Arts
Neil MacGregor’s intense, impassioned new radio programme is shamelessly anti-Brexit
I suspect that whether or not you admire Neil MacGregor’s latest series for Radio 4, As Others See Us (produced…
According to BBC4, what was one of the ‘most important inventions in modern music’?
Here’s a tricky quiz question for you. What word completes this sentence from a BBC4 documentary on Friday: ‘The world…
A masterpiece of pro-Trump propaganda: Sweat at the Donmar Warehouse reviewed
Sweat, set in the Pennsylvanian rust belt, looks at a blue-collar community threatened by a factory closure. The script uses…
It’s hard to think of finer images of children than Gainsborough’s
When he knew that he was dying, Thomas Gainsborough selected an unfinished painting from some years before and set it…
Wozzeck
The story is bleak, very bleak; the music bleak and very loud, yet Wozzeck is regarded as an outstanding 20th…
Dick Clement on Porridge, Kirk Douglas and having seven projects on the go
Given their track record, you might think that Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais would be spared the struggles that…
How did the BBC’s podcast Unexpected Fluids ever get made?
You may have noticed the flood of podcasts that’s been pouring out of the BBC since the launch of its…
Comparing Peanuts to existentialism is an insult – to Peanuts
For the hundredth, possibly the thousandth, time, Lucy van Pelt offers to hold the football for Charlie Brown so he…
A horror show that appeals to the intellect but not the gut: The Tell-Tale Heart reviewed
The Tell-Tale Heart is based on a teeny-weeny short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The full text appears in the…
January as you would wish it: Royal Ballet’s Les Patineurs reviewed
The Royal Ballet’s Les Patineurs is January as you would wish it. No slush, no new-year sales, no streaming chest…
I don’t just recommend you see The Favourite. I command it
The Favourite is a period romp set during the reign of Queen Anne, but it’s not your average period romp.…
Beware of Pity
Festivals are an opportunity to present performances that might not otherwise be seen; there are several in this year’s Sydney…
The fascinating story behind one of the best-loved depictions of the Nativity
In the early 1370s an elderly Scandinavian woman living in Rome had a vision of the Nativity. Her name was…
A short history of ice skating
In landscape terms, the Fens don’t have much going for them. What you can say for them, though, is that…
The people have not forgotten me: the exiled Empress of Iran interviewed
Somewhere in the bowels of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is a portrait from a lost world. Its subject…
High and mighty
In this 200th anniversary of the birth of Mrs C.F. Alexander, author of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, all of…
Gary Kemp on pop, Pre-Raphaelites, politics and playing Pinter
The first thing Gary Kemp bought when Spandau Ballet started making money was a chair. He’s very proud of that…
There’s something about Mary
So, Mary Poppins returns, and I was, of course, primed to be spiteful, as is my nature. Not a patch…
You’ll have shivers down your spine and tears in your eyes: Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker reviewed
Not another Nutcracker, I thought on the way to the Opera House. Haven’t we had our fill of Sugar Plums?…
I couldn’t wait to escape this opaque, witless horror show: True West reviewed
Sam Shepard was perhaps the gloomiest playwright ever to spill his guts into a typewriter. The popularity of his work…
Could it be that Jimmy McGovern was getting into the festive spirit? No… Care reviewed
Jimmy McGovern’s one-off drama Care (BBC1, Sunday 9 December) began with a loving grandmother called Mary having a lovely time…
Remembering the 1968 Apollo mission – when the world was reaching to the future rather than drawing in
Take yourself back to (or try to imagine) Christmas 1968; a year full of disturbances, dashed hopes and extreme violence…
It’s Christmas. You don’t want Götterdämmerung. You want a waltz-operetta
Grade: A– 1898: two Parisiennes and a housemaid secretly invite each other’s partners to the Paris Opera ball and… c’mon,…
Female statue head Villa Casali
Most of us love Rome while still being a little overwhelmed by it. The Roman Empire’s geographical spread and duration…
![David Schwimmer has produced a new film of Alexander Zeldin’s play LOVE for the BBC. [Photo: Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/8Declead.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
David Schwimmer on his new BBC film
There is very little art about modern poverty, because who wants to know? It is barely acknowledged, unless there is…
