Arts
Selective memory
It’s 70 years since the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and yet there has been no rush to…
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid is the most famous woman architect in the world. Would women or, indeed, architecture, be better off without…
Culture buff
It was at a Ball at the Trocadero in August 1955, sixty years ago this month, that I first heard…
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…
The Trump doctrine
Were you ever not very nice at school? A bit of a tosspot to others, perhaps. Ever so slightly a…
Cuban comet
By chance, my first night in Havana in 1987 was the night the clubs went dark to mark the death…
Cuban comet
By chance, my first night in Havana in 1987 was the night the clubs went dark to mark the death…
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…
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…
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid is the most famous woman architect in the world. Would women or, indeed, architecture, be better off without…
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid is the most famous woman architect in the world. Would women or, indeed, architecture, be better off without…
Nuclear overreaction
When I was growing up in the 1970s, my three main fears were: being blown up by the IRA; being…
The Long view
On the green edge of Clifton Downs, high above the city, there is a sculpture that encapsulates the strange magic…
Look at my Fringe
Our theatre critic, Lloyd Evans, makes his Edinburgh debut
Orchestral infallibility
Watching the Berlin Philharmonic going into conclave to choose a successor to Simon Rattle — after countless hours of secret…
Watery depths
I learnt to splash about in watercolour at my grandmother’s knee. Or rather, sitting beside her crouched over a pad…
Pulp fiction
Hot, languorous, sizzling… I was thinking what an ideal show Matthew Bourne’s noir comedy is to watch on a summer’s…
Welcome to Bedlam
Caius Gabriel Cibber’s statues of ‘Melancholy’ and ‘Raving Madness’, their eyes staring blindly into the void, petrified in torment, once…
Affairs in squares
On all those comic lists of the world’s shortest books (Great Italian War Heroes, My Hunt for the Real Killers,…
Family matters
God, what a title. The Gathered Leaves. It sounds like a tremulous weepie about grief and endurance with a closing…
Dedicated follower of fashion
Iris is a documentary portrait of Iris Apfel, the nonagenarian New York fashion icon. Nope, me neither, but that’s irrelevant,…
Matters of life and death
‘Bait by Cartier,’ she growls as her priceless diamond bracelet is strapped to a piece of rope and dropped overboard…
Culture buff
It is an out and out masterpiece so any new production of The Marriage of Figaro matters a great deal.…
Dedicated follower of fashion
Iris is a documentary portrait of Iris Apfel, the nonagenarian New York fashion icon. Nope, me neither, but that’s irrelevant,…
Look at my Fringe
Like everyone performing at the Edinburgh Fringe I’m about to make a lot of mistakes. I’m about to lose a…
