Arts
The rise of psychedelia
On YouTube – and I urge you to look it up – there is a magnificent piece of footage from…
This Othello is almost flawless
Othello directed by Tom Morris opens with a stately display of scarlet costumes and gilded doorways arranged against a backdrop…
Was Queen Victoria’s doctor the first psychoanalyst?
Queen Victoria began to experience dark visions after giving birth to her second child. Concerned that she might have inherited…
Mrs Göring is far too sympathetic: Nuremberg reviewed
Nuremberg is one of those films that falls short on everything it wants to be and everything it could be.…
In defence of Katie Mitchell
Janacek’s The Makropulos Case is a weird and very wonderful opera, but its basic plot isn’t hard to follow. Still,…
This exhibition made my companion gasp
Numerous research academics have contributed to this highly cogent show celebrating the craftspeople of Ancient Egypt. My pre-teen companion, though…
Labour’s war on heritage
Britain’s heritage is slowly going up in smoke. Medlock Mill was Manchester’s oldest standing textile mill until it burnt down…
Bleak but gripping: Channel 4’s Trespasses reviewed
Yeats famously summarised Ireland in the four words, ‘Great hatred, little room’. But, as Louise Kennedy’s 2022 debut novel Trespasses…
The brilliance of her technique
It’s strange the way comedy lives. A legion of the young continue to listen to Pete and Dud or watch…
One of the best plays about the 1980s ever staged
Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty has been turned into a stage show directed by Michael Grandage. We’re in the…
What a joy La Fille mal gardée is
The winter nights may be drawing in and everyone is down with stinking colds as the civilised world inexorably disintegrates,…
Film and TV are run by satanists
I once came up with a brilliant idea for a children’s Sunday-evening TV series. It would follow the adventures of…
Violin concertos from two Broadway legends
Grade: B+ The 20th century, eh? What a lark that was. Vladimir Dukelsky studied in Kiev under Glière and looked…
Del Toro’s Frankenstein offers nothing new
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac (Baron Victor Frankenstein) and Jacob Elordi (‘the creature’) and retells the basics of…
My unofficial music teacher
In the early 1970s my father moved offices and I was plucked out of my cosy prep school in Surrey…
The Two Roberts drank, danced, fought – but how good was their art?
The Two Roberts, Robert MacBryde (1913-66) and Robert Colquhoun (1914-62), are figures of a lost British bohemia. Both born in…
Lice combs, vaginal syringes and cesspits: at home in 17th century Holland
The room is dark, the lighting deliberately low. At its centre stands a solitary object: a yellow and green earthenware…
The melancholy genius of Joseph Wright of Derby
If you lived in the 1760s and were affluent enough – and curious enough – science could be a family…
The necessity of love
Everyone has been preoccupied with television and the way in the wake of Covid we have seen the streamers (and…
Let’s face it, Sleeping Beauty is a bit of a bore
Let’s face it, The Sleeping Beauty runs the high risk of being a bit of a bore. A wonderfully inventive…
Dimes Square on screen
I can’t watch films anymore without looking at my phone. If I watch a film on my laptop, I’ll be…
Perfection: Hampstead Theatre’s The Assembled Parties reviewed
The Assembled Parties, by Richard Greenberg, is a rich, warm family comedy that received three Tony nominations in 2013 following…
There is little sadder than the death of a language
The last Yana-speaker in the world died in 1916. When Ishi was born, the Yana were still a small but…
Peak wackiness: Lanthimos’s Bugonia reviewed
Bugonia is the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, The Lobster, Poor Things) and it’s about a conspiracy theorist…
