Arts
French fancies
The selection of a film for family viewing is a precise and delicate art, particularly with us all now confined…
Radio 3 presenters
Anyone who has listened regularly to Radio 3 over the decades — not to mention the Third Programme, which Radio…
For love or money
There can’t be many programmes that bring to mind quotations from both Henry Kissinger and Boney M., but BBC2’s The…
The Boyz are back in town
Another day in isolation, another bid to find joy in my lone state-sanctioned walk. (Pro tip: stay out longer than…
‘I’ll show you what a woman can do’
The life of Artemisia Gentileschi is made for Netflix, says Laura Freeman, but it’s her art that really excites
Great Scot
William Cook talks to Billy Connolly – welder, banjo player, comedian, actor, and now artist – about growing up in Glasgow, ditching the mike stand and living with Parkinson’s
Lloyd Rees Solitude 1978
‘How much of our village do we burn to contain this?’. That was the chilling headline of an article in…
Haydn seek
As Joseph Haydn was getting out of bed on the morning of 10 May 1809, a cannonball landed in his…
The fascinating Ms Swift
There had been some question about whether Taylor Swift’s Netflix special would actually appear. Last year it seemed that the…
Rules of engagement
With theatres shut, radio must lighten the darkness. The Guilty Feminist is a wildly popular podcast performed by Deborah Frances-White…
Race relations
Some years ago I was invited to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone courtesy of a watch manufacturer. As freebies…
Captive audience
This film contains flying children, time travel and a sand monster that lives under a beach — yet the most…
Museums of the mind
Six months ago I published a book about travelling to look at works of art. One such journey involved a…
A world apart
Holed up in her sixth-floor London flat, Laura Freeman finds solace in the art of the hermit
Christos Tsiolkas
This was not the ideal beach book for the Christmas holidays but now we are in different times, it has…
Red or dead
There was a basket of thick red wool and two pairs of large knitting needles at the start of University…
Georgia on my mind
The film you want to see this week that you mightn’t have seen if you weren’t stuck at home is…
Closing time
War and plague have menaced theatres before, but rarely on this scale, says Lloyd Evans
Raiding the sonic store cupboard
There’s a certain merit in bluntness. ‘Quarantine Soirées’ was what the Budapest Festival Orchestra called its response to the crisis,…
Notes on a scandal
Kevin Katke was quite a man. He had no military training, no political background and no espionage experience. Nonetheless, his…
A soldier’s life
First shown on BBC Scotland, Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War (BBC4, Wednesday) was the documentary equivalent of…
Mozart’s Clarinet
A couple of friends have nominated it as music they would like played at their funerals. I’m not into programming…
Untruthful
To tell you the truth about The Truth, even though it stars Catherine Deneuve at her most Catherine Deneuve-ish (i.e.…
Gross receipts
Film-makers are increasingly turning to the violent, provocatively slow or viscerally repulsive.What is driving this rise in extreme cinema? asks Francesca Steele
The inside story
On Blueberry Hill sounds like a musical but it’s a sombre prison drama set in Ireland. Two bunkbeds. Above, an…
