Arts
Dazzled and satiated
It’s a tumultuous decade or so since The Night Manager burst onto our television screens and a while longer since…
Who stuck the great Emmylou Harris in a sports hall?
Somebody obviously thought it a good idea that Emmylou Harris play her last ever Scottish show in a soulless sports…
How fantastic to see Hogarth’s largest paintings in their original glory
The long overlooked staircase by Hogarth at St Bartholomew’s Hospital has been cleaned and restored in a £9.5 million scheme.…
The Neapolitan Horowitz
‘You play Bach your way, and I’ll play it his way.’ That remark by the Polish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska is…
Beautiful if hagiographic portrait of Godard
Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague dramatises the (chaotic) making of Breathless (1960), Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic. It’s a film…
Our verdict on the new In Our Time presenter
Melvyn Bragg’s first ever intro to In Our Time in 1998 clocked in at 21 seconds. Misha Glenny, meanwhile, took…
If this play is correct, the Foreign Office is a joke
Safe Haven is a history play by Chris Bowers who worked for the Foreign Office and later for the UN…
Gripping: Amazon Prime’s The Tank reviewed
I don’t know how it got past the increasingly powerful ‘All Germans were evil Nazis’ censors but Amazon has released…
Seductive Debussy and Ravel from the RLPO
Grade: A It’s a cliché that the best Spanish music was written by Frenchmen but it’s mostly true nonetheless, and…
In praise of French brothels
In the days of the Belle Époque and Jazz Age, a trip to Paris would have included, for the discerning…
Baton of iron
The Choral Directed by Nicholas Hytner Starring Taylor Uttley, Ralph Fiennes, Mark Addy, Carolyn Pickles. If it were in a…
Celluloid nostalgia for lost worlds
There’s a poignancy in turning back the clock to the Fifties and early-Sixties. Everyone remembers Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday,…
The depressed duck detective is back
Grade: B– It’s a duck, except he’s a detective. Or a detective, except he’s a duck. Anyway he wears a…
Why is this low-grade Ayckbourn play in the West End?
Woman in Mind is a dyspeptic sitcom set in 1986 starring Sheridan Smith as Susan, a moaning Home Counties housewife…
The worst Agatha Christie adaptation I can remember
When it comes to Agatha Christie adaptations, there are normally two possible responses to the denouement. One is a deep…
Three cheers for Poems on the Underground
The idea for Poems on the Underground was thought up by a New Yorker 40 years ago this month. This…
Why I will always have time for Bernard Butler
Bernard Butler has popped up a couple of times in this column, but not alone – once, with two fellow…
The cruelty of H is for Hawk
The cruelty of H is for Hawk
Rattle’s glorious Janacek
The Czech author Karel Capek is probably best known for his plays: high-concept speculative dramas such as R.U.R. and The…
Dazzling: Hawaii, at the British Museum, reviewed
Climb the Reading Room steps to reach the British Museum’s dazzling Hawaii exhibition, and you perform an obeisance. At the…
What drama gets right and wrong about science
A few days after Tom Stoppard’s death last month, Michael Baum, a distinguished surgeon, wrote a letter to the Times.…
Call me Ishmael, or Viola
When To Kill a Mockingbird was published, Flannery O’Connor, the author of those unholy and tragic fables born of intense…
Oh, Mary!’s climax is an inspirational bit of comedy
High Noon, directed by Thea Sharrock, is a perfectly decent version of a trusty western which celebrates its 74th birthday…
Zach Bryan is no Springsteen
There would, on the surface, appear to be little common ground between the wife of stuffy old Malcolm Muggeridge and…
The rise and fall of the football presenter
What does it mean to be a ‘good’ sports presenter? Really, it should mean nothing. They aren’t important. They should…
