First World War
Thrilling tales of British pluck
Few stirring stories compare with the six-week long Battle of Baku against the Ottomans – arguably the least remembered engagement of the first world war
An unheroic hero: Ginster, by Siegfried Kracauer, reviewed
When Kracauer’s protagonist is finally conscripted in the first world war, he starves himself to ‘general physical debility’ and is sent to ‘peel potatoes against the foe’
The greatest military folly of modern times
Kevin Passmore explains why the construction of the Maginot Line, France’s vast defensive network of the interwar years, proved such a failure
The art of war
On his deathbed, the Austrian writer Karl Kraus remarked of the Japanese attack on Manchuria: ‘None of this would have…
Solo sisters
Gertrude Bell travelled extensively through Turkey before and after the first world war and the author plays dogged detective in her wake
Testament of cliché
‘Ring out your bells for me, ivory keys! Weave out your spell for me, orchestra please!’ It’s lush stuff, the…
Low life
Our neighbour Michael is a keen and knowledgable attender of vides-greniers, the equivalent of our car-boot sales. His focus is…
Low life
I’m staying for a week in an 1850s house in the Surrey hills that looks-wise might have been built for…
It pierces the heart
Terence Davies’s Benediction is a biopic of the first world war poet Siegfried Sassoon told with great feeling and tenderness.…
Low Life
Harley Granville-Barker, actor, director, playwright, manager and critic, was a pasha of the Edwardian London stage. As a director, his…
Low life
Noticing via this Low Life column that I had trench fever, the Western Front Association treated me to a year’s…
High life
Gstaad It snowed on the last two days of August up here, and why not? We’ve traded freedom of speech…
Low life
Phone calls aside, the only human contact I had on my ten-day Somme battlefield tour was with the lady who…
Low life
They are starting to cut the corn. But apart from combine harvesters and tractors, the roads up here on the…
Low life
Bernafay Wood B&B, Somme, France I came up on the TGV yesterday from the Midi to northern France and it…
No laughing matter
The RSC’s 2014 version of Much Ado is breathtaking to look at. Sets, lighting and costumes are exquisitely done, even…
The Bard in the bedroom
Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens in a world of puritanical austerity. The cast wear sombre black costumes and…
Closing time
War and plague have menaced theatres before, but rarely on this scale, says Lloyd Evans
Good hats – shame about the film: Sunset reviewed
Sunset is French-Hungarian writer-director Laszlo Nemes’s follow-up to his astonishing Oscar-winning debut, Son of Saul. This time round the film…
How to fight Bolshevism
From 10 May 1919: The heart of the country is always for moderation. Nothing could show this more plainly than…
Can Deborah Ross finish her Tolkien review before it fades from memory?
Tolkien is a biopic covering the early life of J.R.R. Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) and it is not especially memorable. I’m…
The winner of the 2018 What’s That Thing? Award for bad public art is…
Not a bad year for the award. Honourable mentions must go to the landfill abstractions of Oxford’s new Westgate Centre,…
Has the Royal Ballet found its hero?
The Royal Ballet is a company in search of a prince. It has no lack of dancing princesses. You could…
No, Narcos, those who’ve had the odd puff and cheeky line aren’t to blame for the drug wars
Narcos is back on Netflix, set in Mexico this time, with a cool, world-weary, manly voiceover swearily lecturing us at…
Britten’s War Requiem almost sounded like a masterpiece – but it’s isn’t, is it?
‘What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?’ We’ve heard a lot, lately, of the knell that tolls through the…
