Arts
Courageous Kemp
Before I set about reviewing Ross Kemp: The Fight Against Isis (Sky 1), I thought I’d have a glance to…
Losing their religion
Scriabin once suggested that the audiences for his music should be segregated according to their degree of personal enlightenment, with…
Dahl by Spielberg
Nobody who witnessed it can have forgotten Mark Rylance summoning giants to his aid in Jerusalem. As Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron,…
All in the mind
Mark Morris, the most musically communicative and naturally lyrical of choreographers of the past 30 years (and an absentee from…
First impressions
The last boat I saw in the galleries on the Mound was a canoe that the Scottish painter Jock McFadyen…
Power failure
Fracking is a British tradition. Since 1969 more than 200 sites have used hydraulic fracturing ‘without environmental catastrophes’ according to…
Power failure
Fracking is a British tradition. Since 1969 more than 200 sites have used hydraulic fracturing ‘without environmental catastrophes’ according to…
On full beam
What’s the best first opera for a sceptical adult first timer? It’s a favourite topic among opera buffs, and once…
On full beam
What’s the best first opera for a sceptical adult first timer? It’s a favourite topic among opera buffs, and once…
Dramatic effect
It was hard to believe that Monday morning’s introduction to the Italian writer Primo Levi on Radio 4 lasted for…
Dramatic effect
It was hard to believe that Monday morning’s introduction to the Italian writer Primo Levi on Radio 4 lasted for…
Courageous Kemp
Before I set about reviewing Ross Kemp: The Fight Against Isis (Sky 1), I thought I’d have a glance to…
Notes on the type
Back in 1997 the New Yorker published a piece lampooning the proliferation of ‘Notes on the Type’ — those oleaginous…
Disney’s Aladdin
To my parents in the 1930s, the name Disney meant Mickey Mouse. Now the name is associated not only with…
Sounds of the suburbs
In After the Vote, her talk for this week’s special edition of A Point of View (Radio 4) on the…
Taking the pissoir
You have to imagine the lines that follow in separate fonts to get the full sense of the nonsense in…
Where should this music be?
This must rank as the most heartbreaking example of premature chicken-counting in musical history. ‘Gotter has made a marvellous free…
Privates on parade
In 1927, Georgia O’Keeffe announced that she would like her next exhibition to be ‘so magnificently vulgar that all the…
My best fiend
Anthony Neilson is an Arts Council favourite known for trivial but impenetrable plays with off-putting names like The Wonderful World…
First thing’s first
Leonore is the first version of Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Stephen Medcalf thinks it’s better. ‘What Leonore gives us is more…
Girls v. ghosts
From the moment this all-female reboot of Ghostbusters was announced, the fan-boy panic set in: where will it end? An…
The prodigy
On Tuesday night on Channel 4, a stern male figure peered over his glasses (as equipped with one of those…
Taking the pissoir
You have to imagine the lines that follow in separate fonts to get the full sense of the nonsense in…
Girls v. ghosts
From the moment this all-female reboot of Ghostbusters was announced, the fan-boy panic set in: where will it end? An…
Privates on parade
In 1927, Georgia O’Keeffe announced that she would like her next exhibition to be ‘so magnificently vulgar that all the…
