Arts
If you’re tired of hygge then you’ll like Harald Sohlberg
If you’re tired of hygge then you’ll like Harald Sohlberg. The Norwegian painter eschewed the cosy fireside for the great…
Forget the Don – come for the Mataphwoar Ryoichi Hirano: Royal Ballet’s Don Quixote reviewed
The trouble with Don Quixote is Don Quixote. Whenever the doddering, delusional Don is onstage, tilting at windmills, riding his…
Enjoyably contrived: BBC1’s Baptiste reviewed
What’s the best way to start a six-part thriller? The answer, it seems, is to have a bloke of a…
The terrifying genius of Leonardo
A cataclysmic storm is unfolding. Dense, thunderous lines of black chalk sweep rapidly around the paper in frantic curls of…
‘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…
Crackles with nylon, self-regard and unearned privilege: On the Basis of Sex reviewed
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is too ill to sit on the Supreme Court. When she saw On the Basis of Sex,…
Why wasn’t Poetry Please in the Radio Times’s top 30 greatest radio shows of all time?
With the upsurge of listeners to Classic FM (now boasted to be 5.6 million listeners each week) and the imminent…
The worst Arthur Miller play I’ve ever seen
All About Eve is Cinderella steeped in acid rather than sugar. Eve, or Cinders, is a wannabe star who uses…
Bangarra 30th Anniversary
A year of 30th anniversaries; the latest is Bangarra Dance Theatre founded in 1989 by a South African Cheryl Stone…
Meet India’s first – and only – professional western orchestra
It’s a 31ºC Mumbai morning, and on Marine Drive the Russian winter is closing in. The Symphony Orchestra of India…
The film makes you ashamed to call yourself a journalist: A Private War reviewed
A Private War is a biopic of the celebrated Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin who was, judging from this,…
A Winterreise that included a mistake of genius
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of approach to performing Schubert’s Winterreise, though sometimes there’s doubt or dispute about which…
Danny Dyer is not so much an actor as a fairground attraction: Pinter Seven reviewed
The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play from 1957 that retains an extraordinary hold over the minds of theatre-goers. It’s…
The story of the River Clyde
It sounds like something out of Dickens or a novel by Thackeray, a classic case of high-minded Victorian philanthropy, but…
Dau is not just a pretentious fraud – it’s rather disgusting
The best booers, in my experience, are the Germans. There’s real purpose and thickness to their vocals. Italians hiss. The…
Not as good as his immoral brother Eric but still wonderful: Max Gill at Ditchling reviewed
MacDonald ‘Max’ Gill (1884–1947) is less well known than his notorious brother, Eric. But was he less of a designer,…
Like getting Banksy to repaint the Sistine Chapel: Sky Atlantic’s Das Boot reviewed
‘I know, let’s repaint the Sistine Chapel. But this time we’ll get it done by Banksy.’ Perhaps this wasn’t the…
Gerald Murnane
I know I’m a bit late getting to the party; the party that has formed to honour the writing of…
How an anarchist music student become of the fashion greats: the life of Christian Dior
Strange to think when you visit the Christian Dior show at the V&A that his time as designer was so…
The man who never cried
It was odd listening to Jim Al-Khalili being interviewed on Radio 4 on Tuesday morning rather than the other way…
Cost of Living at Hampstead Theatre isn’t a bad show – and it contains a star in the making
Hampstead has become quite a hit-factory since Ed Hall took over. His foreign policy is admirably simple. He scours New…
Watch Paxo set a new PB for lip-curling: Paxman On The Queen’s Children reviewed
You might well expect a royal documentary on Channel 5 to be unashamedly gossipy. You might also expect it to…
All is not very true in All Is True – and all is not very interesting either
All Is True is Kenneth Branagh’s biopic of Shakespeare’s last years and All Is Not Very True, apparently, which we…
The exceptional romantic cityscapes of Cyril Mann
The little-known painter Cyril Mann (1911-80) saw a lot from his council-flat window. Beyond the parks and trees and red-brick…
One of the greatest operatic experiences of my life: Royal Opera’s Katya Kabanova reviewed
Janacek’s upsetting opera Katya Kabanova, which hasn’t been seen in the UK for some time, turned up in two different…
