Arts
Beyond a joke
Let’s start this week with a joke: ‘You know Mrs Kelly? Do you know Mrs Kelly? Her husband’s that little…
The bicycle may have triumphed but it’s far from perfect
The bicycle may have triumphed over the car but it’s far from perfect, argues Stephen Bayley
Artistic taste is inversely proportional to political nous
‘Wherever the British settle, wherever they colonize,’ observed the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, ‘they carry and will ever carry trial…
Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?
Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto,…
I wanted to beat it with a stick and cry, ‘Get on with it!’: Carol reviewed
Carol is an easy film to admire — so beautiful to look at; entirely exquisite — but such a hard…
Why is there no one at the National Theatre preventing these duds getting staged?
Wallace Shawn is a lovely old sausage. A stalwart of American theatre, he’s taken cameo roles in classic movies like…
I’m a Celebrity is like The Simpsons: good if you’re thick; even better if you’re not
The best bit in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (ITV) will be when the prisoners finally revolt…
You can’t forget what Will Self says – even if you wish you could
It lasted for just a few seconds but was such a graphic illustration of the statistics behind the bombing campaign…
Culture buff
In 1789, at the beginning of the French Revolution, one of the most popular operas in Paris was Richard Coeur-de-Lion.…
I wanted to beat it with a stick and cry, ‘Get on with it!’: Carol reviewed
Carol is an easy film to admire — so beautiful to look at; entirely exquisite — but such a hard…
The bicycle may have triumphed but it’s far from perfect
It’s extraordinary that it took civilisation so very long to discover the benefits of putting little wheels on suitcases. We…
Artistic taste is inversely proportional to political nous
‘Wherever the British settle, wherever they colonize,’ observed the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, ‘they carry and will ever carry trial…
Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?
Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto,…
Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?
Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto,…
Why is there no one at the National Theatre preventing these duds getting staged?
Wallace Shawn is a lovely old sausage. A stalwart of American theatre, he’s taken cameo roles in classic movies like…
Why is there no one at the National Theatre preventing these duds getting staged?
Wallace Shawn is a lovely old sausage. A stalwart of American theatre, he’s taken cameo roles in classic movies like…
You can’t forget what Will Self says – even if you wish you could
It lasted for just a few seconds but was such a graphic illustration of the statistics behind the bombing campaign…
You can’t forget what Will Self says – even if you wish you could
It lasted for just a few seconds but was such a graphic illustration of the statistics behind the bombing campaign…
I’m a Celebrity is like The Simpsons: good if you’re thick; even better if you’re not
The best bit in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (ITV) will be when the prisoners finally revolt…
Artificial life
Ruskin dismissed Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs as untrue. But, argues Martin Gayford, the same could be said of any picture
Lost in space
In a converted barn in Dorset, not far from the rural studio where she made many of her greatest sculptures,…
Death watch
At the beginning of the summer of 1715 Louis XIV complained of a pain in the leg. In mid-August gangrene…
Approachable abstraction
Fifteen million pounds and a hefty slice of architectural vision have transformed the Whitworth from a fusty Victorian art temple…
Thomas Heatherwick
Thomas Heatherwick is the most famous designer in the United Kingdom today and has an unquestionable flair for attention-grabbing creations.…
Bored by Brahms
Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet begins, writes his biographer Jan Swafford, with ‘a gentle, dying-away roulade that raises a veil of autumnal…
