Winging it
‘Audience Choice’ was the promise at the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Sunday matinee Prom, and come on – who could resist…
Ireland’s most polite bank robber
There should really be a special word for it: that vicarious fragility you feel when hearing of a minor decision…
Going to the dogs
Based on the poster showing two cute dogs – a border terrier and a Boston terrier – I had assumed…
Sister act
The Mitfords is a superb one-woman show by Emma Wilkinson Wright who focuses her attention on Unity, Diana and Jessica.…
Riding high
In March 1913 two horse painters met at the Lyceum Club to discuss the establishment of a Society of Animal…
Uneasy listening
I have always been fascinated by artists who bounce between tonal extremes when performing, particularly the ones who serve their…
All that remains
Barnaby Rogerson on how his collaboration with a great photographer has brought the ancient world very close
Real life
‘What a worry the Ulez must be for you both,’ said a friend with a nod to the pick-up truck…
High life
On board Aello She was built in 1921, a beautiful wooden ketch that is as graceful to look at…
Magic tricks
Five short stories with male narrators – including a seahorse and a vampire – revolve around masculinity’s contradictory demands and the wish to belong
Tangled threads
The painted-over figure of Baudelaire’s muse eventually emerging from Courbet’s great canvas provides one of many haunting images in this complex novel
A burning passion
Clive Oppenheimer feels a deep kinship with the many volcanoes he has studied. When he is airlifted from Mount Erebus, he suffers ‘the heartache of leaving a lover’
Feasts and fabrications
Japan’s ramen ‘tradition’ was created in 1958 to use up surplus imported flour, while Pizza Margherita’s specious royal connection helped boost Naples’s tourist trade
Down in the woods today
With rewilding projects multiplying worldwide, brown, black and grizzly bears are making a bold comeback. But how much bear can we bear?
Dickens’s magic lantern
Admirers of the novels have always enjoyed identifying their settings where possible, but Dickens’s old haunts are now mainly glimpsed in street names or blue plaques
A trail of dirty money
In 2015, a dedicated DEA agent pursues a Mafia capo involved in a vast cocaine shipment, a Hezbollah militia leader and an elaborate Middle Eastern arms-trafficking ring
To have and to hold
Lauren Bacall was 25 years younger than Humphrey Bogart. Unlike his previous wives, she stayed – though Roger Lewis finds something creepy about their relationship
Voting ‘Yes’ for ‘designated’ jobs
On the bus in Drummoyne, Sydney, an obvious granddad with his cherubic grandson, who cheerfully ignores all worried cautions in…
Watch: hapless Humza refuses to back the Lionesses
Oh dear. Hapless Humza Yousaf has tripped up again. The flailing First Minister of Scotland was today asked by Radio…
Make vaccines safe again (and manufacturers liable)
Will making manufacturers liable for their products lift standards? During the pandemic, it is my belief that powerful international organisations…
Nicolas Sarkozy’s Russia intervention is a disgrace
Team Putin has this week gained a new and vaguely prominent supporter: Nicolas Sarkozy, the disgraced former President of France.…
Joe Biden isn’t reactive enough to be president
At tragic moments, like the deadly fires in Hawaii, our nation expects the president to speak to all of us…
