Kate Maltby writes about the intersection of culture, politics and history. She is a theatre critic for The Times and is conducting academic research on the intellectual life of Elizabeth I.
In Hilary Mantel’s Tudor England, it never stops raining. As she writes in her evocative programme note for the RSC stage adaptation of Wolf Hall, she first envisaged the life of Henry VIII’s political fixer, Thomas Cromwell, as ‘a room: the smell of wood smoke, ink, wet dogs and wet wool, and the steady patter of
One of the best things about The Spectator is that it has no party line. As its dauntless refusal to compromise on Leveson Inquiry has shown, it is incomparably committed to the free speech of its writers. So only here could a humble arts blogger announce that this magazine’s editor, Fraser Nelson, was riproaringly, doltheatedly,
Why do the Left love the Queen? Sure, most of us agree she’s done an excellent job in a difficult role, only screwing up a few major life decisions: tricksy choice of husband, wintry education of her children, fastidious attitude to peanuts. But as one of the country’s richest women, a symbol of economic equality she
Blithe Spirit Gielgud Theatre If you’d asked me before this week, I’m afraid I’d have guessed Angela Lansbury had already reached the spirit world. I’ve always imagined her eternally inhabiting the mid-twentieth century, as the prim but decidedly experimental home front heroine in Bednobs and Broomsticks (1971) or the icy Cold War matriarch in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Yet at
The British Library isn’t the first place I associate with contemporary fiction. For me, it’s about the Tudor manuscripts: the support and expertise of the manuscript room staff is second to none, and to the academic mind, few thrills compare to finding Elizabeth I’s distinctive handwriting on an unexpected document, or deciphering treacherous correspondence in
If Monty Python were working in 1607, they might have come up with something like Francis Beaumont’s raucous The Knight of the Burning Pestle. A parody of popular chivalric romances of the day, the play follows the adventures of Rafe, an oafish grocer’s apprentice who decides to dub himself “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”, or in
On Tuesday morning, Turkish police in the border cities of Kilis and Gaziantep arrested 25 people on suspicion of aiding Jihadi fighters in neighbouring Syria, including two said to be high ranking Al Qaeda operatives. Seven Conservative MPs had flown out of Gaziantep less than twenty-four hours previously. I was with them, meeting with Syrian
As Christmas Day breaks over Maaloula, one of the last few villages which still speaks the language of Christ, Islamist fighters will patrol the streets. Whether the nuns of its ancient convent are safe depends on who you believe, President Assad or Al Qaeda. The local shrine of St Thecla was built in the cleft
I spent much of Tuesday afternoon shivering outside the offices of Universities UK. I was there to protest their publication of guidelines which suggest segregated seating of men and women may be legally required where guest speakers demand it. It’s reassuring to learn that protest sometimes works: by Friday, the beleaguered body had shifted their
Thanks to some mistake of history, Shakespeare’s Richard II has never quite been recognised as one of those roles against which the great actors are measured. But it takes a virtuoso to bring Richard to life: like all the toughest roles, he’s a heap of contradictions out of which only the most talented actors can
Boris Johnson’s speech at the Centre for Policy Studies, much misrepresented, is still grabbing headlines. Boris gave the Margaret Thatcher memorial lecture, so it’s no surprise it has been interpreted as a bid to succeed her. But another relationship is just as intriguing: was Boris also stealing Michael Gove’s clothes? The Mayor said much about
Doris Lessing’s obituaries, as much as her writings, bear witness to the great turbulences of the twentieth century. How many of us spent our childhood in two countries which have both since changed their names? But ‘exotic’ was the last word Lessing would have used to describe herself: ‘I am 85, an Englishwoman (with Scottish
Today the National Theatre hosts a gala performance, screened on BBC2 at 9pm, to celebrate fifty years since its launch as a company in 1963. You can view the full programme here – I’d wanted to be cynical about a Greatest Hits parade, but reading the cast list, it simply looks astounding. But it’s not
Danny Boyle’s staged version of Frankenstein packed in the crowds to the National Theatre last year with its Olympian scale and throbbing orange sunsets. But if you were hoping for a more intimate invitation to the world of Mary Shelley’s monster, you might be better off popping down to the small but central Jermyn Street
A wholesome gem from the London Fringe transfers to Cornwall this week, in the form of father and son double act Frankland and Sons. Both Tom Frankland and father John are born performers, and the show is a colourful dance through their family history that feels like a jovial children’s birthday party, with hints of
66 Books – The Bush Theatre The Bush opened its new theatre with an extraordinarily energetic celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. The 66 playlets, one inspired by each of the books of the Bible, included the occasional dud – but the overwhelming majority were sparklers. Stand-outs included Ony Uhiara as
This month, Mike Bartlett’s new play, 13, opens at the National. It follows the success of his play Earthquakes in London. At Paines Plough, George Perrin and James Grieve unveil the prototype for a revolutionary new theatre space, a portable in-the-round auditorium. And, at the Arcola, Tom Atkins brings us How The World Began, which
When I was a teenager, Death and The Maiden was one of the plays I read when I was discovering that theatre could be angry, obscene and unafraid of speaking truth to power. Ariel Dorfman’s tale introduces us to Paulina, a torture survivor who becomes convinced, but can’t prove, that the urbane neighbour her husband,
Sea-storms seem to be buffeting London theatre at the moment, and I’m not just talking about Trevor Nunn’s sugar-saturated Tempest. Down at the Southwark Playhouse, Edinburgh Fringe hit Bound blows into London after a worldwide tour, while at St Giles Cripplegate, in the Barbican complex, you’ll find a darker, sacral The Tempest just back from
This is the second half of Kate Maltby’s essay on the representation of September 11th in art. You can read the first here. Decade succeeds in humanizing moral failings: fear, shame, doubt. In the simplest and most intimate scene, we hear a blokish, British New Yorker talk through the guilt of swapping his day off