The salty charms of Leigh-on-Sea
I have fallen in love with the c2c, a whisker of a train that is never delayed. It operates between…
The murder of a harmless Hampstead eccentric remains shrouded in mystery
‘True crime’ is a genre that claims superiority over imagination, speculation and fantasy. It makes a virtue of boredom and…
Enrico Fermi: nuclear physicist and childish practical joker
Enrico Fermi may not be a name as familiar as Einstein, Feynman or Hawking, but he was one of the…
How Raffles stole the jewel of Singapore
Accounts of the founding of the British Empire once echoed the pages of Boy’s Own, featuring visionaries, armed with a…
The subtle magic of Antony Gormley wraps the world
Martin Caiger-Smith’s huge monograph on Antony Gormley slides out of its slipcase appropriately enough like a block of cast iron.…
For Julian Barnes, the only story is a love story — and it’s inevitably sad
The story, as it emerges, feels both familiar and inevitable. A bored 19-year-old student, on his university holidays in mid-century…
Corruption, corruption, corruption: the full story of Miami vice
Sullying the glorious sunshine, sand and sea, Miami in the 1940s, when I first ventured there, was already overcrowded, vulgar…
Could the Odyssey have been the work of a woman after all?
Until recently, it seemed we were living in an age of Iliads. Since 2007, the ancient Homeric epic has been…
Was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle really away with the fairies?
When this survey of British fairydom arrived I turned to the chapter on Dorset to read about the little people…
Fairy tales for feisty girls
This being the centenary of women’s suffrage, there’s an unmissable feminist aspect to children’s books right now. Stories about strong…
Françoise Frankel: a spirited woman on the run in Occupied France
Françoise Frenkel was a Polish Jew, who adored books and spent much of her early life studying and working in…
Michelle de Kretser: the modern Australian Jane Austen
Twenty-odd pages into Michelle de Kretser’s The Life to Come, I pounded the table and bellowed an Australian-accented ‘fuck yeah!’…
A sumptuous feast of an exhibition: Charles I at the Royal Academy reviewed
Peter Paul Rubens thought highly of Charles I’s art collection. ‘When it comes to fine pictures by the hands of…
Royal Opera’s Tosca is a sloppy affair
One of the Royal Opera’s greatest virtues is the care it takes with its revivals, even those that are virtually…
Ainsley Harriott is still unaccountably amused by almost everything: Costa Del Celebrity reviewed
These days, when it comes to people who used to be on the telly, the answer to the classic newspaper…
Is forgetting a modern disease?
If you were to ask me by the end of the week what I had written about in this column…
Downsizing throws away its brilliant premise
Downsizing is a film with the most brilliant premise. What if, to save the planet, we were all made tiny?…
The secret to one of the nerdiest – and longest-running – quizzes around
Last year was a bit of a year for Radio 4 anniversaries; maybe most notably, Desert Island Discs celebrated 70…
ENB’s La Sylphide resembles a lock-in at a Royal Mile souvenir shop
Gurn loves Effy, Effy is engaged to James but James is away with the fairies: a recipe for love tragedy.…
R&B landfill: Craig David’s The Time is Now reviewed
Grade: D– You’re in a minicab, on the way home from some bash that was considerably less pleasing than you…
Unlike most Pinter plays, this one doesn’t bore or baffle: The Birthday Party reviewed
The Birthday Party is among Pinter’s earliest and strangest works. It deconstructs the conventions of a repertory thriller but doesn’t…
Taki: What I learned when I tried to join the CIA
Before his untimely death last year, David Tang had attended a Pug’s club luncheon with the proviso that no one…
Two documentaries have made me determined to visit America’s Deep South before I die
‘ESTA refused,’ said the email from the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security. Franklin Roosevelt once said…
Are vets the new transgenders?
The vet who is unhappy that I cracked a joke about vets has received the backing of the British Veterinary…
Bridge
As Janet said last week, the recent European Open trials made for compulsive viewing. Ten pairs took part; first and…
