Arts feature
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…
This V&A show, about fashion’s fascination with the natural world, will seduce and appal
One of the prettiest pieces in the V&A exhibition Fashioned from Nature is a man’s cream waistcoat, silk and linen,…
Viv Albertine of the Slits on anger, honesty and being an arsey feminist
Viv Albertine, by her own admission, hurls stuff at misbehaving audiences. Specifically, when the rage descends, any nearby full cup…
From Stansted to corporate swank: superstructuralism has a lot to answer for
Amid the thick of the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale dispatched a plea to the Times deploring the lethal conditions of…
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…
The artist who creates digital life forms that bite & self-harm. Sam Leith meets him (and them)
Digital art is a crowded field. It’s also now older than I am. Yet despite a 50-year courtship, art galleries…
The subtly savage world of filmmaker Ruben Ostlund
There is a culty YouTube video shot three years ago on the laptop camera of Ruben Ostlund. It shows the…
Peak Picasso: how the half-man half-monster reached his creative – and carnal – zenith
By 1930, Pablo Picasso, nearing 50, was as rich as Croesus. He was the occupant of a flat and studio…
Louise Levene meets the tormented queen of flamenco, who bewitched Dali & Peter Sellers
A frail old woman sits alone on a chair on a darkened stage. There are flowers in her hair. She…
The pioneering artist whose creations vanished before his eyes
The impermanence of works of art is a worry for curators though not usually for artists, especially not at the…
The last survivor of The Birthday Party’s 1958 première remembers the traumatic first night
‘Mad, wearying and inconsequential gabble,’ sighed the Financial Times in 1958. ‘One quails in slack-jawed dismay.’ Here’s the FT at…
Are cruise liners the solution to the housing crisis?
Looking at the sketchbook of William Whitelock Lloyd, a soldier-artist who joined a P&O liner after surviving the Anglo-Zulu War,…
What’s it like being the only right-wing comic?
Geoff Norcott is lean, talkative, lightly bearded and intense. Britain’s first ‘openly Conservative’ comedian has benefited enormously from the Brexit…
A sumptuous feast of an exhibition: Charles I at the Royal Academy reviewed
Peter Paul Rubens thought highly of Charles I’s art collection. ‘When it comes to fine pictures by the hands of…
The sex lives of conductors
I once knew a great conductor who claimed that he never boarded a plane to a new orchestra without a…
Andrew Roberts’s guide to Churchill on screen
Gary Oldman has joined a long list of actors who have portrayed Winston Churchill — no fewer than 35 of…
