Arts
Ai Weiwei
In September, the Royal Academy of Arts will present a solo exhibition of works by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.…
Summer listening
Just back from a few nights in Sweden to find the perfect programme on Radio 3. It was one of…
Poldark porn
My favourite moment in The Scandalous Lady W (BBC2, Monday) was when the heroine played by Natalie Dormer was shown…
Summer listening
Just back from a few nights in Sweden to find the perfect programme on Radio 3. It was one of…
I reshot Andy Warhol
Stephen Smith finally sees the point of Empire, one of the dullest films in cinema history
Afterthoughts
The blackness that sweeps along the stage behind Sylvie Guillem’s disappearing figure in the Russell Maliphant piece on her farewell…
Watching the clocks
When I saw the first performance of this production of Ravel’s two operas at Glyndebourne three years ago, I thought…
Great expectations
Trainwreck is a romcom as written and directed by Amy Schumer, the American comedy prodigy whose Comedy Central sketch show…
Seeking closure
A while ago, David Hockney mused on a proposal to tax the works of art stored in artists’ studios. ‘You’d…
Edinburgh round-up
Propaganda is said to work best when based upon a grain of truth. Ukip! The Musical assumes that most electors…
Sick and tired
When the link between tobacco and lung cancer was first established in the early 1950s, one obvious question arose: should…
Words on war
It’s really hard to imagine now a world before 24-hour news, continually and constantly accessible in a never-ending stream of…
Culture buff
‘I Love a Piano’ sang Fred Astaire and Judy Garland, courtesy of Irving Berlin, in Easter Parade. So do most…
Great expectations
Trainwreck is a romcom as written and directed by Amy Schumer, the American comedy prodigy whose Comedy Central sketch show…
I reshot Andy Warhol
It’s one thing to make the most boring film in cinema history — at least you can kid yourself at…
Afterthoughts
The blackness that sweeps along the stage behind Sylvie Guillem’s disappearing figure in the Russell Maliphant piece on her farewell…
Sick and tired
When the link between tobacco and lung cancer was first established in the early 1950s, one obvious question arose: should…
The Long view
William Cook explores the elemental art and Olympian walks of Richard Long
Music to write books by
I have been writing a book this summer, in the usual mad tearing hurry. (Much as I admire those who…
Life after death
This is not the biggest exhibition at Edinburgh and it will not be the best attended but it may be…
Portrait or landscape?
One of the default settings of garden journalists is the adjective ‘painterly’ — applied to careful colour harmonies within a…
Cuban comet
By chance, my first night in Havana in 1987 was the night the clubs went dark to mark the death…
The Trump doctrine
Were you ever not very nice at school? A bit of a tosspot to others, perhaps. Ever so slightly a…
Chekhov by numbers
Chekhov so dominates 19th-century Russian drama that Turgenev doesn’t get much of a look-in. His best known play, A Month…
Nuclear overreaction
When I was growing up in the 1970s, my three main fears were: being blown up by the IRA; being…
