Arts
Take it easy on a long, hot summer
It’s a strange time, the summer holidays in Australia. Some people have riveting memories of Boxing Day tests, of Australian…
Carols are much weirder than we think
Why, my sharp-minded colleague Tom Utley once asked after a Telegraph Christmas Carol service, should anyone think God would abhor…
Superb: Ruination, at the Linbury Theatre, reviewed
Ruination begins with an ironic prologue in which a choric figure warns the audience that what follows makes unlikely matter…
Meet the king of comic opera
John Savournin has been busy. That comes with the territory for a classical singer – things often get a little…
Vivid, noble and bouyant: AAM’s Messiah reviewed
More than a thousand musicians took part when Handel’s Messiah was performed in Westminster Abbey in May 1791. It wasn’t…
Sumptuous but musically unmemorable: Elton John’s The Devil Wears Prada musical reviewed
The Devil Wears Prada is a fairy tale about an aspiring female novelist, Andy, who receives a job offer from…
Tirzah Garwood just isn’t as good as her husband Eric Ravilious
Tirzah Garwood, wife of the more famous Eric Ravilious, is having a well-deserved moment in the sun, benefiting from this…
‘Was I cast because you couldn’t get anyone else?’ Cate Blanchett discusses Rumours
At last, a film about the G7. There have been more movies than you can shake a stick at set…
Guadagnino is a true master of erotic desire: Queer reviewed
Queer, which is based on the novella by William S. Burroughs, is the latest film directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call…
Leavisites should stay away: Sky’s Bad Tidings reviewed
Reviewing Sky’s The Heist before Christmas last year, I suggested that all feature-length festive television dramas begin with credits announcing…
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains terrible art – but is filled with magic
For a press tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the Church of the Resurrection, the…
The most immodest thing
So they’re having another go at removing the varnish and the accumulated dark oiliness and other accretions from that most…
The best film about a woman turning into a dog that you’ll see this year
Nightbitch stars Amy Adams as a mother who is so full of rage about her loss of identity it makes…
The latest Dragon Age game is unbearably right-on
Like all other forms of culture, video games offer a way to escape from, or reflect on, reality through fiction.…
Dune: Prophecy is much worse than you will believe possible
Do you remember that nagging sense of mild disappointment as you sat through Dune 2? You’d been impressed by Dune:…
Why space is the perfect subject for podcasts
The podcasts I’m recommending to everyone at the moment are Nasa’s Curious Universe and the Royal Astronomical Society’s The Supermassive…
This Muslim playwright believes Yorkshire is headed for civil war
Expendable, at the Royal Court, is an urgent bulletin from the front line of the grooming gang scandal in the…
Warhol, Rauschenberg, Johns and Tinguely all started out as window dressers
Christmas, and in every city already crowds congregate around the festive department store displays in defiance of the apparent disappearance…
Spellbinding: Herbert Blomstedt’s Mahler 9 reviewed
Ivor Cutler called silence the music of the cognoscenti. But there’s silence and there’s silence, and a regular concertgoer hears…
‘La Scala was maddening’: an interview with John Macfarlane, the finest set designer of his generation
Pantomime season is upon us, and unless your taste in colour runs no further than Smarties, there is no more…
Drunk in a midnight choir
Biography can create the most heightened sense of drama. Just at the moment SBS On Demand is showing a streamer…
Wonderful comedy of manners: Kiln Theatre’s The Purists reviewed
A slice of the ghetto arrives at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn. The Purists is set on the stoop of…
Radio 3 Unwind is music for the morgue
Soon after the launch of Classic FM in 1992, the then controller of Radio 3, Nicholas Kenyon, asserted that his…
We’re wrong to mock Do They Know It’s Christmas?
‘I hope we passed the audition,’ said an alarmingly youthful Bob Geldof at one point in The Making of Do…
Smart, taut and stunning: Conclave reviewed
Conclave is a papal thriller based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris and it stars a magnificent Ralph Fiennes.…
