The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
It is strange that, in an age when so few people read books, literary prizes have taken on such significance. This week, with considerable pomp, the Man Booker Foundation announced a new award in honour of the late Beryl Bainbridge, the novelist and Spectator contributor. At last, Beryl the ‘Booker Bridesmaid’ – so-called because she
From 18th Century Shakespearian pretenders to the new establishment, if you find yourself looking for an artistic respite from sports overload at the Olympic Games, there will be few more exciting places to be in 2012 than Shakespeare’s Globe. In the spirit of Olympic internationalism, the Globe will be inviting 38 different companies from around
Great news – Radio Four is to employ a bunch of young black working class presenters, to replace all those old middle class white ones. Or at least I assume it is. The BBC Trust has decided that Radio Four is not adequately representing the population as a whole; it is too elderly, and too
Writers seldom cause revolutions, especially novelists. Even the greatest and most visionary political authors – Solzhenitsyn, Orwell and Hugo – were bound to the task of reflecting a society in turmoil. But, in doing so, fiction can have a more profound impact than the frenzied efforts of photographers and news editors to explain violent political
Increasingly, this is an age of revolution. Disaffection has even reached England’s green and apathetic land. Libraries are to close and campaign groups have formed online around books blogs and community forums. Slogans are shouted, ministers harangued and the Culture Select Committee petitioned – all to no immediate avail. The dissenters are not above direct
Secondary school pupils aren’t taking modern languages. I can’t claim to be surprised at this news: in 2004 the Labour government made it non-compulsory to learn a foreign language after the age of 14 and the invitation to dump vocabulary tests and listening exercises has been gratefully received. What an error. Having carelessly dropped Spanish,
After several breathless promo ads, Faulks on Fiction finally got under way this weekend. The four-part series aims (as Faulks explains during a fetching walk-and-talk shot on the Millennium Bridge) to weaken the mystique of authors; Faulks’ emphasis is on characters. The first programme occupied itself with ‘the hero’ in English fiction, or, more accurately,
Edna O’Brien at 80. The grand dame of Irish fiction talks to the Observer about religion, hedonism and conscience. “Someone said to me in Dublin: masses are down, confessions are down, but funerals are up! Religion. You see, I rebelled against the coercive and stifling religion into which I was born and bred. It was
From Sebastian Faulks’s reflections on Jeeves: It is the exact balance of the sweetness of revenge for Jeeves and the vast relief that Bertie feels that makes the endings of the novels so satisfactory. The point is that this happy world must not change. Bachelorhood for Bertie is the deal-breaker for Jeeves, but there are
We ran a version of this post by Samira Ahmed, the newsreader and reporter for Channel 4, on a previous incarnation of this blog. But with the Coen Brothers’ take on True Grit out next week, Samira has updated and extended it for us now. You can follow Samira on Twitter. here A long time
Lloyd Evans talks to Sophie Thompson, whose lack of vanity defines her approach to acting Straight off, as soon as I meet Sophie Thompson, I can see the look she’s striving for. Elegant ragamuffin. Torn jeans, scruffy trainers and a charity-shop blouse all offset by some peachy designer accessory worth five grand. Then I realise
Stand-up comedians: is there anything they can’t do? Not only do they make up a huge proportion of chat-show guests — and of chat-show hosts — they also present Horizon, give us guides to the night sky, utterly dominate panel shows and regularly pop up on Question Time. Recently, they even set up their own
The pedants who say fly-on-the-wall documentaries are cheap, meaningless television could not be more wrong. They are the postmodernist answer to David Attenborough, the Life on Earth de nos jours. Anyone who doubts this should watch My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding on Channel 4 (Tuesdays, 9 p.m. and, if missed, on 4oD). Not since meerkats
Bridget Riley turns 80 this year, a fact easy to forget when looking at the surging energy and contemporaneity of her pictures. She is a remarkable artist who, although imposing severe formal restraints on her work, manages continually to surprise us with the richness of her invention. Perhaps it is because of the self-limitations she
Although I can’t generally get too worked up about remakes, just as I can’t get too worked up about most things these days — too old; too tired; too long in what teeth I still have left (four, I think) — I suppose this Brighton Rock does have its work cut out. Although I can’t
The Almeida relishes its specialist status. The boss, Michael Attenborough, isn’t keen on celebrity casting because he wants ‘the theatre to be the star’. It’s a niche operation for purists and connoisseurs, for seekers and searchers, and for those who can spell Verfremdungseffekt without having to check (as I just had to) what the penultimate
The annual collaboration between Scottish Opera and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama is, as the principal of the RSAMD writes, ‘a model…for partnership working between professionals and professionals-in-training’, and it is hard to think of any work more suitable for this partnership than Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen. The annual collaboration between
All this talk about cuts might not be such a bad thing, if it forces us to think about what really should not be left to rot and wither away for lack of funding. Take the BBC’s World Service. Do we really need it in these post-imperial times? After all, it was set up in
Sky’s new channel, Atlantic, kicked off this week with two big shows: Boardwalk Empire, which is set in 1920 and is about gangsters, and Blue Bloods, which is set in the modern day and is about a family of New York law enforcers. Sky’s new channel, Atlantic, kicked off this week with two big shows:
An awful lot of books are being published these days about the English language. David Crystal has a new one out every few weeks, and John Sutherland probably has half a dozen on the go. The Language Wars: (John Murray, £17.99) is Henry Hitchings’s third and unlikely to be his last. An awful lot of
Golly gee. Academic literary critics are going to hate Faulks on Fiction like sin. Here is Sebastian three-for-two Faulks, if you please, clumping onto their turf with a book of reflections on a couple of dozen great novels. And he declares in his introduction, with some pride, that he intends to take ‘an unfashionable approach’
This book reads like an interesting after- dinner conversation between intelligent friends. That said, it is a rambling conversation, and although it is extremely entertaining, it does not add up to much. Its ostensible subjects are two instances of scientific intelligence being brought to bear on the possibility of defying, or surviving, death. In the
‘Taylor, I dreamt of your lecture last night,’ the polar explorer Captain Scott was once heard to exclaim, after sitting through a paper on icebergs by the expedition physiographer, Griffith Taylor, that had reduced even its author to the edge of catalepsy: ‘How could I live so long in the world and not know something
Cancer is usually associated with death. For the cancer specialist, however, cancer is more about life: not just patients’ lives; the cancer itself often lives the life of Riley. If it has a life, then, it is entitled to a biography. Here, Siddhartha Mukherjee, an obviously compassionate oncologist, provides that biography. The basis of any
Chapman’s Odyssey became quite famous before it was published, largely because it nearly wasn’t. Chapman’s Odyssey became quite famous before it was published, largely because it nearly wasn’t. Paul Bailey’s long and distinguished career, complete with two appearances on the Booker shortlist, apparently counted for nothing last year when he was reduced to what he
The English fascination with spies is gloriously reflected in our literature, from Kim to A Question of Attribution, and while their Egyptian and Israeli counterparts remain untranslated, and the Americans unreadable, English spy novelists rule. Compromised, divided and alienated, the spy is a model modern hero, and the spy’s world, with its furtive and fetishistic
There have been quite a few anthologies of British eccentricity. Usually they are roll-calls of the lunatic: a sought-after heiress so snobbish she finally gave her hand in marriage to a man who had managed to convince her he was the Emperor of China; a miser so mean he would sit on fish until he
The long summer that led up to the last days of peace in Europe in 1939 — the vigil of the Nazi assault on Poland on 1 September and the ensuing Phoney War — gave little hint of the storm to come. The long summer that led up to the last days of peace in
There was a fabulously daft and self regarding woman called Marina something or other talking about Egypt on Question Time last night. In a prize for the Most Useless Woman Ever to Appear On Question Time she would certainly be in the top five, although probably below Katie Hopkins. I was supposed to be on
