Traditional music at its most graceful, ingenious and jaw-dropping
I was talking recently to a rock guitarist about the amount of music an audience hears during a typical concert…
Ridiculously fun: Assassin’s Creed – Shadows reviewed
Grade: A Sometimes you want to admire the pluck and inventiveness of an indie developer. At other times, you just…
Why we’re flocking to matinees
The Starland Vocal Band were on to something. In their 1976 hit ‘Afternoon Delight’ they sang, in gruesomely twee harmony:…
I genuinely feared The End would never end
Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End is a ‘post-apocalyptic musical’ starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon that is being sold as a…
Heroes of the Norwegian resistance
Among many fascinating characters is Gunnar Waaler, a double agent who passed on intelligence to the British while posing as an enthusiastic member of Quisling’s police force
Deep mysteries: Twist, by Colum McCann, reviewed
An enigmatic captain tasked with repairing undersea communication cables disappears, and it’s up to his shipmate to discover why
Why, at 75, does Graydon Carter still feel the need to impress?
The humblebrag and name-dropping read more like a Craig Brown pastiche than the reminiscences of one of America’s most celebrated magazine editors
A meditation on the beauty of carbon
In fact carbon proves just a peg for a series of essays on the oneness of life, with references to ‘ancient teachings’ , ‘other ways of knowing’ and Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies
A novel in disguise: Theory & Practice, by Michelle de Kretser, reviewed
De Kretser’s witty, innovative take on the immigrant’s predicament tries ingeniously to persuade us that we are not reading fiction but documentary truth
Splendid revival of an unsurpassed production: Royal Opera’s Turandot reviewed
Puccini’s Turandot is back at the Royal Opera in the 40-year old production by Andrei Serban and… well, guilty pleasure…
