Arts
Femmes fatales
Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her…
Independence blues
Referendum fever reaches Stratford East. Spoiling, by John McCann, takes us into the corridors of power in Holyrood shortly after…
Pride and prejudice
1984 and all that. Which side were you on? The side of Margaret Thatcher, her hairdo and person standing rigid…
Toenails and tadpoles
‘I don’t know what I think,’ says Lenny Henry, echoing what many of us who were listening were probably also…
Linked in
For some of us, the biggest TV question of recent weeks hasn’t been how Newsnight is doing without Jeremy Paxman,…
Culture Buff
The village of Bibbenluke sits at the point where the Monaro Highway crosses the Bombala River. It’s beautiful, remote, and…
Power of one
As everybody in the world except me seems to have seen Kate Bush’s live shows — against all apparent arithmetical…
Power of one
As everybody in the world except me seems to have seen Kate Bush’s live shows — against all apparent arithmetical…
The treasures of Turin
Laura Gascoigne enjoys a grand tour of Italy’s former capital city
Bloomsbury bores
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) claimed that nothing has really happened until it has been recorded, so this new exhibition at the…
Buried treasure
One might have expected the streets of Edinburgh, especially at festival time, to bear some evidence of the political struggle…
Bad night for Berlioz
I wonder whether grand opéra really takes war as seriously as this year’s Edinburgh Festival wanted it to. These vast…
Brain drain
Before I Go To Sleep is Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of S.J. Watson’s bestselling thriller of 2011, but whereas the book…
Bent bureaucrats and bakers
Eye of a Needle, by newcomer Chris MacDonald, looks at homosexuality and asylum. Gays from the Third World, who’ve suppressed…
Sight and sound
A strange coincidence on Saturday night to come back from the cinema, having seen a film about a woman fighting…
Journey’s end
Is it just me or are almost all TV documentaries completely unwatchable these days? I remember when I first started…
Nursing on the front line
It’s the tub of bright red geraniums at the heart of the picture that startles. How did anyone have time…
Culture Buff
After a red-carpeted fanfare the Emmy Awards were announced last week in LA. There is no hope for me; my…
Nursing on the front line
It’s the tub of bright red geraniums at the heart of the picture that startles. How did anyone have time…
Nursing on the front line
It’s the tub of bright red geraniums at the heart of the picture that startles. How did anyone have time…
Buried treasure
One might have expected the streets of Edinburgh, especially at festival time, to bear some evidence of the political struggle…
Buried treasure
One might have expected the streets of Edinburgh, especially at festival time, to bear some evidence of the political struggle…
The enigma of Werner Herzog
William Cook watches a new box set from the BFI that reveals the full extent of the German director’s genius – and insanity
Small is not beautiful
Neither OperaUpClose’s La traviata nor Finborough Theatre’s production of Boughton’s The Immortal Hour quite cut it
Still crazy after all these years
It says something about Kate Bush’s standing in the music world that, perhaps uniquely in the history of long-awaited live…
