Arts
Bad blood
In the 1990s, the BBC had a popular flat-share comedy, Men Behaving Badly, about a pair of giggling bachelors who…
Comrades in arms
There were times during last Friday’s First Night of the Proms when it felt as if we’d been transported back…
Catching the zeitgeist
‘Photography has arrived at a point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and…
Feminist phooey
Finally, the Barbie film is here, for which we must be thankful, as the tsunami of pre-publicity meant you probably…
Kundera’s last laugh
So now Milan Kundera is gone at the age of 94. It’s easy to forget the tremendous weight, the sheer…
How to build the bomb
Graham Greene used to say that none of the great literary works he had read as an adult had the…
Too posh for the cosh
In 2014, Ben Macintyre presented a BBC2 documentary based on his book A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the…
Matters of life and death
Seven years ago, I asked Bruce Springsteen what he meant when he talked of the covenant between himself and his…
A gasp and a guffaw
Blockbuster action movies are designed to stun the audience into submissive acceptance. Complexity, humanity, emotion and beauty are reduced to…
Omission accomplished
Beneatha’s Place, set in the 1950s, follows a black couple who encounter racial prejudice when they move to a predominately…
The great pretenders
In 1998 curators at the Courtauld Institute received an anonymous phone call informing them that 11 drawings in their collection…
Testament of cliché
‘Ring out your bells for me, ivory keys! Weave out your spell for me, orchestra please!’ It’s lush stuff, the…
Hot air
Can anything serious come from podcasts, asks Sam Kriss
Keeping Ralph on his toes
It would have been interesting to hear Barrie Kosky and Kip Williams talk about the theatre on Tuesday night. In…
Plane speaking
Idris Elba would have made a perfect James Bond. Not the James Bond that we knew and loved when he…
More cuddly than cutting
Nothing demonstrates the inanity of profanity like an undercooked comedy. The famous Spitting Image puppets have returned in a political…
Dream team
Most artists begin an arena show with a bang: emerging from the floor, the gods, on a hoist, everything short…
Of mice and men
I’m listening to John Cleese talking to Justin Welby in the new series of The Archbishop Interviews when the thought…
Breaking the sound barrier
You’d have to have a heart of stone to not be moved by Name Me Lawand. It’s a documentary about…
Featherweight fun
‘Goodness Triumphant’ is the subtitle of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and you’d better believe he delivers. It’s the sweetest thing imaginable;…
Child’s play
One of the annoying things about too many contemporary museums is that, having ditched old-fashioned closely typed descriptive labels and…
Kabuki nights
Louise Levene on the Japanese art form you can now watch at home
An icy restraint
The world has seemed like a procession of deaths lately. Generally, of those in old age. Of all of them,…
Business as usual
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the fifth and final film in the franchise so it’s Harrison Ford’s…
A tale of two fortunes
Here’s a mystery for you. Why were Spoon, one of the most dynamic, sharpest rock bands in the world, playing…
