Arts
Grace and lucidity
The news of Carmen Callil’s death last week shocked the literary world even though it was expected. She made an…
But what about the plot?
You wouldn’t like Tamerlano when he’s angry. ‘My heart seethes with rage,’ he sings, in Act III of Handel’s opera…
One long moan of woe
I was moved and shaken by Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern when I first saw it in 2017. In richly visualised…
Something special
Bob Dylan has always toyed with audiences. He plays what he wants, how he wants, letting his mood dictate tempo…
Sick at heart
The latest film from Ruben Ostlund received an eight-minute standing ovation after its screening in Cannes and also won the…
Clown or vicar – who cares?
London has a brand-new theatre – yet again. Last summer, a cabaret venue opened in the Haymarket for the first…
Dog days of the USSR
Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone – even the title makes you want to scream – is Adam Curtis’s Metal Machine Music: the…
Something special
A reliable metric for measuring pop success is hard to find these days, as Michael Hann noted in these pages…
The artist’s artist
Pity the poor curators of major exhibitions struggling to find fresh takes on famous masters. The curators of Tate Modern’s…
Fight club
Not all video games are war games but those that are do something deeply unpleasant to our brains, says Sam Kriss
One night in a Gentlemen’s Club
How fascinating it is to see that Australia’s Brendan Cowell is playing John Proctor in the new English National Theatre…
Flesh and fisticuffs
Being of a squeamish sensibility and prejudiced by a low opinion of recent BBC drama, I can claim only a…
Motivated by love
At the start of Somewhere Boy, an 18-year-old boy is rescued from an isolated house by his aunt Sue following…
Full marks for the bottom
My Policemanis a forbidden love drama starring both Harry Styles – whose bid for movie stardom continues apace – and…
Away with all the flesh
Do we need another Lucian Freud exhibition? After years of exposure to his paintings of naked bodies posed like casualties…
Fall from grace
Robert Gore-Langton explores the remarkable life of televangelist Tammy Faye, and its descent into chaos
Blasts from the past
Oh, nostalgia – so much better than it used to be! You’d never have guessed pop music was once the…
Miniature rite of spring
Imagine a folk dance without music. Actually, you don’t have to: poke about on YouTube and you’ll find footage from…
Three roled into one
Good, starring David Tennant, needs more dosh spent on it. The former Doctor Who plays John, a literary academic living…
Swerves of warmth and coolness
One of the great things about the Australian Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet is that the kids love it. Even the…
Weird and wonderful
The life of Emily Brontë is an enduring object of fascination. So small, the life, so sparse, so limited. Yet…
Anthem for end times
It was so dark, my friend noted, you could have had sex or done a Hitler salute. No stage lights,…
Fallen idols
The definition of ‘pop star’ in the Collins English Dictionary is unambiguous: ‘A famous singer or musician who performs pop…
The lying game
I shied away from conspiracy stuff during the Trump era. Not the theories themselves, but the huge volume of content…
Senior moment
We men all think we’ve still got it, even when we’re well past 50 and young women look straight through…
