Arts feature
Meet India’s first – and only – professional western orchestra
It’s a 31ºC Mumbai morning, and on Marine Drive the Russian winter is closing in. The Symphony Orchestra of India…
How an anarchist music student become of the fashion greats: the life of Christian Dior
Strange to think when you visit the Christian Dior show at the V&A that his time as designer was so…
Dau is the strangest and most unsettling piece of art to come out of Russia in years
Dau is not so much a film as a document of a mass human experiment. The result is dark, brilliant…
All About Eve was all about bitching – off-screen as well as on
In 1950, Bette Davis had a string of recent flops behind her. She was 41, married to an embarrassing twerp…
What a relief we can finally admit Jimmy Porter was a pain in the neck
Gary Raymond must have been wondering if it was the end of a promising career — curtains. He was starring…
The balletic, bum-baring rituals of sumo
An early morning in late November in the peaceful glades that surround an ancient temple complex. A Shinto priest in…
Dick Clement on Porridge, Kirk Douglas and having seven projects on the go
Given their track record, you might think that Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais would be spared the struggles that…
The fascinating story behind one of the best-loved depictions of the Nativity
In the early 1370s an elderly Scandinavian woman living in Rome had a vision of the Nativity. Her name was…
The people have not forgotten me: the exiled Empress of Iran interviewed
Somewhere in the bowels of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is a portrait from a lost world. Its subject…
Gary Kemp on pop, Pre-Raphaelites, politics and playing Pinter
The first thing Gary Kemp bought when Spandau Ballet started making money was a chair. He’s very proud of that…
![David Schwimmer has produced a new film of Alexander Zeldin’s play LOVE for the BBC. [Photo: Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/12/8Declead.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
David Schwimmer on his new BBC film
There is very little art about modern poverty, because who wants to know? It is barely acknowledged, unless there is…
Read The Spectator article that gave birth to musical minimalism 50 years ago
The Spectator is responsible for many coinages. One of the most significant came in 1968, when an article by our…
![Twiggy photographed by Justin de Villeneuve in the Rainbow Room at Big Biba, early 1970s. [JUSTIN DE VILLENEUVE]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/11/USE_JDV_TW046.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
A short history of art deco – from high art to two-tone shoes, garden gates to Twiggy
On 10 September 1973 the 1930s Kensington High Street department store formerly known as Derry & Toms reopened as Big…
Join a Jacobean jury at the Globe. Early modern theatre goes immersive – will it work?
James I and VI liked to term himself Rex Pacificus. Like most politicians who talk a lot about working for…
The facts – and fiction – of piracy
Avast there, scurvy dogs! For a nation founded on piracy (the privateer Sir Francis Drake swelled the exchequer by raiding…
For the sake of art as much as society, it’s time to stop remembering the war
A cascade of poppies falls from ‘weeping windows’ across Britain. A 50-metre drawing of Wilfred Owen appears in the sand,…
One of the last living avant-gardists speaks – Gyorgy Kurtag on his new Beckett opera
Arriving in Budapest, I receive a summons I cannot refuse. Gyorgy Kurtag wants to see me. Famously elusive, the last…
Bring back Kevin Spacey
The sixth and final season of House of Cards has begun without Kevin Spacey, who played the murderous Democratic American…
‘Darmstadt taught me how to compose’: Ennio Morricone interviewed
Ennio Morricone’s staff wish it to be known that he does not write soundtracks. ‘Maestro Morricone writes “Film Music” NOT…
Strawberry Hill revived
We can’t know what Horace Walpole would make of the continuing popularity of serendipity, a word he coined in 1754…
‘I should just shut up’: Dominic West on #MeToo and the perils of talking politics
Lounging confidently on the sofa of a Soho hotel suite, Dominic West has been beaming at me, but now his…
Is modernist architecture unhealthy?
Architects and politicians have a lot in common. Each seeks to influence the way we live, and on account of…
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…
Brett Anderson on fame, fear and being 50
‘I always think they’re not lusting after me,’ Brett Anderson says of the middle-aged fans who still turn up to…
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…
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