Hermione Eyre

The woman who pioneered colour photography

17 June 2023 9:00 am

Hermione Eyre on Yevonde, the pioneering 1930s photographer whose colour portraits evoke a vanishing world

Anne Glenconner: ‘I took my courage from Princess Margaret’  

26 November 2022 9:00 am

At times Anne Glenconner seems like a Craig Brown parody – but no, she really exists, and we must celebrate her, says Hermione Eyre

Richard E. Grant’s tribute to his wife leaves us shattered for his loss

1 October 2022 9:00 am

Richard E. Grant pulls off a feat here. The title is twee but the content isn’t. With unselfpitying dash the…

How to tell your Roman emperors apart

18 December 2021 9:00 am

Rising professors do well to be controversial if they wish to be invited to contribute to mainstream media. But the…

‘I am not able to answer your question’: an irascible Paolo Sorrentino interviewed

11 December 2021 9:00 am

Hermione Eyre talks to an irascible Paolo Sorrentino about therapy, Vesuvius and why he kept things simple and easy for his latest film

Doctor Butcher: crank, genius or son of Frankenstein?

26 June 2021 9:00 am

I hated reading this book. Not only was it objectively upsetting, as any book describing monkey vivisection would be (I…

Nina Hamnett's art was every bit as riveting as her life

26 June 2021 9:00 am

Nina Hamnett’s art has long been overshadowed by her wild, hedonistic life, but that is changing, says Hermione Eyre — and about time

World-class music, heavily symbolic staging: Glyndebourne's Katya Kabanova reviewed

5 June 2021 9:00 am

At the first night of Glyndebourne Festival 2021 there was relief and joyful expectation as Gus Christie made his speech…

The truth about my father, Philip Guston

13 March 2021 9:00 am

Musa Mayer talks to Hermione Eyre about her father Philip Guston’s cancellation and her fear that he will for ever be known as the artist who painted the Ku Klux Klan

Keeping poker-faced is no use – it’s the hands that give the game away

27 June 2020 9:00 am

This is not a rip-roaring, gonzo gambling adventure. By page 66 this cautious, thoughtful author has still never played a…

Greg Jenner’s survey of celebrities through the ages has a distinctly Horrible Histories feel

28 March 2020 9:00 am

Good writing about celebrity is scant. It has few poets, because it takes depth to go truly shallow (I’d nominate…

Why we’re all in love with Fleabag

11 January 2020 9:00 am

Why would you need the scripts for Fleabag? It’s hardly a lost classic. It’s always popping up on BBC iPlayer.…

Radio 4’s The Art of Innovation is a series that — for once — deserves the label ‘landmark’

28 September 2019 9:00 am

Radio 4, how do I love thee? Rather as one loves the flocked wallpaper that came with the house. It…

‘True Love’, 1981, by Posy Simmonds

The quiet genius of Posy Simmonds, Hogarth’s heir

1 June 2019 9:00 am

‘It’s no use at all,’ says Posy Simmonds in mock despair, holding up her hands. ‘I can’t tell my left…

Rebel girls of the 13th century

13 April 2019 9:00 am

Women who can — however tenuously — be described as ‘rebel girls’ are big in publishing now. Goodnight Stories for…

Michelle Obama listens to the National Anthem at the White House Correspondents Association annual dinner in Washington, May 2009

Michelle Obama: ‘I was happy that Barack’s career came first’

1 December 2018 9:00 am

‘To me, he was sort of like a unicorn,’ writes Mrs Obama, looking back on her courtship days with Barack.…

‘A verger’s dream: Saints Cosmas and Damian performing a miraculous cure by transplantation of a leg’. The Spanish altarpiece by the Master of Los Balbases depicts a vision described in Jacobus de Voragine’s late medieval Legenda Aurea. (From Medieval Bodies, by Jack Hartnell)

Will ‘I’m a Tudorbethan, Get Me Out of Here’ be hitting our screens soon?

28 April 2018 9:00 am

Are books becoming an adjunct to TV? Both of these are good reads, but both feel influenced by — and…

From Adonis to Prometheus: the beautiful men of myth

16 December 2017 9:00 am

Stephen Fry has had a go at the Greek myths, in a competitively priced hardback, just in time for Christmas.…

The life of Thomas De Quincey: a Gothic horror story

9 April 2016 9:00 am

Frances Wilson’s biography of Thomas De Quincey, the mischievous, elusive ‘Pope of Opium’, makes for addictive reading, says Hermione Eyre

John Lennon ‘adapted’ by Felix Dennis, 1966

Would even Blair have put Felix Dennis in the Lords?

24 October 2015 9:00 am

This is not only an authorised but a commissioned biography. Felix Dennis, the tiny, depraved, manipulative media mogul, was hardly…

For his supposed involvement in a conspiracy against Nero, Seneca is ordered to commit suicide — as depicted in The Nuremberg Chronicle , 1493

Men behaving badly: Nero, Claudius and even Seneca could be intensely cruel to women — and fish

21 March 2015 9:00 am

They lived in barrels, they camped on top of columns, or in caves: the lives of the sages are often…

All radio drama should be as good as this Conrad adaptation

7 March 2015 9:00 am

The aching hum of crickets. The susurrus of reeds. The lapping of waves. The unmistakable noise of a sound technician…

Mary Anne Disraeli by James Godsell Middleton

Politics as an aphrodisiac: the secret of the Disraelis’ happy marriage

17 January 2015 9:00 am

The long, happy and unlikely marriage of the great Conservative leader Disraeli and his wife Mary Anne, 12 years his…

Timothy Spall as the eponymous painter in Mike Leigh’s new film ‘Mr Turner’

Mike Leigh interview: 'A guy in the Guardian wants to sue me for defamation of Ruskin!'

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Hermione Eyre talks to filmmaker Mike Leigh about Mr Turner, Hollywood, and making films his own way