Arts
Hot stuff
Hector Berlioz dismissed Handel as ‘that tub of pork and beer’ but it wasn’t always like that. Picture a younger,…
Same old story
Back in 1990, Grandpa from The Simpsons wrote a letter of protest to TV-makers. ‘I am disgusted with the way…
Sonic youth
Years ago, I asked Robert Plant what he felt about the world’s love of ‘Stairway to Heaven’. He said he…
Cumbersome muddle
Rupert Goold’s new show, Women, Beware the Devil, has great costumes, sumptuous sets and an intriguing chessboard stage like a…
I may destroy you
One day in October 1966 I came home from school and found a large man stripped to the waist, attacking…
I’ll never trust the Spanish again
Champions is an underdog sports movie starring Woody Harrelson as a baseball coach forced to take on a team with…
Monumental mistakes
Ukraine must stop demolishing its public statues, says Yevheniia Moliar
Sea fever
In March 1675 the Keeper of His Majesty’s Lodgings at Greenwich received an order for ‘Three pairs of shutters for…
An ecstatic torment of self-delight
What a week of music. On Thursday night we listened to the Chamber Philharmonia Cologne do Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at…
Dated and dreadful
Careful what you wish for. There can be no definitive way to stage an opera, and it’s the critic’s duty…
The art of the deal
Winner’s Curse is a hybrid drama by Dan Patterson and Daniel Taub which opens as a lecture by a fictional…
Barbarous and mundane
The debate sparked by Josh Baker’s BBC podcast on Shamima Begum, and her teenage flight to join Isis, has divided…
TikTok pop star
Even before albums became bloated, thanks to the largesse offered by CDs and streaming, most contained filler: those so-so songs…
The boys of summer
The Belgian film Close, written and directed by Lukas Dhont, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes and is up…
Sporting greats
My new favourite tennis player, just ahead of Novak Djokovic, is Nick Kyrgios. Up until recently I’d barely heard of…
Haunted habitats
You enter through the gift shop. Mike Nelson has turned the Hayward Gallery upside down and back to front for…
Lost worlds
Daisy Dunn on the mysterious Minoans
Shy old charmer
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra kicks off its 2023 season with a sumptuously ambitious gala concert on the evening of Friday…
Three hours of tripe
Standing at the Sky’s Edge is an ode to a monstrous carbuncle. The atrocity in question is a concrete gulag,…
Calling time
There’s a distinct and rather cunning whiff of cakeism about the new documentary series Parole. On the one hand, it…
The girls, the gays and the theys
The other week I saw a T-shirt bearing the caption ‘For the girls, the gays and the theys’. And if…
Swimming against the tide
If you want to be taken seriously as a contemporary painter, paint big. ‘Blotter’, the picture that won the 34-year-old…
Stranger things
Christopher Howse on the transformative power of folk costume
Aristocratic panache
Last week saw the streaming of the sixth and final episode of Happy Valley, the Yorkshire policier with the great…
