Arts
A dreamy, if overly ambitious show: Silk Roads, at the British Museum, reviewed
Towards the end of the British Museum’s Silk Roads show, there is a selection of treasures found in England. Among…
The real best album of last year
Grade: A+ In a desperate wish to avoid the appellation of a derided genre, this young man from Asheville, North…
Brutal and brilliant portrait of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford
The Last Days of Liz Truss? is a one-woman show about the brief interregnum between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.…
A miracle at the RSC: genuinely funny Shakespeare
Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? Most subsidised theatres hanker for…
No one will convince me that Keira Knightley can fight: Black Doves reviewed
If your heart sinks at the prospect of a thriller series starring Keira Knightley as a highly trained undercover agent…
Fools will love it: We Live in Time reviewed
We Live in Time is a rom-com (of sorts), starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield. They have terrific chemistry and…
How French absolutism powered a techno-progressive revolution
The Enlightenment is back. Despite the best efforts of the past decade of handwringing about cultural imperialism and wailing over…
Take it easy on a long, hot summer
It’s a strange time, the summer holidays in Australia. Some people have riveting memories of Boxing Day tests, of Australian…
Carols are much weirder than we think
Why, my sharp-minded colleague Tom Utley once asked after a Telegraph Christmas Carol service, should anyone think God would abhor…
Superb: Ruination, at the Linbury Theatre, reviewed
Ruination begins with an ironic prologue in which a choric figure warns the audience that what follows makes unlikely matter…
Meet the king of comic opera
John Savournin has been busy. That comes with the territory for a classical singer – things often get a little…
Vivid, noble and bouyant: AAM’s Messiah reviewed
More than a thousand musicians took part when Handel’s Messiah was performed in Westminster Abbey in May 1791. It wasn’t…
Sumptuous but musically unmemorable: Elton John’s The Devil Wears Prada musical reviewed
The Devil Wears Prada is a fairy tale about an aspiring female novelist, Andy, who receives a job offer from…
Tirzah Garwood just isn’t as good as her husband Eric Ravilious
Tirzah Garwood, wife of the more famous Eric Ravilious, is having a well-deserved moment in the sun, benefiting from this…
‘Was I cast because you couldn’t get anyone else?’ Cate Blanchett discusses Rumours
At last, a film about the G7. There have been more movies than you can shake a stick at set…
Guadagnino is a true master of erotic desire: Queer reviewed
Queer, which is based on the novella by William S. Burroughs, is the latest film directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call…
Leavisites should stay away: Sky’s Bad Tidings reviewed
Reviewing Sky’s The Heist before Christmas last year, I suggested that all feature-length festive television dramas begin with credits announcing…
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains terrible art – but is filled with magic
For a press tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the Church of the Resurrection, the…
The most immodest thing
So they’re having another go at removing the varnish and the accumulated dark oiliness and other accretions from that most…
The best film about a woman turning into a dog that you’ll see this year
Nightbitch stars Amy Adams as a mother who is so full of rage about her loss of identity it makes…
The latest Dragon Age game is unbearably right-on
Like all other forms of culture, video games offer a way to escape from, or reflect on, reality through fiction.…
Dune: Prophecy is much worse than you will believe possible
Do you remember that nagging sense of mild disappointment as you sat through Dune 2? You’d been impressed by Dune:…
Why space is the perfect subject for podcasts
The podcasts I’m recommending to everyone at the moment are Nasa’s Curious Universe and the Royal Astronomical Society’s The Supermassive…
This Muslim playwright believes Yorkshire is headed for civil war
Expendable, at the Royal Court, is an urgent bulletin from the front line of the grooming gang scandal in the…
Warhol, Rauschenberg, Johns and Tinguely all started out as window dressers
Christmas, and in every city already crowds congregate around the festive department store displays in defiance of the apparent disappearance…
