Court chronicler for the coalition
There are two ways of being a political journalist. One is to stay on the outside and try to avoid…
…and murderous, child-molesting mystics
Though alcohol withdrawal is potentially fatal, booze has none of the media-confected glitz of heroin (imagine Will Self boasting of…
on not answering
I was late for dinner not because I wanted to exercise restraint but because I wanted to hear them calling…
A parable of human weakness
Fred Goodwin’s descent from golden boy of British banking to ‘pariah of the decade’ would be the stuff of tragedy…
Comfort in melancholy
Geoff Nicholson is the Maharajah of Melancholy. The quality was there in his novels, it was there in his non-fiction…
Wizards of Oz
Astonishingly, the last major survey show of Australian art in this country was mounted more than half-a-century ago. Then it…
Spaced out
Does London need another concert hall? Or, to put it more precisely, does London need another chamber music hall? The…
Brecht will be Brecht
Brecht in the West End? Quite a rarity. Jonathan Church’s zippy and stylish version of The Resistible Rise of Arturo…
Don Q lite
Superstar Carlos Acosta makes little or no reference to Don Quixote’s established history in his programme note about the genesis…
Sensational Strauss
It’s been a sensational week for opera in London, with a sensationally good performance of Strauss’s Elektra at the Royal…
Dirty work
People are generally saying Filth fully fulfils the promise of its title and is not for the faint of heart…
Counting the cost
The acclaimed television series Breaking Bad has ended. Steffen Huck on what it can teach us about economics
Myth mash-up
This week saw the final episode of possibly the greatest television series ever. Breaking Bad wasn’t made by the BBC,…
All change
This time round in the autumn shake-up of the schedules it’s Radios 2 and 3 who are on the frontline…
Pearl appeal
‘Women spend more money on their ears in pearl earrings than on any other part of their person.’ So said…
High life
New York The trouble with driving into the city is nostalgia. Manhattan Island looms into view and it still has…
Low life
I went to a Tibetan yoga all-day workshop. Tibetan yoga is very simple. It would be hilariously so if it…
Real life
Natural horsemanship has a lot to answer for. After a cross country event the other day, I rode back to…
Long life
There is at last good news to report on the poultry front. In the past, when I have mentioned my…
Bridge
I defy anyone, even Tolstoy were he still alive and were he to abandon War and Peace for a bridge…
Through glasses darkly
Grandmasters Pal Benko and Viktor Korchnoi have worn dark glasses to counter perceived hypnotic influence during games. In the recent…
