Arts
Chimerica is a triumph
Chimerica. The weird title of Lucy Kirkwood’s hit play conjoins the names of the eastern and western superpowers and promises…
Mark Elder and the Hallé surpassed any other account of Parsifal that Michael Tanner has heard
The Proms season of Wagner operas — pity they didn’t do them all; Die Meistersinger would have been specially welcome,…
The sight of a rose-and-pistachio cake with lychee flavouring, strewn with petals, makes Clarissa Tan’s heart lift
I’m not crazy about cookery shows. I suspect they indicate how little we are cooking, rather than how much. We’re…
Tom Stoppard’s Pink Floyd play gives Radio 2 a dark side
How many listeners, I wonder, actually tuned in to Darkside as it went out on air on Radio 2, after…
The Venice Film Festival from your desk
Venice may be the oldest film festival in the world but it is still breaking new ground. This week film-lovers…
Home viewing
Venice may be the oldest film festival in the world but it is still breaking new ground. This week film-lovers…
Home viewing
Venice may be the oldest film festival in the world but it is still breaking new ground. This week film-lovers…
Tell me a story! Anne Fine, Amanda Mitichison, Terence Blacker and Keith Crossley-Holland on the joy - and importance - of reading aloud
Robert Gore-Langton on Oxford’s new Story Museum, which aims to put stories into young lives deprived of books
Tippett’s Midsummer Marriage is an opera of exuberant genius — but forget about the text
Whenever Michael Tippett’s first opera, The Midsummer Marriage, is revived, there is a chorus of voices, including mine, complaining that…
Crash-for-cash scam at the Donmar
High summer and it’s blockbuster time. The Donmar’s latest show is by the acclaimed Nick Payne, whose play about string…
The best satire at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Lloyd Evans finds politics everywhere: not only in the architecture but at the Fringe too
The problem with self-portraits: Ruth Borchard competition and Stranger reviewed
My wife says you can always tell a self-portrait by the quality of its self-regard. There’s something about the eyes…
A painful but brilliant film: Deborah Ross on Maisie’s betrayal
What Maisie Knew is an adaptation of the Henry James 1897 novel, updated to Manhattan in the now, and is…
Breaking Bad is so harrowing that for a while James Delingpole couldn’t watch it
One of Boy’s more annoying teenage rules of thumb is that, if Dad likes it, it must be crap. This…
Only Evan Davies can keep his guests in order
It must have sounded like such a great idea. To gather a group of thinkers, agitators, experts, intellectuals and media…
Martha Wainwright’s family affair
Martha Wainwright was keeping it in the family at the Union Chapel in Islington last week. Arcangelo, the singer-songwriter’s three-year-old…
A family affair
Martha Wainwright was keeping it in the family at the Union Chapel in Islington last week. Arcangelo, the singer-songwriter’s three-year-old…
A family affair
Martha Wainwright was keeping it in the family at the Union Chapel in Islington last week. Arcangelo, the singer-songwriter’s three-year-old…
The next Joyce Grenfell at the Edinburgh Fringe
Lloyd Evans samples the delights of the Fringe
Kuma would shine at any time of the year
Mid-August is a hopeless time for films; so hopeless, useless and bleak, if I don’t use three words when one…
Happy 80th birthday, Dame Janet Baker
Michael Kennedy salutes the mezzo-soprano Janet Baker,who celebrates her 80th birthday next week
State-sponsored cultural renaissance in revolutionary Mexico
Revolution shook Mexico between 1910 and 1920, but radical political change was not mirrored in the art of the period.…
A masterclass in stage presence from the Bolshoi
Jewels is everything a George Balanchine admirer could ask for. The sumptuous triptych, set to scores by Fauré, Stravinsky and…
Wagner at the Proms
It would be interesting to know why Tristan und Isolde was placed in the Proms programme in between Siegfried and…
Big School left me po-faced
How did our comedies become so sad? BBC1’s new sitcom Big School (Fridays) opened with a scene that would probably…
