The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
There was nothing remarkable about the Whitshanks. None of them was famous. None of them could claim exceptional intelligence, and in looks they were no more than average….Their family firm was well thought of. But then, so were many others. But like most families, they imagined they were special. So, you know what you will
It is a common prejudice about modern politics that it is all focus groups and spin, all public relations and advertising. The rather heartening conclusion from Sam Delaney’s history of advertising in politics is that this is a calumny on the political trade. Delaney has spoken to everyone involved in political advertising since the phenomenon
Few first novels are as successful as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which married a startling and unusual premise to a tightly controlled and claustrophobic thriller. Its only drawback was that it was a hard act to follow. Novelists tend to dump all their brilliant ideas into their first book, and the white
Dylan Evans, the author of this book, was one of those oddballs who rather looked forward to the apocalypse, because it promised ‘challenging times ahead’. If, in the not too distant future, famines and droughts more or less wipe us out, that will be our own fault for allowing population levels to reach an unsustainable
In 1891, George Nathaniel Curzon, ‘the very superior person’ of the mocking Balliol rhyme, and future viceroy of India, arrived at Persepolis. Torched in 330 BC by Alexander the Great, it had once been the nerve-centre of an empire that stretched from the Aegean to the Hindu Kush. For Curzon, whose tour of Iran had
It was the night of Eton versus Harrow at the Baftas as Eddie Redmayne faced off competition from Benedict Cumberbatch to take home the Best Actor gong. Now, Bafta are under fire for leaving out the late Bob Hoskins in their tribute montage to actors who have passed away. David Baddiel, the comedian, took to Twitter to
The Japanese novelist-turned-agony uncle Haruki Murakami is currently dishing out advice to fans on topics that range from cats and hate speech to parenting and infidelity. The call to cast a well-known writer, living or dead, in a similar role was an opportunity to check out the counselling skills of other literary greats — and
In 1915 D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation was premièred, Henry Ford manufactured his millionth Model-T (‘a million of anything is a lot’, he said), Kafka’s Metamorphosis was published and so, too, was one of Einstein’s critical contributions to his own general theory of relativity. Mixed into this modernist cocktail of extreme achievement and harrowing
‘Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting,’ Henri Matisse once advised, ‘should begin by cutting out his own tongue.’ Marlene Dumas — whose work is the subject of a big new retrospective at Tate Modern — has not gone quite that far (and neither, of course, did Matisse). On the other hand, she does not
There were great numbers of young men who had never been in a war and were consequently far from unwilling to join in this one.(Thucydides, 5th century BC) I love that quote, inscribed on the walls of the Imperial War Museum, because it tells you so much both about the reason wars happen and about
Selma, the civil rights film that stars David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, undoubtedly contains the best and most powerful performance of the year as not nominated for an Oscar. Oyelowo has said this is because Hollywood prefers black actors when they play ‘subservient roles’ and aren’t ‘the centre of their own narrative, driving it
Big event. A new play from Sir Tom. And he tackles one of philosophy’s oldest and crunchiest issues, which varsity thinkers call ‘the hard problem’. How is it that a wrinkled three-pound blancmange sitting at the top of the spinal cord can generate abstract thoughts of almost limitless complexity? In real life Sir Tom is
It’s easy to forget what a mess of an art form opera once was. For its first 100 years it had no name, it had no fixed address, it didn’t really know who it was or what it was doing. You’d find it at schools, at weddings, at political functions. It was an artistic whore
Only a fool would mess with James Blunt. As his Twitter followers know, he has a sharp wit, and, as befits a former officer in the Life Guards, he is always ready for a fight. Indeed, the grievous suffering around the world caused by his greatest hit, ‘You’re Beautiful’, has been offset to some extent
Our pilot on the Delaware offers to show you his laptop. These are the buoys, he says; I know exactly where I am to within a metre. This is the same way we track our missiles and drones. You stare for a moment and say oh. Then remembering your manners add thank you for showing
In the course of the 19th century, various flotillas of expeditions hastened to the polar regions in little wooden ships which sooner or later expired in the pincers of an ice floe while crewmen ate their shoes. These stories bear retelling for our own age, and Hampton Sides does well to identify the gruesome story
Like so many Britons who chased the dream and woke up in Italy I have contemplated writing a book about the Italians. I even thought of what to call it: Those Italians.The title was prompted by what an Albanian port official told the media during some international crisis in response to the news that the
In time for the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death comes this pacy novel about his attempts to persuade the Americans to join the war. It is January 1941; President Roosevelt’s special envoy Harry Hopkins arrives in Blitz-torn London and is subjected to Churchill’s charm offensive. Hopkins, a chain-smoking, hard-drinking man of principle with a dislike
My career at school and after was greatly enhanced by a series of books called The Bluffer’s Guide to….These gave mischievous advice, often on the reliable when-in-doubt-confuse-the-issue lines. A favourite of mine, still in use in emergencies, was: ‘I think Jack Kerouac was more a Franciscan Christian than Buddhist, don’t you?’ Martin Kemp’s Art in
Tony Judt was not only a great historian, he was also a great essayist and commentator on international politics. Few in this country will be familiar with his journalism, however, since it was largely published in America by the the New York Review of Books and the New Republic. Thankfully, this situation can now be
Of all the big battalions of books marking the bicentenary of the battle of Waterloo that have come my way, this has to be the best. David Crane has used the bloody campaign as a telescope, bringing into sharp focus not just the carnage along the Brussels road, but the state of Britain itself: a
Italian cabinets and tables decorated with inlaid semi-precious stones known as ‘pietre dure’ were a ‘must-have’ for English milords returning from their Grand Tours. The finest example is perhaps the Sixtus V cabinet at Stourhead, in Wiltshire, which has just been written up in a thorough, scholarly way by Simon Swynfen Jervis and Dudley Dodd,
The whole idea of capitalism, according to Enlightenment philosophers, was that it created a positive spiral of moral behaviour. ‘Concern for our own happiness recommends us to the virtue of prudence,’ wrote Adam Smith. ‘The profits of commerce,’ according to David Hume, carry us towards a state in which ‘the tempers of men, as well
It’s a curious subject, fashion, and those who write about it rarely want to jeopardise future access to it on the altar of clear-eyed analysis. The business must pretend that there is a single genius at work here, whose vision creates not just clothes but the things that actually make the money. The catwalk shows
Last weekend BBC Arabic celebrated 77 years since John Reith (as he then was) launched the first foreign-language service of the fledgling BBC Empire Service with an announcement (in English) in which he declared that the programmes would always be ‘reliable, accurate and interesting’, values that have become virtually cast in stone as the Reithian
A bronze sculpture by Michelangelo is one of the lost Holy Grails of art history. We know he made them, but the most important – an over life-size figure of Pope Julius II – was destroyed by the enraged citizens of Bologna (who had a grudge against the pontiff) a few years after it was
The news that Harper Lee has her long-awaited second novel on the way (just a casual 55 years after her one hit wonder To Kill a Mockingbird) came as a surprise to those who did not realise she was still even alive. Once that news had settled in, it came as an even bigger shock to the BBC’s
At the synagogue where I happened to be singing last Saturday, the rabbi wrapped up her regular notices with a timely exhortation to her congregants to try to watch the André Singer documentary Night Will Fall. In 1945, as the Allied forces fought their way across Europe, in the process uncovering the hideous network of
Les Contes d’Hoffmann Met Opera Live This was another excellent performance from the Met, though that house’s addiction to enormously elaborate scenery – most of which could be sold off to Las Vegas – reaches lunatic proportions, robbing the work of its dream-like or hallucinatory quality, though that must surely have been a large part