Arts
A sting in the tail
Mr Holmes stars Ian McKellen as the great detective in his old age and while it could have proved a…
Walking with cadence
I often regret that I’m writing in the past tense here, but never more than about milonga. It is such…
Forward thinking
The award of a knighthood to the composer James MacMillan will have ruined last weekend for lots of unsavoury people:…
Forward thinking
The award of a knighthood to the composer James MacMillan will have ruined last weekend for lots of unsavoury people:…
Bad robots
You’d think scientists might have realised by now that creating a race of super-robots is about as wise as opening…
James Turrell interview: ‘I sell blue sky and coloured air’
Martin Gayford talks to the artist James Turrell, who has lit up Houghton Hall like a baroque firework display
Three tiny cheers for Mumford & Sons’ new album
Like a lot of essentially cautious people, I like my music to take some risks, play with fire and damn…
ENO’s Queen of Spades: I wanted to grab David Alden’s production by the neck and shake out its silly clutter
The opera director David Alden has never been one to tread the straight and narrow. Something kinky would emerge, I’m…
There's a reason why the past four centuries have ignored Shakespeare's King John
King John arrives at the Globe bent double under the weight of garlands from the London critics. Their jaunt up…
Stunning, riveting, horrifying: Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence reviewed
With Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing you’d be minded to think that’s it, that’s the Indonesian genocide (1965–66) done,…
BBC2’s Napoleon reviewed: does Andrew Roberts’s pet Frog need rehabilitating?
I adore Andrew Roberts. We go back a long way. Once, on a boating expedition gone wrong in the south…
Why I love The Bottom Line
Evan Davis’s series on business life, The Bottom Line (made in conjunction with the Open University), has become one of…
The Heckler: my decades-long campaign against Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
For anyone who has been interested in classical vocal music since the middle of the last century, whether choral, operatic…
Culture Buff
Bill Dobell is back in town. At least an aspect of his output, titled Painter in Paradise: William Dobell in…
Dead behind the eyes
With Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing you’d be minded to think that’s it, that’s the Indonesian genocide (1965–66) done,…
The pretenders
Like a lot of essentially cautious people, I like my music to take some risks, play with fire and damn…
The pretenders
Like a lot of essentially cautious people, I like my music to take some risks, play with fire and damn…
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
For anyone who has been interested in classical vocal music since the middle of the last century, whether choral, operatic…
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
For anyone who has been interested in classical vocal music since the middle of the last century, whether choral, operatic…
Pet rescue
I adore Andrew Roberts. We go back a long way. Once, on a boating expedition gone wrong in the south…
Are we ready for a play about Jimmy Savile?
Will Gore talks to the playwright who has brought Jimmy Savile’s crimes to the stage
I fear for this year’s Proms
As Sepp Blatter has so affectingly remarked, the organisation he formerly headed needs evolution, not revolution. There is a consensus…
Is that Sylvie Guillem? Or R2-D2? Guillem's farewell dance at Sadler’s Wells reviewed
There’s been a clutch of middle-aged danseuses taking leave of life in one way or another recently. We’ve seen the…
Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition reviewed: a jumble sale with pizzazz
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition has very little in common with the Venice Biennale. However they do share one characteristic.…
Completely unmemorable - even though I saw it yesterday: Queen & Country reviewed
Queen & County is John Boorman’s follow-up to his 1987 semi-autobiographical film Hope & Glory, although why a sequel now,…
