Arts
Glastonbury knight
I had meant to write a dispassionate account of this year’s Glastonbury, really I had. But I’m afraid my plans…
Glastonbury knight
I had meant to write a dispassionate account of this year’s Glastonbury, really I had. But I’m afraid my plans…
The bankers’ darling
This week’s Imagine… Jeff Koons: Diary of a Seducer (BBC1, Tuesday) began with Koons telling a slightly puzzled-looking Alan Yentob…
City life
To gentrify or not to gentrify. That is the question, says Stephen Bayley
Maestro maker
When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that…
Maestro maker
The writer and director Peter Bogdanovich has made three of my favourite films of all time (The Last Picture Show,…
Better than Bayreuth
Which of Wagner’s mature dramas is the most challenging, for performers and spectators? The one you’re seeing at the moment,…
![‘Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red) [6]’, 1943, by Barbara Hepworth](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/exhibitions1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Shape-shifter
In the last two decades of her life, Barbara Hepworth was a big figure in the world of art. A…
Savile exposed
Ho hum. Bit icky. Not bad. Hardly dazzling. The lukewarm response to An Audience With Jimmy Savile has astonished me.…
Look back in anger
‘Cringe!’ said Boy, after I’d exposed him to a few seconds of last week’s special nostalgia edition of TFI Friday.…
Sea sound
It’s often not visual images that stimulate memory but a smell, a taste, the sound of pebbles crashing on to…
Culture Buff
This is a very operatic time in Sydney; the SSO has just done Tristan & Isolde, OA has opened it’s…
Maestro maker
The writer and director Peter Bogdanovich has made three of my favourite films of all time (The Last Picture Show,…
Maestro maker
When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that…
Maestro maker
When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that…
Look back in anger
‘Cringe!’ said Boy, after I’d exposed him to a few seconds of last week’s special nostalgia edition of TFI Friday.…
Elysian fields
Glastonbury is a model for radical policy reform, says Steve Hilton
Forward thinking
The award of a knighthood to the composer James MacMillan will have ruined last weekend for lots of unsavoury people:…
Fairground attraction
Gianlorenzo Bernini stressed the difficulty of making a sculpture of a person out of a white material such as marble.…
Own goal
For nine years Patrick Marber has grappled with writer’s block (which by some miracle doesn’t affect his screenplay work), but…
A sting in the tail
Mr Holmes stars Ian McKellen as the great detective in his old age and while it could have proved a…
Between Kafka and Crossroads
We opera critics love gazing into crystal balls. We’re particularly good at discovering Ed Milibands and backing them to the…
Walking with cadence
I often regret that I’m writing in the past tense here, but never more than about milonga. It is such…
Bad robots
You’d think scientists might have realised by now that creating a race of super-robots is about as wise as opening…
Culture Buff
Surely the most luxuriously sensual of all operas, Tristan & Isolde makes voyeurs of us all. This opera is being…
