Arts feature
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…
The night I kissed Harold Pinter
I think everyone was a little nervous of Harold. Including Harold, sometimes. He was affable, warm, generous, impulsive — and…
Tintoretto unmasked
Tintoretto was il Furioso. He was a lightning flash or a thunderbolt, a storm in La Serenissima of Renaissance Italy,…
From ancient Egyptian smut to dissent-by-currency: I object at the British Museum reviewed
‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,’…
From jute, jam and journalism to video games and the V&A: the transformation of Dundee
Not so long ago, the Dundee waterfront was presided over by a great triumphal arch, built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s…
Operetta is serious business in Bad Ischl – and seriously glorious
It’s the lederhosen that grabs you first. Two gents were walking down the street ahead of us in full Alpine…
![Let there be light: the Atlantic footballfish dwells 3,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. [Paulo Oliveira / Alamy Stock Photo]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/08/18augartslead.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
How to live in a world without light: Life in the Dark at the Natural History Museum reviewed
Like most of our ape ancestors, we have really had only one response to the fall of night. We have…
Music’s Brexit
It’s October 1895 and the spirit of Music has been absent from Britain for exactly 200 years. Why she fled,…
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…
Why the National Garden Scheme beats the Chelsea Flower Show hands down
What could be more British than nosying around someone else’s private property while munching on a slice of cake? The…
Barry Humphries on Trump, transgender ‘rat-baggery’ and causing maximum offence
‘I’m an amateur,’ Barry Humphries tells me. The Australian polymath uses the word in its older sense of ‘enthusiast’ rather…
The ‘idiot’ artists whose surreal visions flourished in Victorian asylums
In G.F. Watts’s former sculpture studio in the Surrey village of Compton, a monstrous presence has interposed itself between the…
The problem with British mosques
My earliest memory of a mosque is being with my father in London’s Brick Lane Mosque. He was a member…
‘I think The Kinks could have found a better frontman’: Ray Davies interviewed
‘I like your shirt today,’ Sir Ray Davies says to the waiter who brings his glass of water to the…
How the world was turned upside down by revelation of aerial perspectives
‘To look at ourselves from afar,’ Julian Barnes wrote in Levels of Life, ‘to make the subjective suddenly objective: this…
Musically, politically and culturally, Kanye West is uncontrollable and unignorable
Kanye West is more than halfway in to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame — if his politics don’t block the…
The buildings we knocked down in the name of ‘progress’
When the German novelist Sophie von La Roche visited Oxford Street in the 1780s she saw watchmakers and fan shops,…
A champion actor and fully paid-up member of the human race: Roger Allam interviewed
A most excellent fellow, Roger Allam. On the stage he brings dignity to all he does, in the noblest traditions…
The real stars of Kew’s newly restored Temperate House
The glasshouses at Kew Gardens are so popular that they can be quite unbearably busy at weekends. And why shouldn’t…
From buck dancing to Happy Feet: a short history of tap
Fire up YouTube on the iPad, tap in ‘tap’, then wave goodbye to the rest of your day: clip after…
How Riccardo Chailly brought joy – and Italian opera – back to La Scala
As the curtain opens on the second act of Don Pasquale, I hear a rustle of discomfort. Donizetti’s opera has…
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…
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