Arts
If you have teenage boys who loathe the very idea of theatre, send them to The Play That Goes Wrong
It’s taken a while but here it is. The Play That Goes Wrong is like Noises Off, but simpler. Michael…
Is Anna Nicole’s absurd life worth our while? Not as much as Otello’s
So how did London’s two big opera companies launch their new seasons last week? Not perhaps in the way you…
20,000 Days On Earth: is Nick Cave the missing link? Or the next stage in evolution?
Inspired by Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never (2011), Katy Perry’s Part of Me (2012) and One Direction’s This Is Us…
The sofa that became a work of art
Last week on Front Row (Radio 4) the singer Joyce DiDonato recalled the advice she gave the new graduates of…
I love that people assume I’m gay
At a birthday dinner over the weekend I was introduced to this delightful party girl of a certain age whose…
Culture Buff
It’s chamber orchestras at 20 paces. Both the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra have recently announced their…
Bach triumphant
A few weeks ago I was at the perfect wedding. My young friend Will Heaven, a comment editor at the…
Bach triumphant
A few weeks ago I was at the perfect wedding. My young friend Will Heaven, a comment editor at the…
Michelangelo’s vision was greater even than Shakespeare’s
Alasdair Palmer reveals the monstrous egomaniac behind Michelangelo’s artistic genius
How independence will impoverish Scottish culture
Daniel Jackson foresees an impoverished cultural landscape for an independentScotland, with artists forced to do Salmond’s bidding
The Imperial War Museum finds a deadly place to display first world war masterpieces
The Imperial War Museum has reopened after a major refit and looks pretty dapper, even though it was overrun by…
The secret to a long and happy pop career? Don’t die
As everybody in the world except me seems to have seen Kate Bush’s live shows — against all apparent arithmetical…
Michael Tanner: Why I prefer Donizetti to Strauss
Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her…
Can the Scots really be as small-minded, mistrustful and chippy as Spoiling suggests?
Referendum fever reaches Stratford East. Spoiling, by John McCann, takes us into the corridors of power in Holyrood shortly after…
Ignore the simplistic politics, Pride will make you laugh and cry
1984 and all that. Which side were you on? The side of Margaret Thatcher, her hairdo and person standing rigid…
Warhol’s ‘time capsules’ contain everything from toenails to previously unseen paintings worth millions
‘I don’t know what I think,’ says Lenny Henry, echoing what many of us who were listening were probably also…
Now for the really tricky question: can Only Connect survive BBC2?
For some of us, the biggest TV question of recent weeks hasn’t been how Newsnight is doing without Jeremy Paxman,…
Culture Buff
The village of Bibbenluke sits at the point where the Monaro Highway crosses the Bombala River. It’s beautiful, remote, and…
Power of one
As everybody in the world except me seems to have seen Kate Bush’s live shows — against all apparent arithmetical…
Power of one
As everybody in the world except me seems to have seen Kate Bush’s live shows — against all apparent arithmetical…
Pizza, choc-ice and Leonardos – the treasures of Turin
Laura Gascoigne enjoys a grand tour of Italy’s former capital city
The Bloomsbury painters bore me
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) claimed that nothing has really happened until it has been recorded, so this new exhibition at the…
Enough ‘themes’ at festivals
One might have expected the streets of Edinburgh, especially at festival time, to bear some evidence of the political struggle…
Mariinsky’s Les Troyens — a bad night for Berlioz and Edinburgh
I wonder whether grand opéra really takes war as seriously as this year’s Edinburgh Festival wanted it to. These vast…
Before I Go to Sleep prefers creepy car parks to feelings
Before I Go To Sleep is Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of S.J. Watson’s bestselling thriller of 2011, but whereas the book…
