My B&B’s first celebrity guest
The TV talent show star was due to arrive at 5 p.m., and would be checking into our house long…
Whatever happened to Lionel Shriver?
For many readers, my absence from these pages may have gone unnoticed. Those few who’ve detected my disappearance might have…
Trams make a comeback
Earlier this month, the fortunate folk of Frankfurt were entertained by the 11th annual tram-drivers competition, with entries from 26…
The art inspired by the 1924 Paris Olympics was a very mixed bag
George Orwell took a dim view of competitive sport; he found the idea that ‘running, jumping and kicking a ball…
Committed performances – but who was the granny? Northern Ireland Opera’s Eugene Onegin reviewed
It’s a critic’s job to pick holes in the dafter aspects of opera productions, but in truth audiences are usually…
The show belongs to Jonathan Slinger and Ben Whishaw: Waiting for Godot reviewed
Waiting for Godot is a church service for suicidal unbelievers. Those who attend the rite on a regular basis find…
A wish-fulfilment romance: Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney, reviewed
Rooney’s fourth novel is another case of compare and contrast, with various pairings of anxious characters struggling through their twenties and thirties in picturesque Dublin
The hare-raising experience that changed my life
When Chloe Dalton adopts an abandoned new-born leveret, she soon finds her domestic routine radically altered
The Crimean War spelt the end of hymns to heroism and glory
Writing from opposite sides, Leo Tolstoy and William Howard Russell exposed the horror of conditions in a quagmire war which seemed to have no meaning
