Arts
Eight angry women
Women Talking, which has received Oscar nominations for best picture and adapted screenplay, is one of those films that, on…
Joking aside
Nick Hornby’s 2014 novel Funny Girl was both a heartfelt defence and a convincing example of what popular entertainment can…
Dynamo of the Florentine Renaissance
‘Donatello is the real hero of Florentine sculpture’, so Antony Gormley has proclaimed (hugely though he admires Michelangelo). It’s hard…
Wars of the roses
Matthew Wilson on the female medieval poet who rescued the flower’s reputation
Snatches of poignancy
Some decades ago when David Foster Wallace was proceeding to write the great confounding masterpiece of his generation Infinite Jest…
Still in the game
The Last of Us is widely being hailed as the best video game adaptation ever. Maybe. But it’s still a…
What a drag
Sound of the Underground is a drag show involving a handful of cross-dressers who spend the opening 15 minutes telling…
Screen time
A classical concert programme is like a set menu, and for this palate the most tempting orchestral offering in the…
Weight watchers
I can’t work out if Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser as a man weighing 600lb – that’s…
New life on old bones
Folk is the Schiphol of Scottish music. Eventually, every curious traveller passes through. From arena rockers to rappers, traditional music…
The only way is Sussex
In a national vote on which county’s landscape best embodies Englishness, every county would presumably vote for itself. But when…
‘I’ve ended up looking for pixies’
Revd Steve Morris talks to former Damned drummer Rat Scabies about his journey from punk rock to the Holy Grail
Rite of summer
It’s a strange period of relaxation, isn’t it? The post-Christmas and New Year period in the lead up to Australia…
Pure, heavenly escapism
The Unfriend is a smart new family comedy which opens on the sunlit deck of a cruise ship. Peter and…
Things fall apart
The great country singer George Jones was famed not just for his voice, but also for his drinking. Once, deprived…
Procession of eccentrics
For around a decade now, Grayson Perry has been making reliably thoughtful and entertaining documentary series about such things as…
With added Spice
‘We hope you enjoy the performance,’ announced the Tannoy before the lights went down for How did we get here?…
A crash course in all things Hispanic
‘Spain must be much more interesting than Liverpool,’ decided the 12-year-old Archer M. Huntington after buying a book on Spanish…
Cheesy feat
There can’t be anyone anywhere who hasn’t somehow been touched by a Steven Spielberg film. Some of us, for example,…
Mersey boy
Daniel Barenboim was supposed to perform with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this month. His recent health concerns made…
Listening to walls
Frank Lawton talks to Maurizio De Luca, former chief restorer at the Vatican, about the pitfalls of his profession
Cardinal virtues
George Pell is dead. Although he was 81, no one would have predicted it. The Cardinal who had had to…
Close to perfection
Watch on the Rhine is the curiously misleading title chosen by Lillian Hellman for a wartime family drama that became…
