Arts
Classical music is awash with virtue-signalling
All my life I’ve wanted to compose music, and now I’ve done it. I’ve written a sonata for solo flute…
Shamelessly derivative and, worse, asks us to root for asshats: Swimming with Men reviewed
Swimming with Men is a British drama-comedy starring Rob Brydon as a disaffected middle-aged accountant who joins his local male…
Contains at least 15 laugh-out-loud moments: Genesis Inc. reviewed
Listen to the crowd. I often delay passing judgment on a show until the audience delivers its verdict. This is…
A new exhibition gives us the real Tolkien – not his awful legacy
To no one’s surprise, the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition at the Bodleian in Oxford, where J.R.R. spent so much…
The great thing about the World Cup is you don’t even have to watch it to enjoy it
Even though I don’t watch much football I love the World Cup because it’s my passport to total freedom. I…
Vexing reading of a perplexing opera: Glyndebourne’s Pelléas et Mélisande reviewed
The femme fatale was invented in France. A giddy, greedy child in her first incarnation, as the antiheroine of Abbé…
A warning to those who argue that we live in a visual society
‘Can one person really grasp the significance of what another person has been through?’ asks Dr Rita Charon in this…
Ignore Lily Allen’s sub-adolescent politics – her new album is brilliant
Grade: B+ Here we go again, then, I thought — another gobbet of self-referential, breast-beating respec’ me bro sputum against…
Ben Jacks
A concert in the schedule of the Sydney Symphony recently caught my eye: Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 3 and his…
The problem with British mosques
My earliest memory of a mosque is being with my father in London’s Brick Lane Mosque. He was a member…
How good a painter was Frida Kahlo?
In 2004 Mexican art historians made a sensational discovery in Frida Kahlo’s bathroom. Inside this space, sealed since the 1950s,…
Sexy hints of affluence with top notes of fascism: Grange Park’s Roméo et Juliette reviewed
Patrick Mason’s new production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette reminded me of something, but it took a while to work…
The dumbing down of the Reith Lectures
It’s been a heavyweight week on Radio 4 with the start of the annual series of Reith Lectures and a…
So bad I wanted to escape: An Octoroon reviewed
Intriguing word, ‘octoroon’. Does it mean an eight-sided almond-flavoured cakelet? No, it’s a person whose ancestry is one eighth black.…
Fury and excitement – how the journalists at the New York Times have coped with Trump
Back when his country was controlled by the USSR, the Czech writer Milan Kundera pointed out that ‘Union of Soviet…
Leave No Trace is inaction-packed – yet it pulls you in and keeps you pulled in
Debra Granik, the writer-director who made quite a splash with Winter’s Bone (which launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence in…
Antony Gormley’s art works better in theory than in practice
Antony Gormley has replicated again. Every year or so a new army of his other selves — cast, or these…
An extraordinary, brilliant spectacle: Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium reviewed
Imagine living Taylor Swift’s life. She has been staggeringly, life-dominatingly famous since she was 17. Not for a single moment…
The Wharf and its neighbour
After 35 years on The Wharf at Walsh Bay, the Sydney Theatre Company has moved out. But it will be…
‘I think The Kinks could have found a better frontman’: Ray Davies interviewed
‘I like your shirt today,’ Sir Ray Davies says to the waiter who brings his glass of water to the…
Alexander Calder was a volcano of invention
In the Moderna Museet in Stockholm there is a sculpture by Katharina Fritsch, which references Chekhov’s famous story ‘Lady with…
More gripping than any scripted thriller: November 13 – Attack on Paris reviewed
There were 1,500 punters in the audience when Eagles of Death Metal played their fatal gig at the Bataclan theatre…
The best album of the year so far, by some margin
Grade: A+ While the young bands plunder the 1980s for every last gobbet of tinny synth and hi-hat, the singer-songwriters…
The excitement of emigrating on your own as a child
There was one of those moments late on Sunday night when a voice is so arresting (either through tone, timbre,…
Sorrow and pity are no guarantee of artistic success: Aftermath at Tate Britain reviewed
Some disasters could not occur in this age of instant communication. The first world war is a case in point:…
