enabling registered non-doms to cheerily reside in the UK and avoid tax on their overseas earnings. In other words, he’ll whack the rich. Whether the rich deserve to be whacked we
Spectator competition: a paean to Red Rum (plus: famous writers’ job applications)
Thanks to David Pearn, who suggested that I invite competitors to write a paean to a famous racehorse and drew my attention to Right Royal, John Masefield’s 1920 fine narrative poem about a steeplechaser. It was strong field of champions past — Shergar, Desert Orchid, Frankel, Dawn Run — and present — this year’s victor
24 Apr 2015
Force Majeure reviewed: meaty and hilarious – but it may wreck your relationship
If you’re unsure about the man (or woman) you’re dating, go and see this film. It’ll cause rifts in a weak relationship, and yield powerful debate – or perhaps agreement on the central themes – in a strong one. It asks men to defend or disown the role of hero, and begs us to consider
The Falling reviewed: a film of beauty and magic
Long live the glockenspiel, that typically dull percussion stalwart usually relegated to primary school memories, along with humdrum gym classes and endless repetitions of Kumbaya. Here the glock is like a new instrument altogether. Its eery, metallic tones haunt the early scenes of Carol Morley’s The Falling, filling them with an unexpectedly ethereal quality that
23 Apr 2015
Mistress of modernism
Arts featureEveryone keeps talking about classical music’s image problem, and proposals on the table designed to rescue the music from apparent extinction have included the suggestion that conductors ought to face audiences rather than orchestras, and the cunning plan, mooted by Julian Lloyd Webber, that we stop calling it ‘classical music’. But what classical music really
Designer fatigue
ExhibitionsDifferent concepts of luxury may be inferred from a comparison of the wedding feast of Charles Bovary and Emma Rouault with the habits of their contemporary the Duke of Wellington. At the Bovary wedding were served four sirloins, six chicken fricassées, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, four chitterlings (with sorrel), brandy, wine, foaming sweet
Russell Brand’s The Emperor’s New Clothes reviewed: ‘uncomfortable viewing’
For the past year Russell Brand – who is worth an estimated £10 million – has been making a film about inequality. You may already know this. The comedian’s antics filming across the capital have regularly made the news. His attempt to storm RBS resulted in a temp angrily blogging that the palaver had caused
Sign of the Vulcan
PoemsShe was considered the cleverest girl in the school, and deservedly so, and as such started the lower sixth with no trepidation, so who could not feel for her when she stretched back in her chair, casually, in a lesson-break on an autumnal afternoon, remarking, ‘Live long and prosper… that was Horace, right?’ There was
Curators
More from ArtsAs a purveyor of lairy souvenirs Venice outdoes even Lourdes. The scores of shops and booths that peddle this lagoonal kitsch are manned by graduates of hard-sell whose market-barker schtick does not need to include descriptions as their goods are self-explanatory. Every other year they coexist with a different sort of operation: the galleries, ateliers,
Three cheers
RadioThe new controller of Radio Three, Alan Davey, was on Feedback this week (Radio Four) talking to listeners about his plans for the network. Roger Bolton, who presents, wondered if Davey was worried about ratings — Radio Three hovers around two million listeners compared with the 5.5 million boasted by its commercial rival Classic FM,
Target practice
TelevisionEver since the days of Tony Hancock, many of the best British sitcoms — from Dad’s Army to Fawlty Towers, Rising Damp to The Royle Family — have featured a middle-aged man convinced that he’s the only sane person left in an increasingly mad world. The frankly subversive twist in W1A (BBC2, Thursday) is that
Stage fright
TheatreThe smash hit Matilda, based on a Roald Dahl story, has spawned a copycat effort, The Twits. Charm, sweetness and mystery aren’t Dahl’s strong points. He specialises in suburban grotesques who commit infantile barbarities. But his prose is sensational. No ‘style’ at all, just the simplicity and clarity of a master copywriter. He’s as good
Superheroic failure
CinemaAvengers: Age of Ultron is the second film in the Avengers franchise, as written and directed by Joss Whedon, and stars Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark (Iron Man), Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Mark Ruffalo as Dr Bruce Banner, aka
Lethal weapon
More from ArtsThe current talking-point at the Royal Ballet is the Russians milling around. One can sound unfortunately as if one’s starting a Ukip conversation here, but the Royal Ballet never used to be short of half a dozen home principals, any one of whom could be looked on as sufficiently glittery to attract the opening-night audience.
Off colour
OperaBig slats of orange, burning yellows, an Adriatic in electric blue: I wish I’d bought my sunglasses to the Royal Opera’s latest revival of Il turco in Italia. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s production of Rossini’s opera buffo first burst on to the Covent Garden stage in 2005, and its shrieking colours haven’t dimmed with
Talisman
More from BooksShe’s meant to be good with words, used to medicating others with a timely postcard — FABULOUS WOMAN YOU! Today she can’t find it in herself to buy, let alone send, A SISTER IS WORTH A THOUSAND FRIENDS. If only she knew the right phrase, the sort other people have stored in their mouths, like
Spring
More from BooksThe sparrows banter in the bushes that crowd the walls of the World’s End alleyway as I walk to the library. There is, it seems, much to catch up on. Winter was bitter cold; five months that had us by the throat, five months in our house that were bone lonely. April. And earth is