Books
The pleasures and perils of talking about art on the radio
‘I like not knowing why I like it,’ declared Fiona Shaw, the actress, about Georgia O’Keeffe’s extraordinary blast of colour,…
What really happened at Troy?
Heinrich Schliemann had always hoped he’d find Homer’s Troy. Although he had no archaeological background to speak of, he did…
How Nova revolutionised women’s magazines
Batsford has just brought out a huge tome on Nova — ‘one of the most influential magazines in history’ —…
God awful: BBC1’s His Dark materials reviewed
‘Here’s your new Sunday night obsession…’ the BBC announcer purred, overintoned and mini-orgasmed, like she was doing an audition for…
‘The only place I can’t get my plays on is Britain’: Sir Peter Brook interviewed
‘Everyone of us knows we deserve to be punished,’ says the frail old man before me in a hotel café.…
The beauty of Soviet anti-religious propaganda
Deep in the guts of Russian library stacks exists what remains — little acknowledged or discussed — of a dead…
Sebastiao Salgado – master of monochrome, chronicler of the depths of human barbarity
Occasionally, we encounter an image that seems so ludicrously out of kilter with the modern world that we can only…
Do Jews think differently?
Sixteen years into a stop-go production saga, I got a call from the director of The Song of Names with…
Why do we write dedications in books?
When my siblings and I were clearing out my dad’s bookshelves (he died earlier this year), I made sure to…
Will you last beyond the madeleine? Radio 4’s In Search of Lost Time reviewed
The madeleine upon which Proust’s seven-volume epic In Search of Lost Time pivots makes its significant appearance after just 18…
Before Quentin Blake, there was Nancy Ekholm Burkert – Dahl’s forgotten illustrator
Bunnies were out. Beatrix Potter had the monopoly on rabbits, kittens, ducks and Mrs Tittlemouses. ‘I knew I had to…
Geoff Dyer on the poetry of motels
It’s to be expected. You take photographs in order to document things — Paris in the case of Eugène Atget…
The quiet genius of Posy Simmonds, Hogarth’s heir
‘It’s no use at all,’ says Posy Simmonds in mock despair, holding up her hands. ‘I can’t tell my left…
Why is a book like a sarcophagus?
‘Is it like a packet of fags?’ asked my husband, less annoyingly than usual, but still in some confusion. I…
‘Come on, cancel me’: An interview with Bret Easton Ellis
‘I grew up in LA where we all thought fame was a joke,’ says Bret Easton Ellis. ‘My class was…
The joy of jousting
Emperor Maximilian I liked to say he invented the joust of the exploding shields. When a knight charged and his…
What makes British art British?
There’s no avoiding the Britishness of British art. It hits me every time I walk outside and see dappled trees…
Whitby Abbey is at the heart of Britain’s spiritual and literary history
The 199 steps up to the ruins of Whitby Abbey are a pilgrimage; they always have been. And any good…
Scala Radio is a real threat to Radio 2
It’s not surprising given the way that electronic communication has taken over so much of our daily business, minimising human…
Kingsley Amis on Lolita: It’s not pornographic enough
From ‘She was a child and I was a child’ by Kingsley Amis, 6 November 1959: The only success of…
Would any publisher dare to print Lolita now?
The other day Will Self unburdened himself on the state of fiction with crushing hauteur. ‘What’s now regarded as serious…
The first great English artist – the life and art of Nicholas Hilliard
When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left a religiously divided country to a young iconoclast who erased a large…
‘Lock him in a motel & he’d do something astonishing’: Hockney on the genius of Van Gogh
Being in the south of France obviously gave Vincent an enormous joy, which visibly comes out in the paintings. That’s…
The people have not forgotten me: the exiled Empress of Iran interviewed
Somewhere in the bowels of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is a portrait from a lost world. Its subject…
![Twiggy photographed by Justin de Villeneuve in the Rainbow Room at Big Biba, early 1970s. [JUSTIN DE VILLENEUVE]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/USE_JDV_TW046.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
A short history of art deco – from high art to two-tone shoes, garden gates to Twiggy
On 10 September 1973 the 1930s Kensington High Street department store formerly known as Derry & Toms reopened as Big…
