Gross receipts
Film-makers are increasingly turning to the violent, provocatively slow or viscerally repulsive.What is driving this rise in extreme cinema? asks Francesca Steele
The inside story
On Blueberry Hill sounds like a musical but it’s a sombre prison drama set in Ireland. Two bunkbeds. Above, an…
A toast to Italy’s health
We live in a world where yesterday’s inconceivable becomes today’s commonplace, but even so. I never thought that the day…
A perfect antidote
Anyone familiar with Joe Hill-Gibbins’s work will brace instinctively when the curtain goes up on his new Figaro. He’s the…
The Green Book
I pictured the Green Book (which Rishi Sunak has been urged to tear up) as a matt card-bound thing like…
Bigamists, lunatics and adventurers
The world of 19th-century British music was raucous, but are there any masterpieces waiting to be rediscovered? wonders Richard Bratby
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Q. We recently welcomed an 18-year-old au pair into our young family, and I’m pleased that she has settled in…
The thrill of apocalypse
Something about the word ‘bomb’ has always thrilled me, and I know why. No school today. In the 1950s we…
When did publishers become so spineless?
Even amid plague, economic apocalypse, and the cancellation of 2020, dumb stuff keeps happening. Besides, loads of us will now…
The Spectator’s Notes
When we left this Britain on Thursday last week, life was almost as usual. Shops and restaurants were open. The…
Quarantine with our new puppy will send me barking
When the news leaked at the weekend that the government was considering telling those aged 70 and over to self-quarantine…
Barometer
Taking off Who came up with the concept of ‘helicopter money’? — The term is derived from an essay in…
A common cure
For the Chancellor to produce an emergency bailout package just six days after delivering his Budget is an extraordinary state…
Comedian’s Notebook
‘Cancelled’ is quite a buzzword of our times, isn’t it? Up until about ten days ago, it referred mainly to…
Letters
British science Sir: Dr Fink is right that the UK bats well above its weight through curiosity-driven research (‘Back to…
Pub lockdowns
Pubs are fascinating at the moment. On the day that the Prime Minister advised us not to attend them, I…
Difficult women
The director of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, talks to Sarah Ditum about her new biopic of Marie Curie, exile from Iran and her fears for the future of democracy
The abbey habit
The world may be going to hell in a handcart but some things remain reassuringly unchanged: Julian Fellowes period dramas…
The great pretenders
The accepted line about Bryan Ferry is that his is one of the greatest reinventions in English pop culture: Peter…
Mad, bad and dangerous
Brian De Palma brings his film director’s eye to Are Snakes Necessary? (Hard Case, £16.99), written in collaboration with the…
Straight to number one
Pop music has always been, to those who love it, to some degree tribal or factional; fans like to carve…
