Arts
Why orchestras are sounding better than ever under social-distancing
Our college choirmaster had a trick that he liked to deploy when he sensed that we were phoning it in.…
Horrifyingly beautiful – but I will never watch it again: Painted Bird review
The Painted Bird opens with a young boy (Jewish) running through a forest and clutching his pet ferret. He is…
Books shop
When the Irish comedian Dylan Moran was interviewed on ABC radio last year as a precursor to his (now presumably…
Angus Cerini
No longer confined to the digital space, the Australian Chamber Orchestra is returning to the platform in City Recital Hall…
Battle honours
In the cabinet war rooms in Whitehall in London, there is a chart which registers Atlantic convoys en route from…
Defund theatres – and give the money to gardeners and bingo halls
Why does the state fund theatres and not gardening and bingo, asks Lloyd Evans
Half the fun of the animation – and much longer: Mulan reviewed
Mulan is Disney’s latest live-action remake, coming in at 120 minutes, compared with the 1998 animation, which ran to 80.…
Imagine being married to Stanley Spencer
It sometimes rains in Cookham. It rained all day when I visited the Stanley Spencer Gallery to see the exhibition…
The death of the Southbank Centre
The roots of the Southbank Centre’s current crisis stretch back to before the pandemic, says Oliver Basciano
Couldn't the BBC have filled at least some of the seats? First night of the Proms reviewed
The Royal Albert Hall, as Douglas Adams never wrote, is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely,…
A sadistic delight: World’s Toughest Race – Eco-Challenge Fiji reviewed
Few things better capture the crazed cognitive dissonance of our age than this: that while we cower behind masks for…
Churchill
When I first arrived in Australia quarter of a century ago one of the many kind invitations I received was…
Paul Newton
Things are starting to happen culturally, at least outside of Victoria. Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre is rehearsing a play to…
A James Bond film with added physics no one understands: Tenet reviewed
Tenet is the latest high-concept, time-bending blockbuster from Christopher Nolan and it’s the film that (unofficially) reopens cinemas in the…
Spiky, sticky, silly: interviewing Van Morrison
Q: ‘How would you define transcendence?’ A: ‘Well, how would you define it?’ I interviewed Van Morrison last year. (I’m…
A convincing and hair-raising depiction of showbiz at its most luridly weird: I Hate Suzie reviewed
Fifteen minutes into the first episode of I Hate Suzie, main character Suzie Pickles was doing a photoshoot in her…
The art of street furniture
On his lockdown rambles, Christopher Howse finds beauty and solace in London’s street furniture
A podcast about the literary canon that actually deepens your knowledge (sort of)
While most of life’s pleasures can be shared, reading is lonely. It’s more than possible for six friends to enjoy…
Edinburgh Festival is in ruins – but there's one gem amid the rubble
The virus has broken Edinburgh. The shattered remnants of the festival are visible on the internet. Here’s what happened. The…
Enter the parallel universe that is the Lucerne Festival
There wasn’t going to be a Lucerne Festival this year. The annual month-long squillion-dollar international beano got cancelled, along with…
Culture wars
Forming groups to kill other groups over territory, resources or belief is so much a part of the human condition…
Zadie Smith
She had a heady start to her writing career. The rights to her first novel were the subject of a…
Unique and disturbing: Donmar Warehouse's Blindness reviewed
Okay, I admit it. I have a girl crush on Juliet Stevenson. Ever since I first saw her in the…
The original Edinburgh Festival
James Sadler’s 1815 balloon flight, a Fringe first, heralded the greatest musical extravaganza that Scotland had ever seen, says John D. Halliday
We're wrong to think the impressionists were chocolate boxy
One Sunday evening in the autumn of 1888 Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin went for a walk. They headed…
