Might LSD be good for you?
When Peregrine Worsthorne was on Desert Island Discs in 1992, he chose as his luxury item a lifetime supply of…
The Siege of Acre: a monstrous blot on the Third Crusade
Lionheart! Saladin! Massacre! There is no shortage of larger-than-life characters and drama in the epic, two-year siege of Acre, the…
Love me or go to hell – Tchaikovsky’s message to his public
This is a wonderful and moving book of correspondence and biographical documents promising one Tchaikovsky in its subtitle and introduction,…
Fried squid, stale sweat and sensuality in Ian Buruma’s Tokyo
In 1975, the 24-year-old Ian Buruma (now an award-winning essayist and historian, and the editor of the New York Review…
The most shocking sight in ancient Greece: men in trousers
In his robust new biography of Alcibiades, David Stuttard describes how the mercurial Greek general shocked his contemporaries by adopting…
Hernando Columbus deserves to be as famous as his father, Christopher
On 9 May 1502, a young Spaniard joined the fleet setting sail for the newly discovered Americas. The boy, Hernando,…
The Wallis Simpson I knew – by Nicky Haslam
One would have thought this particular can of worms might, after nearly 80 years, be well past its sell-by date.…
We still live in the age of dinosaurs
The age of dinosaurs is a perennial favourite on any time traveller’s wishlist. Even though we’re technically still in it…
I want Lorrie Moore to be my BFF
Is there anything more depressing than the prospect of reading a writer’s collected essays, journalism and occasional pieces? Most of…
The Chernobyl catastrophe was a foregone conclusion
In the early days of the atomic age, Soviet students debated whether it was nobler to become a physicist or…
Northern, posh and Brummie are the only accents we recognise
Jacob Rees-Mogg and Rab C. Nesbitt excepted, it has become quite difficult to infer much from people’s appearance. In these…
Fifty-one hours in Dr Johnson’s rumbustious company
When a man is tired of Samuel Johnson, he’s tired of life. James Boswell intended his biography of Dr Johnson,…
From buck dancing to Happy Feet: a short history of tap
Fire up YouTube on the iPad, tap in ‘tap’, then wave goodbye to the rest of your day: clip after…
Belly, the band responsible for one of my favourite 90s songs, is back
Grade: B+ One of my favourite songs from the 1990s was about a Chinese adulteress forced to walk around town…
Why can’t podcasts be more like Radio 4?
Now here’s a series that would make a brilliant podcast but is also classic Radio 4 — they don’t have…
Animals, tourists and raptors: the hazards of being a plein-air artist
A conservator at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum was recently astonished to find a tiny grasshopper stuck in the paint of…
Which now unbearable TV show has been ruined for ever by political correctness?
Twenty years after it first appeared, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? is back for a brief, week-long anniversary run…
Flawed but often hilarious new play: Nine Night at the Dorfman Theatre reviewed
Nine Night refers to a Jamaican custom that obliges bereaved families to party non-stop for more than a week following…
Dudamel’s Amériques made The Rite of Spring sound like Einaudi
Apparently it’s called ‘expectation management’. Pollux, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s new work for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, takes its name from…
Convoluted, woeful mishmash with no central story: How to Talk to Girls at Parties reviewed
How to Talk to Girls at Parties is set in the 1970s and has punk as the backdrop and an…
Did Jared Kushner punish Qatar because of a building on Fifth Avenue?
New York Talk about high life this is not. I smelled a rat long ago, but then the scent got…
The critics may have liked The Death of Stalin but the French certainly don’t
Should I or shouldn’t I go and see The Death of Stalin, showing at the French village cinema last Sunday…
The women who are turning horses into dogs
The first time I saw a woman leading a horse down the lane on a lead, both she and it…
There is no escaping the O’Brien factor
I suppose, given the income and the opportunity to indulge, you could eventually tire of even Meursault, Mauritius and Mrs…
Bridge
This year’s Schapiro Spring Foursomes, England’s best tournament by a mile, wasn’t held in the usual Stratford-upon-Avon venue but in…
