Racism
A bundle of woe
It seems to have become a virtual orthodoxy of the academic and publishing worlds that history and fiction now have…
When history is bunk
In the 1930s curators at the British Museum, under orders from Lord Duveen, a generous donor, scoured and hacked at…
Colour bind
Why the ‘anti-racism’ movement is dangerous
Drama gold or bullion dross?
Unlike with every other BBC period drama series these days, I didn’t have to sit through Small Axe: Mangrove grumbling…
Thank god for lockdown
Death of England: Delroy is a companion piece to Death of England, which ran in February at the NT and…
High life
New York Back when people used to read newspapers, they called it a ‘human interest’ story. Now it appears as…
Sins of the fathers, music of the sons
When Kwame Kwei-Armah took over the Young Vic he strapped a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign over the front of the…
In two minds
Can people of one race really understand the experience of another? asks Colin Grant
Marshal law
Covid marshals have invaded theatreland. Arriving for a weekday matinee at the Bridge, I was greeted by stewards holding up…
The grand inquisitor
I always want to know more about Louis Theroux, which is odd, since I’ve seen so much of him already.…
High life
Oh, to be in America, where cultural decay and self-destruction compete equally with hyper-feminist and anti-racist agendas. Gone with the…
A sting in the tale
Did the US secretly write a power ballad in order to bring down the Soviet Union? That’s the question behind…
The purity myth
In the award-winning musical Avenue Q, filthy-minded puppets sang about schadenfreude, internet porn, loud sex, the uselessness of an English…
Family matters
History will record Leopoldstadt as Tom Stoppard’s Schindler’s List. His brilliant tragic-comic play opens in the Jewish quarter of Vienna…
On the bias
The Gift is three plays in one. It opens in a blindingly white Victorian parlour where a posh lady, Sarah,…
Putting us in the picture
on the history, power and beauty of infographics
High life
Did any of you know that most of the 20th-century monsters — Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Ceausescu, Duvalier, and even the…
Bernadine Evaristo shoulders weighty themes lightly: Girl, Woman, Other reviewed
It’s a slippery word, ‘other’. Taken in one light, it throws up barriers and insists on divisions. It is fearful…
Full of fascinating data and excellent comedy: Messiah at Stratford Circus reviewed
I’ve joined the Black Panthers. At least I think I have. I took part in an induction ceremony at the…
James Baldwin’s radicalism was part Marxist, part Christian
Great biographies try to answer questions about the complicated relationship between their subjects’ inner life and outer workings. How did…
Universities don’t need to be lectured about racism
I’ve been contacted by a professor at a leading Russell Group university who is worried about the spread of progressive…
A 90-minute slog up to a dazzling peak: ‘Master Harold’… and the boys reviewed
Athol Fugard likes to dump his characters in settings with no dramatic thrust or tension. A prison yard is a…
An elegy for New York
New York The master of the love letter to New York, E.B. White, eloquently described the city as a place…
A decorative pageant that would appeal to civic grandees: The Secret River reviewed
The Secret River opens in a fertile corner of New South Wales in the early 1800s. William, a cockney pauper…
The joys of Radio 4’s Word of Mouth
I first heard Lemn Sissay talking about his childhood experiences on Radio 4 in 2009. At that time he was…
