Arts

Frieze Art Fair: where great refinement meets harrowing vulgarity

25 October 2014 9:00 am

If you wanted to find a middle-aged man in a bright orange suit, matching tie and sneakers, Frieze is a…

Brad Pitt with the crew of the Sherman tank, Fury

Fury: the men blow stuff up, then Brad Pitt takes his top off

25 October 2014 9:00 am

Fury is a second world war drama that plays with us viscerally and unsparingly — I think I saw a…

Glyndebourne’s Turn of the Screw: horrors of the most innocent and creepy kind

25 October 2014 9:00 am

We all know that ‘They fuck you up your mum and dad’, but nowhere is this more reliably (and violently)…

What it's like being a scarily talented teenager

25 October 2014 9:00 am

It was when she said how she loved ‘watching the computer do exactly what you wanted it to do’ that…

Hooray for Homeland - Carrie’s back blasting America’s enemies to pieces with drones

25 October 2014 9:00 am

One of the more welcome and surprising things about television at the moment is that Homeland (Channel 4, Sunday) is…

Culture buff

25 October 2014 9:00 am

A highly successful tour of European festivals is a great boost to an orchestra. Not just to morale but to…

Timothy Spall as the eponymous painter in Mike Leigh’s new film ‘Mr Turner’

Mike Leigh interview: 'A guy in the Guardian wants to sue me for defamation of Ruskin!'

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Hermione Eyre talks to filmmaker Mike Leigh about Mr Turner, Hollywood, and making films his own way

Tate Modern’s latest show feels like it’s from another planet

18 October 2014 9:00 am

‘Some day we shall no longer need pictures: we shall just be happy.’ — Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, 1966…

The drunk conductor who ruined Rachmaninov’s career

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Would musical history have turned out differently if Alexander Glazunov hadn’t been smashed out of his wits when he conducted…

Hye-Youn Lee as Violetta in ‘La traviata’

Opera North’s Coronation of Poppea: a premium-rate sex-line of an opera

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Virtue, hide thyself! The Coronation of Poppea opens with a warning and closes with a love duet for a concubine…

Turning feral: Lord of the Flies

Matthew Bourne’s Lord of the Flies: when boys turn feral

18 October 2014 9:00 am

GCSE Eng Lit pupils are doing well from dance this season with two set books told in the medium of…

Harriet Walter as King Henry

Donmar’s Henry IV: Phyllida Lloyd has nothing but contempt for her audience

18 October 2014 9:00 am

The age of ‘ladies first’ is back. Phyllida Lloyd reserves all the roles for the weaker sex, as I imagine…

The Best of Me is more of a sleepie than a weepie - especially when our old friend No Sexual Chemistry makes an appearance

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Take tissues to The Best of Me, I’d read, as it’s such a weepie, so I took tissues, being a…

Fellow saddoes rejoice: BBC4 has made a comedy-drama about metal detecting

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Detectorists (BBC4) is a sad git’s niche comedy that would never have been commissioned if it hadn’t been written and…

Can Radio 3 escape the digital squeeze?

18 October 2014 9:00 am

The new controller of Radio 3 has at last been appointed. Alan Davey (not to be confused with the former…

Culture buff

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Happy is the theatre company that can enjoy the regular services of a genuine international star, as admired on stage…

Turning feral: Lord of the Flies

Boys alone

16 October 2014 2:00 pm

GCSE Eng Lit pupils are doing well from dance this season with two set books told in the medium of…

What iff?

16 October 2014 2:00 pm

Would musical history have turned out differently if Alexander Glazunov hadn’t been smashed out of his wits when he conducted…

What iff?

16 October 2014 2:00 pm

Would musical history have turned out differently if Alexander Glazunov hadn’t been smashed out of his wits when he conducted…

Brian Blessed as Prince Vultan and Sam J. Jones as Flash in ‘Flash Gordon’, part of the BFI ‘Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder’ season

Without sci-fi, there would be no cinema

11 October 2014 9:00 am

Without sci-fi, there would be no cinema, writes Peter Hoskin

‘Winter Landscape (Winterlandschaft)’, 1970, by Anselm Kiefer

All my doubts about Anselm Kiefer are blown away by his Royal Academy show

11 October 2014 9:00 am

In the Royal Academy’s courtyard are two large glass cases or vitrines containing model submarines. In one the sea has…

ENO’s The Girl of the Golden West is irresistibly seductive

11 October 2014 9:00 am

Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is, one suspects, one of those works that modern audiences struggle to keep a straight…

Ukip's logo is quite successful – in communicating a spirit of gung-ho crapness

11 October 2014 9:00 am

Now that the conference season is over, we can compare not just the party policies, but their logos too. Last…

Stage rage: Kristin Scott Thomas as Electra

Were the cast of the Old Vic’s Electra clothed by Oxfam?

11 October 2014 9:00 am

First, a bit of background. Conquering Agamemnon slew his daughter, Iphigenia, in return for a fair wind to Troy. This…

Poor, poor Effie: Dakota Fanning

Effie Gray can effie off

11 October 2014 9:00 am

Effie Gray, which has been written by Emma Thompson and recounts the doomed marriage of Victorian art critic John Ruskin…