Losing the plot
By now a genuinely radical way to turn a Victorian novel into a TV drama would be to take that…
The Turf
Mrs Oakley not being a turfista, she rarely joins me on a racecourse expedition. But before we had a dog…
Real life
‘What’s Bill W. got to do with it?’ said one of the committee members to the others as they discussed…
Callous to the core
Berlusconi: A New Musical, an excellent title, has opened at a new venue in south London, Southwark Playhouse Elephant. The…
High life
New York Is it poor little ol’ me imagining things, or are Americans becoming stupider by the minute? I’ve been…
From the sublime to the ridiculous
Godland is a film to see on the big screen: not just for its awesome, immersive cinematography, but because it…
Sweet nothings
Despite its widespread rating as one of his masterpieces, Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella is chock full of knots, gaps and stumbling…
Hounds of love
Walking on Hampstead Heath the December before Covid, I got caught up in a festive party of bichon frises dressed,…
A wilderness of mirrors
A young stage illusionist is recruited by the British secret service to extract a list of double agents concealed in a Russian magician’s stage prop
Brush up your Polari
A deranged anarchist plans to commit the crime of a century – with Polari, coded messages and a faulty typewriter contributing to the mayhem
Of microbes and men
Jonathan Kennedy explores the (mainly) devastating effects of bacteria in the past – and now, as they proliferate and our resistance diminishes
Jolly good company
There are vignettes of many Cambridge contemporaries – including the mysterious John Sackur, the inspiration for the invisible man in Donkeys’ Years
A reluctant unbeliever
He dismisses the philosophy of religion as sixth-formish point-scoring. But are his own ruminations any more profound?
Farewell to the Belle Époque
Edward VII’s reign is generally seen as a bright interlude between Victorian primness and the Great War – but there was considerable unrest on many fronts
Elizabethan enterprise
After the Amboyna massacre of 1623, the newly-fledged East India Company conceded the spice trade to the Dutch – to focus instead on the riches of India
Woman of mystery
A counterfactual history of modern America serves as a backdrop to the life of the enigmatic ‘X’ – a woman of multiple personae and impenetrable disguises
A nation in turmoil
Twentieth-century Spain was a violent, corrupt and volatile country – but that hardly made it an anomaly within Europe, says Sarah Watling
The crisis of liberal illiteracy
Former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is in hot water over this unwelcome bit of advice to President Donald…
The half-hearted ‘no’
In a half-hearted ‘no’ to The Voice, the Australian Liberal Party will support a legislated Voice, not a constitutional addendum. It’s…
