The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Marcus Berkmann has written the Bookends column in this week’s issue of the Spectator. Here it is as an exclusive for the books blog. 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
Claudine Van Hensbergen, an Oxford Don, has disinterred some early Georgian smut from a 1714 edition of The Works of the Earls of Rochester and Roscommon. The poems, found in a sub-section titled ‘The Cabinet of Love’, were added by the publisher, Edmund Curll, and are definitely not by John Wilmot, although I imagine he
If the Observer was hoping to reignite the debate on the future of cultural criticism they couldn’t have found a soggier squib than American academic Neal Gabler’s unenlightening essay. Professional criticism, thinks Gabler, is dead. According to him, reviewers, or “cultural commissars”, used to be able to control what we “ordinary folk” read, watched and
Wendy Cope is a household name, a force in light but cutting verse to match Betjeman and Larkin. So it’s somewhat surprising that she has produced so little since in a career spanning 30 years. Anyway, I wish she’d write more because few things give such simple and sustained pleasure as her rueful stanzas: Bloody
Being anonymous doesn’t immunize you from criticism, as the nameless author of O: A Presidential Novel has discovered recently. Numerous high profile reviewers have been sharpening their critical cutlery and tucking in. Simon Schama, usually the model of bouncy good humour, was brought to a savage, Swiftian boil by ‘this turkey’ in the Financial
‘I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.’ Philip Marlowe had it lucky: I haven’t even got a hat. This month, Radio Four will air four plays of Raymond Chandler’s
Plaster the name ‘William Shakespeare’ on your theatre posters, and you’re sure to get bums on seats – even if Shakespeare didn’t quite write the play in question. That’s the rationale behind the slew of productions of the mysterious Cardenio, or Double Falsehood, the latest of which has opened at the Union Theatre.
Those who expected a novel loosely based on Barack Obama’s re-election to be a puff piece should look away now. O – A Presidential Novel is a refreshingly cynical look inside the Obama White House by an anonymous someone who claims to have seen the President live and work at close hand. Like Primary Colours
It is shaming to stare into the mirror after a late night. Your hair is snarled and your lips are puckered. Your nose glows red. Blotches cover your skin, which is underlain by a lurid translucence. Your eyes are dull, their whites are pallid; and the bags which envelop them are puffed-up. You can’t abide
LP Hartley could not have been more wrong. The past is not a foreign country to which we can never return. It fills the minds of the living and stops us seeing the present clearly. My Observer colleague Andrew Rawnsley tells our nervous readers this morning that David Cameron and George Osborne have no Plan
What I find so depressing about this book is that so few politicians and journalists have bothered to read it. A couple of days ago I popped in to the Commons for dinner. As I still had Boles’s book in my pocket, every time I bumped into ministers and senior journalists I asked if they
Mark Greaves talks to the artist Peter Howson about his latest commission and his demons Peter Howson started hallucinating last summer. Lying awake at night, he saw what he describes as ‘devils, demons and goblins’. They told him there was no point in living; that he might as well do away with himself. It was,
In the recent EastEnders cot-death controversy, both sides behaved pretty much as you’d expect. The BBC-bashers denounced the ‘offensive’ suggestion that grieving mothers routinely steal other people’s babies. In the recent EastEnders cot-death controversy, both sides behaved pretty much as you’d expect. The BBC-bashers denounced the ‘offensive’ suggestion that grieving mothers routinely steal other people’s
There has already been a certain amount of controversy over this exhibition: not just the predictably ruffled feathers of Royal Academicians omitted from the selection, but also the kind of ill feeling among the Academy’s organisational staff which gives a museum a bad name. There has already been a certain amount of controversy over this
Hereafter is directed by Clint Eastwood, produced by Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg, and written by Peter Morgan, although what would attract one of these big names to such a project, let alone three, is anyone’s guess. Hereafter is directed by Clint Eastwood, produced by Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg, and written by Peter Morgan,
As I sat fuming through the latest absurd production of Carmen, this one directed by the controversial Daniel Kramer for Opera North, it struck me that this opera, like one other of the trio of popular masterpieces set in or around Seville, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, suffers because its central figure leads a separate life of
What would Glenn Gould’s playing have sounded like if he hadn’t chomped his way through bucketloads of Valium? It’s not a question that is asked in Genius Within, a much-praised documentary about the tortured Canadian pianist that has just been released in Britain. What would Glenn Gould’s playing have sounded like if he hadn’t chomped
An all-Hall haul this week. Sir Peter directs his daughter Rebecca in Twelfth Night at the National. This traditional and very fetching production opens in a sort of Elizabethan rock-star mansion where Orsino (Marton Csokas) lounges on a carved throne, in Lemmy locks and Ozzy cape, intoning the play’s gorgeous opening lyrics. Then the plot
The Royal Ballet could not have timed better its new run of Swan Lake. Swans — and black ones, in particular — are all the rage these days. The Royal Ballet could not have timed better its new run of Swan Lake. Swans — and black ones, in particular — are all the rage these
‘We’ve got our main presenters,’ they explained. ‘What we need are interviewees to fill the guest slots. People with strong opinions on …well, what are your views on the EU, for example?’ So I told them my views on the EUSSR, while swearing quite a lot. This seemed to make them happy. ‘It’s called 10
As the battle rages between the American and British military PR over which brigade is being the most effective force for change in Afghanistan, it’s easy to forget that this proud country has its own ideas about what it needs in the future. As the battle rages between the American and British military PR over
Several new facts have rocked me back on my heels recently: Alastair Cook garnered more runs at the Gabba in Brisbane than Don Bradman; there are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in your brain; more people in this country can recognise Simon Cowell than Pope Benedict; and we spend as much annually on ‘wild bird
Did you know they once burned comic books? And in America, no less. In schoolyards. It was shortly after the end of the second world war, and legislators and parents were all shook up about what these ten-cent publications with their scenes of violence and distress were doing to the minds of their children. So
Colin Thubron’s new book will disappoint those of his readers who admire him for his reserve. He is the last and perhaps the best of the gentleman travellers of the old school, his books distinguished by scholarship, rigour and that extraordinary ability that he has made his own: the capacity to immerse himself in someone
‘I have to do everything myself, I who have all my life been so spoilt.’ So lamented the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, mother of Tsar Nicholas II, in the diary she kept aboard HMS Marlborough, the British warship carrying her and 16 other Romanovs, in April 1919, from Yalta into perpetual exile. ‘I have to
Cedilla picks up where Adam Mars-Jones’s previous novel Pilcrow (2008) left off. Cedilla picks up where Adam Mars-Jones’s previous novel Pilcrow (2008) left off. That book described the early life of John Cromer, a boy whose joints are fused by arthritis. Most of it saw him bed-bound, whether at home in Bucks, at hospital, or
‘Never such innocence again’ wrote Philip Larkin of an unquestioning British people on the eve of the first world war, and much has been made, not unreasonably, of the trusting frame of mind in which young men of that time accepted the arguments for war in 1914. ‘Never such innocence again’ wrote Philip Larkin of
Plunging into the second volume of Alastair Campbell’s diaries is like opening a Samuel Richardson novel. Plunging into the second volume of Alastair Campbell’s diaries is like opening a Samuel Richardson novel. The tone is breathless and excitable and the dramatic world of backstabbing, tittle-tattle and palace intrigue is instantly captivating. Historians will scour the
‘“We weren’t phoney,” Stephen said. “Our whole point was to live an authentic life, to challenge the bourgeois conventions of our parents’ generation. We wanted to make it real.”’ Such is the lifelong aspiration of Stephen Newman, the baby boomer hero of Linda Grant’s new novel. ‘“We weren’t phoney,” Stephen said. “Our whole point was