Arts
Gathering storm
Sally Potter’s The Party, which unfolds in real time during a politician’s soirée to celebrate her promotion, is just 71…
Raw materials
‘Art by its very essence is of the new… There is only one healthy diet for artistic creation: permanent revolution.’…
When in Rome…
I know I keep saying that in Decline of the West terms we’re all currently living in Rome, circa 400…
Make mine a double
If two concert pianists are performing a work written for two grand pianos, there are two ways you can position…
Soap opera
Previously on Giulio Cesare… English Touring Opera’s new season caters cannily to the box-set generation by chopping Handel’s Egyptian power-and-politics…
Perishable goods
Labour of Love is the new play by James Graham, the poet laureate of politics. We’re in a derelict…
Cabbages and kings
The first pastry cook Chaïm Soutine painted came out like a collapsed soufflé. The sitter for ‘The Pastry Cook’ (c.1919)…
Faulty connection
There’s no doubting her passion for the programme of which she is now chief of staff. Talking to Roger Bolton…
Pretty vacant
Alice is at it again. Christopher Wheeldon’s 2011 three-act ballet began another sell-out run at Covent Garden last week. It’s…
Back to the future
Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner first came out in cinemas 35 years ago, which I was going to say probably…
Mourning glory
On the face of it, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds aren’t exactly a natural fit with the O2. Cave’s…
The Merry Widow
Not everyone celebrates a 55th anniversary, but if you are a national ballet company at the peak of its form,…
Playing it safe
BBC1’s latest Sunday-night drama The Last Post, about a British military base in Aden in 1965, feels like a programme…
Vice and virtue
‘Can the ultimate betrayal ever be forgiven?’ screams the publicity for The Judas Passion, transforming a Biblical drama into a…
Pole position
Did you know that they used to make the Fiat 126 in the Eastern bloc? They did, apparently. There was…
Verbal diarrhoea
In Beckett’s Happy Days a prattling Irish granny is buried waist-deep, and later neck-deep, in a refuse tip whose detritus…
Savage beauty
Could it, at times, be frustrating to have taken one of the world’s most famous photographs? Steve McCurry’s ‘Afghan Girl’…
Split decision
Think back to that morning in September 1967 when the Light Programme was split in two, Tony Blackburn launching Radio…
Vital signs
Exhibit A. It is 1958 and you are barrelling down a dual carriageway; the 70 mph limit is still eight…
Beauty and the beast
I was going to start with a little moan. About the shouty marketing, the digital diarrhoea, the sycophantic drivel, which,…
Sound and vision
To get a reminder of how strange the 1970s were, there’s no need to plough through lengthy social and political…
Terracotta bust of Edmund Barton by Nelson Illingworth (c.1901)
Although they are not especially grand, these houses are arguably the most significant in the country. The four official residences…
No pain, no gain
The best episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm are the ones that make you want to hide behind the sofa, cover…
Unhappy days
Scriptwriters love to feast on the lives of children’s authors. The themes tend not to vary: they may have brought…
I spy
Where was Degas standing as he sketched his ‘Laundresses’ (c.1882–4)? Did he watch the two women from behind sheets hanging…
