Arts
Sex offender
I saw Prince play once. I was bored rigid but couldn’t mention this to the girls I’d gone with: as…
Sex offender
I saw Prince play once. I was bored rigid but couldn’t mention this to the girls I’d gone with: as…
Polly’s pleb adventure
Down and Out in Paris and London is a brilliant specimen from a disreputable branch of writing: the chav safari,…
Polly’s pleb adventure
Down and Out in Paris and London is a brilliant specimen from a disreputable branch of writing: the chav safari,…
Sound and vision
Janacek’s Jenufa, his first great opera, had a one-night stand at the Royal Festival Hall last Monday, courtesy of the…
Sound and vision
Janacek’s Jenufa, his first great opera, had a one-night stand at the Royal Festival Hall last Monday, courtesy of the…
Word processing
‘Comedy is like music,’ said Edwin Apps, one of the characters in Wednesday afternoon’s Radio 4 play, All Mouth and…
Word processing
‘Comedy is like music,’ said Edwin Apps, one of the characters in Wednesday afternoon’s Radio 4 play, All Mouth and…
His dark materials
So: Game of Thrones. Finally — season six — the TV series has overtaken the books on which it is…
BBC Proms
BBC Proms 2016 is about as exciting as my sock drawer. But it’s unclear who exactly is to blame. The…
BBC Proms
BBC Proms 2016 is about as exciting as my sock drawer. But it’s unclear who exactly is to blame. The…
All the world’s a stage
James Woodall talks to the Belgian director Ivo van Hove, who has brought a swathe of Shakespeare’s history plays to the stage in Dutch (four hours of it)
Death and the Bard
How did Shakespeare kick the bucket? Lloyd Evans considers the evidence
Shakespeare400
The feeding frenzy over the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death has reached its peak. Recently we’ve had Shakespeare’s complete…
Whose opera is it anyway?
Disguises and mistaken identities are a staple of opera, but usually as part of the onstage, not the offstage, action.…
Picture books for grown-ups
Art Spiegelman, the American cartoonist behind Maus, the celebrated Holocaust cartoon, dreamt up a good definition of graphic novels: comics…
The female gaze
Tamara Rojo programmed three female choreographers for her English National Ballet spring bill because, she said, she had never danced…
There may be trouble ahead
Jane Got a Gun is being sold as a rousing feminist Western although the truth is that it’s about as…
The Jezza effect
Corbyn the Musical feels like it comes from the heart. Did the writers live through the 1970s when the hard-left…
Written on the body
Sue Armstrong’s programme on Radio 4 All in the Womb (produced by Ruth Evans) should be required listening for anyone…
Special delivery
Five Star Babies: Inside the Portland Hospital won’t, I suspect, have been a hard sell to BBC2’s commissioning editors. Childbirth…
Helen Garner
True crime is the genre of literature based on actual crimes and the real life perpetrators. Initially popularised in the…
Death and the Bard
Listen http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/260046943-the-spectator-podcast-obamas-eu-intervention-the-pms.mp3 How did the Bard kick the bucket? The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death reignites interest in a great…
All the world’s a stage
In this much-heralded Shakespeare anniversary year, one might expect a certain respect for the works to prevail. In Holland it’s…
There may be trouble ahead
Jane Got a Gun is being sold as a rousing feminist Western although the truth is that it’s about as…
