The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Just before I was sent this huge tour de force of a book to review, I happened to be reading those 17th-century diary accounts by Pepys and John Evelyn which record a remarkable number of what would today be called ‘extreme weather events’. Repeatedly we see them referring to prolonged droughts, horrendous floods, summers and
This book, as the subtitle explains, makes a bold claim: Griffith Pugh was the ‘unsung hero’ of the 1953 ascent of Everest, his achievements neglected and nearly lost to posterity. Harriet Tuckey is Pugh’s daughter, so this assertion might be little more than a kindly attempt to revive her father’s flagging reputation. Yet, Pugh was
The Great Gatsby is one of those great works of literature, like Pride and Prejudice, that appeals as much to the general reader as to the literary bod. It’ll always be around, if not as a movie (there have been five since its publication in 1926) then as an opera or a ballet. Last year
Any writer who embarks on a trilogy is either extremely confident or taking something of a risk. The danger is that the reader will have forgotten the first two volumes and will have lost any memory of the story and the characters who now occupy the foreground of what might be a fairly mystifying account.
I do not have much time for the idea of the redemptive power of the countryside. I am not alone in this. Even theologians tend to dream of the day they enter the City of God rather than 1,000 acres of nowhere. But I will buy into a modern fairytale extolling the virtues of nature
If you are considering adopting — that is, buying — a Chinese baby girl, recycling a television or computer, or buying a Vuiton bag, think again. Ma Jian, author of the startling Beijing Coma, prepared for this evocative and sometimes horrifying novel by travelling through Chinese regions few tourists see. There he encountered some of
On 16 July 1823 a round-bottomed, bluff-bowed, dull-sailing collier-built tub of 120 tons called the Hercules made its slow, log-like way out of the port of Genoa. Roderick Beaton writes: Aboard were a British peer, who happened to be one of the most famous writers of the day, a Cornish adventurer, an Italian count, a
Chan Koon Chung’s previous novel, The Fat Years, was set in a gently dystopian Beijing of 2013, when a whole month is missing from the Chinese public’s awareness, and everyone is inexplicably happy. Since it first appeared in 2009, the novel has enjoyed cult success in both Chinese and English translation, even becoming, as Julia
This is the third entry in an occasional series by Christopher Fletcher, Keeper of Special Collections at the Bodleian Library. You can read the other instalments here. It’s almost two years since the Bodleian celebrated its hard-fought acquisition (nail biting auction) of Jane Austen’s manuscript draft of her abandoned novel, The Watsons. Thank you again
This Saturday’s Eurovision contest was never going to be a triumph for the UK, that much was for certain. What was slightly surprising, however, was the Danish victory with their song Only Teardrops The song might have been one of the favourites to win, but the triumph of what Fraser Nelson described as a collaboration
Might I urge people to watch the following video? In recent days the press has inevitably focussed most attention on the perpetrators of the Woolwich attack. Here is a video from earlier today of the wife and step-father of Drummer Lee Rigby speaking about him and their love for him.
When he arrived in London, Burke had a very brief career in law. He soon dedicated his time to critical thinking, writing and politics. Burke published a number of ground breaking books, including: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, and Reflections on the Revolution in France. In
To be a folk music fan in Britain today is to be jangling the keys to a cultural palace. For a variety of reasons, we seem to have produced the most brilliant young musicians in decades — but the rest of the world has always seemed rather more excited about the fact than we are.
Forgive my ignorance, ladies and gentlemen, but I must confess that I had never heard of Saloua Raouda Choucair before the advance publicity of the Tate’s exhibition. She’s not in the Yale Dictionary of Art & Artists (always a useful reference book, but by no means infallible) and I don’t believe I’d ever seen her
‘When Titian paints eyes,’ observed Eugène Delacroix, who spent a lifetime admiring, studying and copying the Venetian artist, ‘they are lit with the fire of life.’ The truth of Delacroix’s aphorism is on striking display in the magnificent exhibition of Titian’s paintings at the Scuderie of the Quirinale Palace in Rome. The exhibition does not
I like bankers. They’re an honest lot. All of us like money, but only they are upfront about it. I once witnessed a conversation between three financiers that started with them comparing their cars, then their houses, then their helicopters. None of the shilly-shallying you find at a society cocktail party, where people slyly suss
It came at last, the letting-go, Up over the hill and down our street — The end of time had, finally, been reached. There was comfort in it, the worst happening And it being of no consequence, since we were done for. What did it matter if our digital photo frames were lost, Our data-carrying
Man, I love the Flaming Lips. Psychedelic rock sublimity. They movingly address the deepest human concerns without a whiff of irony, while also seeing the point of confetti cannons, dancing penguins, having the lead singer surf the crowd in a giant plastic bubble, and so on and so forth. This week, mind you, they played
‘I don’t understand him and never will,’ says Pearl, the pivotal character in Anne Tyler’s 1982 novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. She’s talking about her husband, but could be saying something much bigger, larger, more meaningful. That’s the charm (and effortless skill) of Tyler’s writing. She appears to be drawing very mundane portraits of
A marvellous novelty at the Tower of London. The Banqueting Suite of the New Armouries has been converted into a pop-up theatre and the Tower authorities have welcomed a new play following the rise and fall (into two pieces) of Anne Boleyn. Joanna Carrick, who directs her own script, has chosen a tricky format. Two
Something in the Air is a French film set in Paris in 1971, three years after the uprisings of June 1968; a time when civil unrest was still ongoing but starting to tail off. In France, this film is titled Après Mai, which makes a lot more sense, as it speaks of an aftermath, and
Rossini’s La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s poem, is a relatively late work in his brief and unbelievably industrious period of operatic composition. It has its passionate admirers — it is the only opera that Maurizio Pollini has conducted and recorded. The Royal Opera was seething with excitement on the first night
Last weekend my iPad sucked me deeper into Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony than I thought possible. Deutsche Grammophon and Touch Press have released an app devoted to the work that rendered me slack-jawed with wonder, like a Victorian on his first visit to a cinema. The app gives you four complete performances of the Ninth: by
A hot child sees itself and cries. The kind face kissing through the glass Perhaps half wants the things to come To be the things already done, Like thank-you letters. I was home By eight! I had a lovely time. Can you believe how much he’s grown? ‘Train gone,’ he says. He weighs a ton.
I’m writing this by the pool in Greece. It’s not a pool I own, you understand (though give it a couple of years and we might all be able to afford one). No, it’s the pool in the resort to which my partner and I have repaired for a week, safe in the knowledge that
Too many Beatles books? In my house there’s always room for one more, and this week’s addition is All Together Now (Matador, £9.99), an ABC of Beatles’ songs by registered Fabs geek David Rowley. This is his third book on the subject, for like many repeat offenders, Rowley has spent more years writing about the
Who would have thought that the idea for a novel about mothers at the school gate would spark a frenzied bidding for world rights? Not a subject to make the heart race, surely, but race publishers did for a first novel by Gill Hornby, whose inspiration it was. Plainly she did her research at a
Half in jest, Evie Wyld has described her highly garlanded first book After the Fire, a Still Small Voice as ‘a romantic thriller about men not talking’. The same description more or less fits this second novel, although here a reticent woman takes the place of three generations of silent men. All the better: we
After the success of Dear Lupin, Roger Mortimer finds himself facing something not normally experienced by former Guards officers who have been dead for more than 20 years — namely Difficult Second Album Syndrome. Lupin, a collection of letters written by Mortimer to his extremely errant son Charles (‘Lupin’) took everyone by surprise when it