The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
All literature, but especially literature of the weird and the fantastic, is a cave where both readers and writers hide from life. (Which is exactly why so many parents and teachers, spotting a teenager with a collection of stories by Lovecraft, Bloch or Clark Ashton Smith, are apt to cry, ‘Why are you reading that
In the last couple of decades or so, a plenitude of biographers have provided us with studies of 20th-century literary celebrities, from Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw to Evelyn Waugh and T. S. Eliot. Roland Chambers now treats the life and works of Arthur Ransome, a lesser mortal than these grandees. Ransome was born
This vast novel, well-plotted and gripping throughout, is the first that Sebastian Faulks has set in our time. It is a state of the nation book, and what a state we seem to be in: if Faulks is less kind to the contemporary than he has been to the past, we cannot blame him, for
Napoleon has humbugged me, by God. He has gained 24 hours’ march on me!’ The Duke of Wellington’s exclamation was at least honest; he made only a show of calmness when told at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball on 15 June 1815 that the French were across the border. His reputation stood in the balance,
Of how many novelists can it be said that they have never written a bad sentence? Well, it can be said of William Trevor, as it could of his fellow countryman John McGahern, and of many another Irish novelist. What was it that so formed them, to write such elegant, flexible, lucid, beautiful but serviceable
How do you describe novels written by a Fellow of All Souls, laced with extreme post-modern self-consciousness and lavish with cultural references, but revolving almost entirely around graphic permutations of the sexual act? As a genre, it can surely only be called clever-dick-lit. This is Adam Thirlwell’s second foray into this exclusive terrain. His first
On the face of it, Nicholson Baker’s books are a varied bunch. His fiction ranges from the ultra close-up observations of daily life in the early novels to the hard-core sex of Fermata and Vox (a copy of which Monica Lewinsky famously gave to Bill Clinton). His non-fiction includes a tribute to John Updike, a
Since we’re speaking of lists and, you know, it’s still August, Barack Obama’s summer reading list is a mixture of the good (George Pelecanos) the middlebrow (David McCullough) and the too-contrived-and-appallingly-written (Tom Friedman). Joe Carter critiques the list and asks: In all seriousness, though, what books would you recommend the President read during his vacation?
Martin Amis says that when a man turns 40 he stops saying “hi” and starts saying “bye”. So, as a 41-year-old, I now stand unequivocally on the farewell side of the tracks, putting my affairs gradually in order before the eventual arrival of the Grim Reaper – who in an Amis novel would probably be
The thinking is, I suppose, that this book is about a valet and Wodehouse’s writing featured a gentleman’s gentleman too. Plus, he did make those unfortunate recordings while held prisoner by the Nazis. Nonetheless, I was a trifle surprised to receive an email from Amazon.com suggesting that… As someone who has purchased or rated The
Henrietta Bredin talks to David Pountney about running the Bregenz Festival Back in the days when David Pountney was director of productions at English National Opera, his so-called office was a tiny broom cupboard of a space carved out of a backstage cranny of the London Coliseum, with a single grubby window overlooking a narrow
Katya Kabanova Opera Holland Park The Mask of Orpheus, Act II Proms I took yet another amazed Londoner to the Opera Holland Park production of Janacek’s Katya Kabanova — he was amazed not only by the pleasant comfort of the place, but also by the standard of the performance, which would have been a credit
Edinburgh is a flashers’ convention. Edinburgh is a flashers’ convention. Everyone wants exposure. They come to build their brand, to raise recognition levels among the oblivious, to smuggle themselves into your brain while you’re not looking. So don’t feel obliged to buy a ticket. Your attendance is sufficient reward. Performers know the fringe is a
Grasping the content of the Proms these days has become a bewildering business. The best image I can give is of a contrapuntal web, teeming with themes, in which the principal subjects stand out against the detail, but where the detail nonetheless clamours for attention and the sheer profusion of it can seem overwhelming. When
I expected to dislike Walk on the Wild Side (BBC1, Saturday), fearing sub-Johnny Morris, anthropomorphic, animals-say-the-darndest-things whimsy. Instead it turned out to be funny, inventive and even acerbic. The notion is that comedians take genuine footage of animals from natural-history programmes, and voice-over short routines matched to the creatures’ movements, often with surreal effect. It’s
One minute we were in Brent Town Hall witnessing a Citizenship Ceremony, as a group of Somalis, Sri Lankans and Iraqis were welcomed as fully paid-up (to the tune of £2,500-plus) British citizens, the next in a beekeeper’s garden in Acton, west London. One minute we were in Brent Town Hall witnessing a Citizenship Ceremony,
Perhaps you’ve already seen Kseniya Simonova’s performance on Ukraine’s Got Talent. But if you haven’t, watch how she recounts the horrors of Ukraine’s experiences during the Second World War. With sand. It’s one of the most remarkable, moving, beautiful pieces I’ve seen in ages. Since the video has already been seen 900,000 times I suppose
Sir Muirhead Bone: Artist and Patron The Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, W1, until 5 September The Fleming Collection mounts loan exhibitions of artists represented in its permanent collection, its focus on Scottish artists a strength rather than a limitation. (Would there were an institution in London which just showed American artists. Perhaps then we’d
By now, Alice Munro has established a territory as her own so completely, you wonder that the Canadian Tourist Board doesn’t run bus tours there. Perhaps they do, even though it presents an appearance more characteristic than inviting. To think of her world is to think of lonely houses at the edge of bleak, small
Oh the relief of quantitative easing! Who could fail to welcome a fiscal laxative guaranteed to loosen the bankers’ constipated hold on credit? But before much more of the mixture is gulped down, it may be salutary to glance at the effect of the purgatives administered to ease economic bowels in the late 17th century.
A World According to Women: An End to Thinking, by Jane McLoughlin The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism, by Ellie Levenson Jane McLoughlin is furious with women. We have let the feminists down and turned off the rational sides of our brains in favour of the thrilling emotional life that popular culture provides. The feminists
That the rise of a powerful coterie of Russian billionaires overlapped with Britain’s transformation into an offshore tax-haven is unlikely to escape the notice of both countries’ future historians. Indeed it is entirely plausible that had successive British governments in the 1990s been less amenable to foreign wealth, this book would have been entitled Genevagrad
Patrick Marnham visits Brazil’s annual festival of literature Many years ago a wild-eyed Englishman hacked his way into the Amazon rain forest and disappeared, never to be seen again. Since then the fate of Percy Fawcett, known as ‘the Colonel’, has remained a mystery. Fawcett, a heavily bearded pipe-smoker in a deerstalker hat, was a
Lloyd Evans goes in search of culture on the rain-soaked streets of Edinburgh The crunch. That damn credit crunch. It hurt Scotland hardest of all. A worldwide reputation as a financial powerhouse? Gone. Dreams of independence? Severely truncated. Last year the Edinburgh Festival bore prophetic signs of imminent poverty, of homelessness, of doom. Free shows
Dolly Parton is a lady and Emmylou Harris is a dame, but Patsy Cline was a broad. A rootin’ tootin’ bar-room broad as fond of cussin’ as she was of a beer and a good time. You gotta have her in this series sooner, rather than later. Unusually for a singer, she’d hang out with
Oh dear. Nearly 80 years ago Dorothy Parker wrote a bleak poem entitled ‘Resume’. Back then she must have thought she’d been fairly comprehensive in covering all possible self-inflicted exit routes. Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as
The Girlfriend Experience Young Vic Helen Globe Who exploits prostitutes? Men, of course. And women, too. In particular those feminist politicians, always at panic stations, always posing as moral redeemers, who promote the myth that there’s only one type of hooker in this country — the crackhead Albanian rape-slave living in an airing cupboard —
Was it a shock, Joan Bakewell was asked, when Harold Pinter showed you the script of his latest play? Bakewell was hardly going to reveal live on air to ten million listeners what she really felt about Pinter’s use of their affair as a plot device in Betrayal. She’s far too smart for that. All
Janet Boulton: Remembering Little Sparta Edinburgh College of Art, until 30 August Janet Boulton (born 1936) is an artist of integrity and dedication, whose principal subject is still-life. She paints in watercolour, that most demanding of media, and eschews drama of subject or treatment. She has chosen a difficult path, and one which attracts little