Arts
A short history of ice skating
In landscape terms, the Fens don’t have much going for them. What you can say for them, though, is that…
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…
High and mighty
In this 200th anniversary of the birth of Mrs C.F. Alexander, author of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, all of…
Gary Kemp on pop, Pre-Raphaelites, politics and playing Pinter
The first thing Gary Kemp bought when Spandau Ballet started making money was a chair. He’s very proud of that…
There’s something about Mary
So, Mary Poppins returns, and I was, of course, primed to be spiteful, as is my nature. Not a patch…
You’ll have shivers down your spine and tears in your eyes: Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker reviewed
Not another Nutcracker, I thought on the way to the Opera House. Haven’t we had our fill of Sugar Plums?…
I couldn’t wait to escape this opaque, witless horror show: True West reviewed
Sam Shepard was perhaps the gloomiest playwright ever to spill his guts into a typewriter. The popularity of his work…
Could it be that Jimmy McGovern was getting into the festive spirit? No… Care reviewed
Jimmy McGovern’s one-off drama Care (BBC1, Sunday 9 December) began with a loving grandmother called Mary having a lovely time…
Remembering the 1968 Apollo mission – when the world was reaching to the future rather than drawing in
Take yourself back to (or try to imagine) Christmas 1968; a year full of disturbances, dashed hopes and extreme violence…
It’s Christmas. You don’t want Götterdämmerung. You want a waltz-operetta
Grade: A– 1898: two Parisiennes and a housemaid secretly invite each other’s partners to the Paris Opera ball and… c’mon,…
Female statue head Villa Casali
Most of us love Rome while still being a little overwhelmed by it. The Roman Empire’s geographical spread and duration…
![David Schwimmer has produced a new film of Alexander Zeldin’s play LOVE for the BBC. [Photo: Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/8Declead.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
David Schwimmer on his new BBC film
There is very little art about modern poverty, because who wants to know? It is barely acknowledged, unless there is…
![Carl Mullaney as a charismatic Dame in Lyric Hammersmith's Dick Whittington. [Photo: Tristram Kenton]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Theatre_1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Lyric Theatre’s Dick Whittington is the opposite of festive garbage
One of the biggest stars of the 1970s was the professional lard-bucket Mick McManus, who plied his trade as an…
![Gaelle Arquez as Carmen in Barrie Kosky's production at the Royal Opera. [Photo: ROH / Bill Cooper]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Opera.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Kosky’s Carmen is still the smartest show in town – and the most fun
It’s December, and while musical theatre is busy celebrating ‘warm woollen mittens’, opera, as usual, is far more interested in…
![Nothing much happens, yet there is so much to watch: Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma. [Photograph: Carlos Somonte/Netflix]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/8Decfilm.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Nothing much happens, yet there’s so much to watch: Roma reviewed
Roma is the latest film from Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity,Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) and…
![Jessica Biel as Cora Tannetti. [Photo: BBC / Iron Ocean / Universal Cable Productions LLC]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/TV.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
The Sinner is for hormonal teenage girls’ insatiable appetite for the sordid and sick
Don’t watch The Sinner (originally on Netflix; now on BBC4) because, despite your better judgment, you’ll only get addicted after…
![British poet Salena Godden presenter of Mrs Death Misses Death on Radio 4. [Photo: Roberto Ricciuti / Getty Images]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Radio.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Listening to people talking about death can be strangely consoling
‘Without death,’ says Salena Godden, ‘life would be a never-ending conveyor belt of sensation.’ For her death is what gives…
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,…
Read The Spectator article that gave birth to musical minimalism 50 years ago
The Spectator is responsible for many coinages. One of the most significant came in 1968, when an article by our…
Banjo
He was a solicitor, journalist,war correspondent, soldier, grazier but, most importantly, a poet. Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson CBE (1864-1941) was…
![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…
1975 was a great year for pop – worthy of a better band than The 1975
Grade: C A derided year in pop music, 1975 — and yet a great one. The mainstream was horrible, but…
As a symphonist, Mieczyslaw Weinberg was a master: Weinberg Weekend reviewed
It’s a strange compliment to pay a composer — that the most profound impression their music makes is of an…
Refreshingly understated: BBC1’s Mrs Wilson reviewed
Shortly before her husband’s funeral, the undertaker told the eponymous main character in Mrs Wilson (BBC1, Tuesday) that, ‘We’re here…
![Ivory plaque of a lioness mauling a man, ivory, gold, cornelian, lapis lazuli, Nimrud, 900 BC–700 BC. [© The Trustees of the British Museum]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/lioness_plaque.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
The Assyrians of Ashurbanipal’s time were just as into pillage and destruction as Isis
The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul,…
