Arts
Diary stories
By chance on Saturday morning, I tuned into Radio 4 and heard Professor Clare Brant talking on Saturday Live about…
How the west coast was won
There’s an incredibly addictive old iPhone game called Doodle God where you effectively invent civilisation from scratch by combining basic…
Snoop Dogg: Neva Left
The problem Calvin Broadus has is persuading the rest of us that he still a baaaad muthafucka. Snoop is now…
White-knuckle ride
Playing in an orchestra that disintegrates mid-concert is not an experience you forget. One moment everything’s motoring along nicely. Suddenly…
Glamming it up
Late on the Friday afternoon of The Great Escape — the annual three-day event for which the London music industry…
Myths and morals
Handel’s Semele, one of the most enjoyable operas (or opera-oratorio, if you insist) in the repertoire, is, in its upshot,…
Fantastic Mr Fox
Sand in the Sandwiches is the perfect show for those who feel the West End should be an intellectual funfair.…
Building block
Liverpool is the New York of Europe. The business district looks like old Wall Street: a miniature Lower Manhattan on…
The rise of toytown pop
Pop’s counterfactuals tend to be built on questioning mortality: what if Jimi Hendrix had lived? Or Buddy Holly? Rarely does…
Music matters
The ancient Greeks had a word for it —katabasis, descending into the depths, to the underworld itself, in search of…
Army surplus
Georg Büchner, a justly neglected German playwright, died at the age of 23 leaving a half-finished script about a mad…
Jun Chen Grey Red 2017
At the age of 30, Jun Chen arrived in Australia post Tianamen Square. He settled in Brisbane where his first…
Scarlet women
A Covent Garden barfly was scanning her programme during the first interval: ‘Oh yes, the one about the gynaecologist.’ She…
Woman to woman
Bump to bump they stand: Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, both pregnant, both apple-cheeked and glowing as expectant mothers should…
Dealer’s choice
One evening a few weeks ago I was on my way to the opening of an exhibition at the Venice…
Comic relief
In such times as these, enough to try a man’s soul, a dose of John Finnemore is advisable. His brand…
Heaven knows they’re miserable now
On the face of it, the two new big drama series of the week don’t have a great deal in…
National Army Museum
I used to love the National Army Museum in Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, which was crammed with the memorabilia of…
Vanessa Downing and Geoff Morrell in Black is the New White
I should have written about this play earlier; it is on now at the Sydney Theatre Company Wharf 1. Black…
When will I ever learn?
Oh, Pirates of the Caribbean, I have given you every chance down the years. Every chance. I am always hopeful.…
Being and nothingness
Size, of course, matters a great deal in art; so does scale — which is a different matter. The art…
Around the horn
The concert began with a flourish and a honk. Well, of course it did. Telemann wrote his last Ouverture-Suite in…
Crime and punishment
‘Hell is better than what I personally witnessed,’ says Ben Ferencz, who was one of the American troops sent in…
The great rock’n’roll swindles
Birds have been giving me a lot of grief of late. There’s Tappy — the blue tit who has built…
PWR BTTM: Pageant
How about some queercore garage punk? PWR BTTM — the name means something empowering to do with buggery — are…
