Arts
The ideal summer opera: Garsington’s The Bartered Bride reviewed
So it’s the start of the summer opera season at Wormsley and we’re sitting there in evening dress in the…
Much as I admire Morrissey’s refusal to conform, I don’t much like his music
Grade: B Rock stars who utter something a little gamey, something a tad right-wingish, are usually coerced by the lefties…
Alyona Kovalyova and Jacopo Tissi in Diamonds Act 3 of Jewels
The name is a byword for exacting standards and grand tradition. The Bolshoi Ballet, at the peak of the ballet…
Quentin Tarantino on how spaghetti westerns shaped modern cinema
The movie that made me consider filmmaking, the movie that showed me how a director does what he does, how…
British surrealism at its most remarkable and nightmarish
Holding the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936 was a coup for the British avant-garde, putting newbie surrealists such…
What would you do if you were a Syrian migrant?
‘Put yourself in their shoes,’ says Zahra Mackaoui, a British-Lebanese journalist who has been following the stories of refugees from…
Igor Levit’s Goldbergs were transcendental
Igor Levit has rapidly achieved cult status, as he certainly deserves. He has already reached the stage where he can…
Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets is a revelation
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is full of music and movement. The players, such as they are, slip, slide, shake, tumble,…
The quiet genius of Posy Simmonds, Hogarth’s heir
‘It’s no use at all,’ says Posy Simmonds in mock despair, holding up her hands. ‘I can’t tell my left…
Deeply unpleasant and thrilling: Viagra Boys make Primal Scream look antiseptic
May was a cruel month for those middle-aged liberals who treasure their old alternative rock heroes. There was Morrissey, appearing…
Good hats – shame about the film: Sunset reviewed
Sunset is French-Hungarian writer-director Laszlo Nemes’s follow-up to his astonishing Oscar-winning debut, Son of Saul. This time round the film…
Bog-standard spy mystery with a gimmicky appeal: Anna at the Dorfman Theatre reviewed
Arts Council England takes money from almost all of us and spends it on culture for almost none of us.…
Earth dying in five billion years I can deal with, but not a world-weary Brian Cox
When you see the opening caption ‘4.6 billion years ago’, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re watching a programme…
How plastic saved the elephant and tortoise
Plastics — even venerable, historically eloquent plastics — hardly draw the eye. As this show’s insightful accompanying publication (a snip…
Anna Bolena
Where would we be without the Tudors? Certainly our shelves, stages and screens would seem empty without their era which…
The new treasures of Pompeii
One afternoon in AD 79 an unusual cloud appeared above Vesuvius in the Bay of Naples. ‘It was raised high…
Sunday night on the Beeb was an orgy of virtue-signalling and third-rate sport
After its new costume drama You Go, Girl! (Sundays) about how amazing, empowered and better-than-men women are, especially if they…
Forget the The Reith Lectures. To understand the world listen to George the Poet
At last a podcast that takes the medium to its limit, created by someone who loves listening, understands how it…
A very odd two hours: Sting and Shaggy reviewed
Many is the pop star who has craved gravitas. Only Sting, however, has pursued it by covering John Dowland on…
This Boris play only gets it half-right
The opening of Jonathan Maitland’s new play about Boris purports to be based on real events. Just before the referendum,…
A mesmerising retrospective: Victoria Crowe at City Art Centre, Edinburgh, reviewed
This mesmerising retrospective takes up three floors of the City Art Centre, moving in distinct stages from the reedy flanks…
The forgotten masterpieces of Amy Beach
At the Wigmore Hall last Friday, the Takacs String Quartet and Garrick Ohlsson played a piano quintet that was once…
If opera survives, it’ll be thanks to artists and curators, not opera houses
It was bucketing it down in Venice, yet the beach was heaving. Families, lovebirds, warring kids, a yappy mutt, all…
Rocketman is cheesy and clichéd – and all the better for it
There have been claims that Rocketman, the biopic of Elton John, is ‘cheesy’ and ‘clichéd’, but, in truth, you do…
Captain James Cook. Wedgwood and Bentley, c.1779
Three speakers: one is Director of The Royal Collection comprising over a million objects in 13 royal residences across the…
