Arts
Potted herring and Lester Piggott
Q: ‘How would you define transcendence?’ A: ‘Well, how would you define it?’ I interviewed Van Morrison last year. (I’m…
There’s no business like show business
Fifteen minutes into the first episode of I Hate Suzie, main character Suzie Pickles was doing a photoshoot in her…
Public art
On his lockdown rambles, Christopher Howse finds beauty and solace in London’s street furniture
A podcast about the literary canon that actually deepens your knowledge (sort of)
While most of life’s pleasures can be shared, reading is lonely. It’s more than possible for six friends to enjoy…
Mum’s the word
The virus has broken Edinburgh. The shattered remnants of the festival are visible on the internet. Here’s what happened. The…
Parallel universe
There wasn’t going to be a Lucerne Festival this year. The annual month-long squillion-dollar international beano got cancelled, along with…
Culture wars
Forming groups to kill other groups over territory, resources or belief is so much a part of the human condition…
Zadie Smith
She had a heady start to her writing career. The rights to her first novel were the subject of a…
When things fall apart
Okay, I admit it. I have a girl crush on Juliet Stevenson. Ever since I first saw her in the…
The original Edinburgh festival
James Sadler’s 1815 balloon flight, a Fringe first, heralded the greatest musical extravaganza that Scotland had ever seen, says John D. Halliday
…and of looking at real pictures again
One Sunday evening in the autumn of 1888 Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin went for a walk. They headed…
Television Keep it in the family James Delingpole
‘By the way, my name is Max. I take care of them, which ain’t easy, because their hobby is murder.’…
The joy of going to a real concert…
I went to a concert! Not a livestream or download: a real concert, with real musicians, a real conductor, a…
We-ness rising
Back in March, I made a long-odds bet that Michelle Obama would be the Democratic party’s vice-presidential nominee. I knew…
American road trip
Like a lot of Australians I look at what is happening in America with sad bemusement if not alarm. Over…
A.N. Wilson
Kathy Lette says that during lockdown she has been reading Dickens. Her choice illustrates the enduring appeal of Charles Dickens…
‘Where I grew up, classical music was diversity’
Richard Bratby talks to Birmingham Opera Company’s new music director Alpesh Chauhan about his Brummie roots, Bruckner and how his BAME heritage is a non-story
Viva la vulva!
I spent half an hour this week listening to a woman make a plaster cast of her vulva. Kat Harbourne,…
His dark materials
Matteo Garrone’s live-action version of Pinocchio is visually sumptuous and there are some enchanting characters (my favourite: Snail). And unlike…
Stitches and bad-ass bitches
If it’s a test of a good documentary series that it takes us deep into an unknown, even unimaginable world,…
Grubby thumb prints and peeling glue
Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…
Deep Purple: Whoosh!
Grade: B+ Less deep purple than a pleasant mauve. Ageing headbangers will note a lack of the freneticism that distinguished…
‘Theatre is back!’
So the madness continues. Planes full of passengers are going everywhere. Theatres full of ghosts are going bust. My first…
Australian arts
Back in my now rather distant days of regular residence in Britain, I listened regularly to a radio program called…
James Darling striding the shores of Limebuners’ Bay
‘Just as I am’ is the recurrent opening line of a hymn written in 1835 by Charlotte Elliott. It was…
