Why Mayerling is a #MeToo minefield
Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling is a #MeToo minefield. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary is a serial seducer, a man of many…
Bellini vs Mantegna – whose side are you on?
Sometimes Andrea Mantegna was just showing off. For the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, he painted a false ceiling above the…
A brief history of unicorns
After the England football team beat Tunisia at this summer’s World Cup, they celebrated with a swimming-pool race on inflatable…
Save us from Tiger, the posh Poundland of tat
There is a Tiger on the loose. It is stalking our high streets. It is prowling our train stations. It…
The artist who breathes Technicolour life into historic photographs
There is something of The Wizard of Oz about Marina Amaral’s photographs. She whisks us from black-and-white Kansas to shimmering…
The view from Paris: ‘Why are Brexiteers so stupid?’
‘Problème est masculin; solution est féminine,’ says Brigitte, the adored French teacher at the British embassy in Paris. Good way…
A smidge of self-indulgence amid the power and grace: Akram Khan’s Xenos reviewed
‘Comedy Sunil Lanba, Salman Quaraishi, Omar Syed…’ Names play from a crackling gramophone. We hear what they were before the…
Only the south of France could silence Henry James
‘Saint-Tropez?’ said the French mother of a friend. ‘C’est un peu… “tacky”.’ She was distressed to think of our taking…
Patrick Heron’s paintings are exhilarating – his colours dance, pulse & boff you on the nose
Patrick Heron’s paintings of the 1950s melt like ice creams. You want to run your tongue along the canvas and…
Is it any wonder children can’t express themselves when all they have is emojis?
Smiley face. Sad face. Smoochy face. Sick face. Edvard Munch ‘Scream’ face. How are you feeling today? Any of the…
No one can beat Mary Cassatt at painting mothers and children
A lady licking an envelope. An intimate thing. It might be only the bill from the coal-man she’s paying, but…
My life in Paris as a Diplomatic Wag
The French President says he wants to rule as a Jupiter — but he doesn’t look like a Jupiter to…
How Rodin made a Parthenon above Paris
‘My Acropolis,’ Auguste Rodin called his house at Meudon. Here, the sculptor made a Parthenon above Paris. Surrounded by statues…
Spend, spend, spend at the court of Philip IV of Spain
‘Nine hours,’ boasted my friend the curator about his trip to the Prado. Nine! Two hours is my upper limit…
Monet painted London not brick-by-brick, but light-by-shade
The Savoy was too sumptuous, complained Claude Monet, returning to the hotel in 1904. His rooms — one for sleeping,…
The loveliest episode of Holy Week – Christ rises from the potting shed
In Nicolas Poussin’s ‘Noli Me Tangere’ (1653) Christ stands with his heel on a spade. He appears, in his rough…
Showman, con man, family man: P.T. Barnum’s many faces
‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’ That was the P.T. Barnum battle cry. It has come to have a ring…
Susie Boyt neatly skewers the self-help trends
Grief is not being able to eat a small boiled egg. ‘Could you face an egg?’ the widowed Jean asks…
The time is right for an Erté revival – a new hero for our gender-anxious times
Erté was destined for the imperial navy. Failing that, the army. His father and uncle had been navy men. There…
Why does the Duchess of Cambridge wear French wellies when British is best?
‘Foot – foot – foot – foot – sloggin’ over Africa — / (Boots – boots – boots – boots…
London calling
Madame Monet was bored. Wouldn’t you have been? Exiled to London in the bad, cold winter of 1870–71. In rented…
Cabbages and kings
The first pastry cook Chaïm Soutine painted came out like a collapsed soufflé. The sitter for ‘The Pastry Cook’ (c.1919)…
I spy
Where was Degas standing as he sketched his ‘Laundresses’ (c.1882–4)? Did he watch the two women from behind sheets hanging…
Let’s redo lunch
As a young sub-editor on the Times in 1926, Graham Greene, future author of The Quiet American and Brighton Rock,…
It’s got to be perfect
When I order a cup of tea in Costa, the barista says: ‘Perfect!’ I ask for tap water in a…
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