Arts
Morning Star, 2017
President Macron is lending the Bayeux Tapestry for exhibition in the British Museum; the medieval tapestry masterpiece The Lady and…
A sumptuous feast of an exhibition: Charles I at the Royal Academy reviewed
Peter Paul Rubens thought highly of Charles I’s art collection. ‘When it comes to fine pictures by the hands of…
Royal Opera’s Tosca is a sloppy affair
One of the Royal Opera’s greatest virtues is the care it takes with its revivals, even those that are virtually…
Ainsley Harriott is still unaccountably amused by almost everything: Costa Del Celebrity reviewed
These days, when it comes to people who used to be on the telly, the answer to the classic newspaper…
Is forgetting a modern disease?
If you were to ask me by the end of the week what I had written about in this column…
Downsizing throws away its brilliant premise
Downsizing is a film with the most brilliant premise. What if, to save the planet, we were all made tiny?…
The secret to one of the nerdiest – and longest-running – quizzes around
Last year was a bit of a year for Radio 4 anniversaries; maybe most notably, Desert Island Discs celebrated 70…
ENB’s La Sylphide resembles a lock-in at a Royal Mile souvenir shop
Gurn loves Effy, Effy is engaged to James but James is away with the fairies: a recipe for love tragedy.…
R&B landfill: Craig David’s The Time is Now reviewed
Grade: D– You’re in a minicab, on the way home from some bash that was considerably less pleasing than you…
Unlike most Pinter plays, this one doesn’t bore or baffle: The Birthday Party reviewed
The Birthday Party is among Pinter’s earliest and strangest works. It deconstructs the conventions of a repertory thriller but doesn’t…
Portrait of William Manning c.1821
The great museums and galleries in Australia do more than acquire, maintain and display their collections; they are also centres…
The sex lives of conductors
I once knew a great conductor who claimed that he never boarded a plane to a new orchestra without a…
Ferrari – heavy, expensive, wasteful, dangerous and addictive
Has a more beautiful machine in all of mankind’s fretful material endeavours ever been made than a ’60 Ferrari 250…
Nothing about Radio 4’s Across the Red Line suggested it would be as riveting as it was
On paper and on air, there’s nothing to suggest that the Radio 4 series Across the Red Line will have…
Another American playwright felled by her own trophy collection: Belleville reviewed
A pattern emerges. A hot American playwright, dripping with prestigious awards, is honoured in London with a transfer of their…
Is Britannia really in the Game of Thrones’s league?
It’s a terrible thing for a TV critic to admit but I just don’t know what to make of Britannia,…
More than ever, this was Ulysses’ show: Royal Opera’s Return of Ulysses reviewed
Spoiler alert: the final image of John Fulljames’s production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses at the Roundhouse is haunting.…
You just can’t argue against Hanks and Streep: The Post reviewed
Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which dramatizes the Washington Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, doesn’t exactly push at…
Rembrandt live
The link between music and painting is not a direct one. The aural and visual impacts of the two art…
Andrew Roberts’s guide to Churchill on screen
Gary Oldman has joined a long list of actors who have portrayed Winston Churchill — no fewer than 35 of…
Turning marble into cushions and stone into flesh: the magic of Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Seventeenth-century Roman art at its fullblown, operatic peak often proves too rich for puritanical northern tastes. And no artist was…
What Rwanda can teach us about gender equality
What an incredible statement we heard on My Perfect Country. ‘I can walk into a boardroom and forget I am…
The National Youth Orchestra showed that they’re the equal of any professional band
Everyone knows — don’t they? — that the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain is the UK’s youngest world-class symphony…
Three Billboards is a hoot and a blast, which I never thought I’d say about a rape movie
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri does, indeed, feature three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. They have been placed at the roadside…
Channel 4’s Kiri is already shaping up to be one of the TV highlights of the winter
These days a genuinely controversial TV drama series would surely be one with an all-white, male-led cast that examined the…
