A cross between Peter Rabbit and Queen Victoria: Bliss: The Composer Conducts reviewed
Grade: A– There’s a classic trajectory for British composers: a five-decade evolution from Angry Young Man to Pillar of the…
Letters: Let the King choose the Archbishop of Canterbury
Supreme idea Sir: My colleague Fergus Butler-Gallie is right about the deficiencies of the Church of England’s system for filling…
The joys of mudlarking
Imagine a London of the distant future. A mudlark combs through the Thames foreshore, looking for relics of the past.…
A latter-day exercise in Dada: Nature Theater of Oklahoma reviewed
What to make of the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, which this week made its British debut at the Queen Elizabeth…
Labour is risking the future of racing
The only political party with a serious chance of winning office I will ever vote for again is the one…
Elizabeth Harrower – the greatest Australian writer you’ve never heard of
The friend of Patrick White and Christina Stead abruptly withdrew her fifth novel in 1971 and gave up writing altogether – only now to be hailed as ‘one of the great novelists of Sydney’
The force of Typhoon Tyson, Sydney, 1954
After receiving a bouncer from Ray Lindwall that left him temporarily unconscious, England’s fast bowler Frank Tyson swore vengeance and annihilated the Australian team – to retain the Ashes
A theatrical one-woman show: Billy Eilish at the OVO Hydro, Glasgow reviewed
Like spider plants and exotic cats, certain artists are best suited to the great indoors. Lana Del Rey, for instance,…
Maoist China in microcosm: Old Kiln, by Jia Pingwa, reviewed
Smouldering resentment flares to self-destructive violence in a remote village as the Cultural Revolution serves as a pretext for vengeance and exploitation
Hauntingly re-readable: Autocorrect, by Etgar Keret, reviewed
Whether sci-fi vignettes, thought experiments, parables or fables, these tales of parallel universes and artificial realities are suffused by a pervasive melancholy
The shocking state of perinatal care in Britain
Theo Clarke gathers heartbreaking instances of infant mortality, medical malpractice and severe post-partum trauma in the nation’s maternity wards
Eat your way round Paris
Moving anticlockwise through the coil of arrondissements, Chris Newens samples the range of cuisines on offer and examines their histories
The wit and beauty of bank notes
William Shakespeare was the first to feature, in 1970. Alan Turing was most recent, in 2021. But the Bank of…
Definitely the film of the week: Four Letters of Love reviewed
In the brief lull between last week’s summer blockbuster (Superman) and next week’s (Fantastic Four) you may wish to catch…
The Alfred Hitchcock of British painting
Carel Weight, the inimitable painter of London life and landscape, was my godfather. I remember a clownish-faced elderly man with…
Spectator Competition: Some like it hot
For Competition 3408 you were invited to write poems about heatwaves. This comp was inspired by the weather! In the…
