Arts
La de da
Everyone who has read the work of the late great Thomas Bernhard, the Austrian novelist forever spitting his fellow Austrians…
Tracy Letts’s magic touch
Tracy Letts’s Mary Page Marlowe is a biographical portrait of an emotionally damaged mother struggling with romantic and family problems.…
Is there anything menopausal women can’t do?
Is there anything menopausal women can’t do (on television)? Last Sunday, as a couple of them were still working on…
Very pretty and pretty gruesome: Ballad of a Small Player reviewed
Ballad of a Small Player opens with Lord Doyle, played by Colin Farrell, hiding from security in his trashed casino…
In defence of Mick Hucknall
Before Simply Red came on stage at the Greenwich peninsula’s enormodome, the screens showed a clip of a very young…
Handel was derided in his own time – particularly by us, for which belated apologies
Here’s a patriotic thought for you: baroque opera, as we now know it, was made in Britain. Sure, there are…
A remarkable insight into Le Carré’s working methods
When Richard Ovenden of the Bodleian Library wrote to John le Carré asking if the writer would leave it his…
Condoms in 18th-century painting
Waldemar Januszczak and Bendor Grosvenor’s art podcast has returned after nearly five years. It is, says Januszczak, ‘the podcast they…
The dying art of costume design
At the receptionist’s desk in Cosprop’s studio and costume warehouse, a former Kwik Fit garage, the sloping bleakness of Holloway…
The rustle of underwear
If ever there was gorgeous chocolate-box theatre it’s this magnificently staged production of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca directed by Anne-Louise…
Excruciating: Netflix’s House of Guinness reviewed
First the surprising news: not a single one of the four Guinness siblings in 1868 Dublin is black; and only…
The death of cinéma vérité
Oh, how we lived. Or, how we thought we lived. Despite the numerous criticisms levelled at the BBC on a…
An album that proves Martinu was one of the great quartet composers
Grade: A Bohuslav Martinu was a patchy composer; worse, he was also a prolific one, meaning that if you dip…
Has Taylor Swift been reading The Spectator?
The Last Dinner Party received quite the critical backlash when they arrived amid much fanfare in 2023. Posh, precocious and…
The mind-bendingly creative works of Louis Couperin
The French lutenist Charles Fleury, Sieur de Blancrocher, is one of those unfortunate historical figures who are chiefly remembered because…
What does it feel like to perform the same show 355 times in one year?
I have my routine down to a science. At 6.59, I’m sitting in the stairwell, typing on my laptop or…
Stephen Fry is the perfect Lady Bracknell
Hamlet at the National opens like a John Lewis Christmas advert. Elegant celebrations are in progress. The stage is full…
This museum is a lesson for all curators
The National Railway Museum is 50 years old, and it’s come over all literary. A quote from Howards End stands…
I could watch Balanchine’s Theme and Variations on repeat
R:Evolution is a pun, presumably intended to suggest that tradition is not static and the obvious truth that change always…
Save art history!
A few weeks ago I went along to a lecture on the Welsh artist, poet and soldier David Jones. Kenneth…
Looming horror of the heart
What are we to make of dramatic classics and classics of music and dance? That very distinguished actor Bille Brown…
A dazzling musical celebration of the 1970s
Clarkston is an American-backed production featuring a Netflix star, Joe Locke. He plays a young graduate with a terminal illness,…
The best Turner Prize in years
So, the Turner Prize: where do we start? It’s Britain’s most prestigious art award, one that used to mean something…
Every line in the new Alan Partridge is perfect
By now, viewers of TV thrillers are no strangers to a baffling prologue – but this week brought a particularly…
The art of dining
Ivan Day pulls out an old Habsburg cookbook from his library. The 300-year-old volume is so thick it’s almost a…
