Arts feature
The triumph of classical architecture
It is very hard to imagine the University of Oxford ever constructing a modernist building again. This is the significance…
The dying art of costume design
At the receptionist’s desk in Cosprop’s studio and costume warehouse, a former Kwik Fit garage, the sloping bleakness of Holloway…
Save art history!
A few weeks ago I went along to a lecture on the Welsh artist, poet and soldier David Jones. Kenneth…
The art of dining
Ivan Day pulls out an old Habsburg cookbook from his library. The 300-year-old volume is so thick it’s almost a…
Was Serbia the real birthplace of the Renaissance?
Where did the Renaissance begin? There has been an official answer to that question since 1550, the date that Giorgio…
Is Grey Gardens the greatest documentary ever made?
A middle-aged woman wearing what looks like Princess Diana’s infamous ‘revenge dress’ and a balaclava from an IRA funeral approaches…
‘Modern pop makes me want to kill myself’: Neil Hannon interviewed
Search for a successor to Tom Lehrer, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any decent candidates. One of the …
The man who can save classical music
John Gilhooly is sick of talking about the Arts Council of England. ‘Please tell me you’re not going to ask…
Picasso’s ravishing work for the ballet
Visitors to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new storehouse in Stratford’s Olympic Park are being enthralled by an atmospherically lit…
The masterpieces on your doorstep
I do not, if I can help it, catch a train to anywhere on a Sunday. Yet there I was…
How the railways shaped modern culture
Cue track seven of Frank Sinatra’s 1957 album Only the Lonely and you can hear Ol’ Blue Eyes pretending to…
Rattigan’s films are as important as his plays
A campaign is under way to rename the West End’s Duchess Theatre after the playwright Terence Rattigan. Supported as it…
Edinburgh Fringe’s war on comedy
Every day my inbox fills with stories of panic, madness and despair. The Edinburgh Fringe is upon us and the…
Why has the world turned on the Waltz King?
On 17 June 1872, Johann Strauss II conducted the biggest concert of his life. The city was Boston, USA, and…
The joys of mudlarking
Imagine a London of the distant future. A mudlark combs through the Thames foreshore, looking for relics of the past.…
The greatest photography exhibition of all time
I am sitting on a neat little park bench in a tiny medieval town in rural Luxembourg, and I am…
Landscape designer Tom Stuart-Smith on mistakes, sand and weeds
If you’re looking for an early example of Tom Stuart-Smith’s work, you’d have to go to a car park to…
The French sculptors building the new Statue of Liberty
At a miserable-looking rally for the centre-left Place Publique in mid-March, its co-president, MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, made international headlines calling…
The politics of horror
Everyone forgets the actual opening scene of 28 Days Later, even though it’s deeply relatable, in that it features a…
The Renaissance master who rescued polyphonic music
Last month I watched conductor Harry Christophers blow through what sounded like an arthritic harmonica but in fact was a…
The gloriously impure world of Edward Burra
Every few years the shade of Edward Burra is treated to a Major Retrospective. The pattern is long established: Edward…
Museums: open up your vaults!
At any one time eighty per cent of the art owned by Britain’s many museums and public art galleries will…
The forgotten story of British opera
British opera was born with Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and then vanished for two-and-a-half centuries, apparently. Between the first performance…
The odd couple: Austen and Turner at 250
History is full of odd couples: famous but unrelated people who happen to have been born in the same year.…
Art deco gave veneer and frivolity a bad name
The jazz style was the blowsy filling between the noxious crusts of two world wars. More than 30 years passed…
