Arts
The best and most extensive exhibition on Napoleon in three decades
The Musée de l’Armée at Les Invalides in Paris has a new exhibition that I believe to be the best…
I don’t get why people worship Bach
I don’t get Johann Sebastian Bach. I mean, I get that he was good — no Mozart, sure, but definitely…
Michael Lewis as Rigoletto
Sir Walter Scott published The Bride of Lammermoor in 1819 as one of his hugely successful Waverley novels which captured…
Musically, politically and culturally, Kanye West is uncontrollable and unignorable
Kanye West is more than halfway in to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame — if his politics don’t block the…
Gripping piece of comic-horror nonsense: Killer Joe at Trafalgar Studios reviewed
Tracy Letts begins his trailer-trash comedy Killer Joe with the corniest of platitudes. A runaway druggie named Chris Smith needs…
Garsington makes as good a case as you can for Strauss’s frothy Capriccio
‘Is there an end [to this opera] that is not trivial?’ asks the Countess in her final bars of Richard…
Edward Bawden is deservedly one of Britain’s most popular 20th century artists
‘When I’m on good form,’ Edward Bawden told me, ‘I get to some point in the design and I laugh…
Cynical, one-dimensional and oddly colourless: Jurassic World – Fallen Kingdom reviewed
Back in the mists of prehistory, when I was eight, dinosaur films followed a set pattern. The dinosaurs themselves would…
Why is this Israeli drama such a hit with Palestinians? Because it tells the truth
‘The rule in our household is: if a TV series hasn’t got subtitles, it’s not worth watching,’ a friend told…
Why is Today losing its audience? Because it doesn’t care about its listeners
Headlines announcing that Radio 4’s flagship Today programme is losing its audience while Radio 3’s Breakfast has put on numbers…
Cold and confusing: Garsington’s Die Zauberflöte reviewed
The picnic hamper’s open, the bubbly is chilled, and country house opera is starting to eat itself. When you arrive…
A smidge of self-indulgence amid the power and grace: Akram Khan’s Xenos reviewed
‘Comedy Sunil Lanba, Salman Quaraishi, Omar Syed…’ Names play from a crackling gramophone. We hear what they were before the…
Kororadika Beach by Augustus Earle
Antiquarians can seem an exotic group to many of us and yet there are several successful dealers in this country,…
The buildings we knocked down in the name of ‘progress’
When the German novelist Sophie von La Roche visited Oxford Street in the 1780s she saw watchmakers and fan shops,…
Glyndebourne’s Der Rosenkavalier never forgets to be funny
‘Comedy for music by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Music by Richard Strauss.’ That’s what the creators of Der Rosenkavalier wrote on…
Understated and heartbreaking: BBC2’s King Lear reviewed
I recently came across a theory of the American poet Delmore Schwartz’s that Hamlet only makes sense if you assume…
No one but Michelle Terry would have hired Michelle Terry to play Hamlet
Regime change at the Globe. The new boss, Michelle Terry, wants a 50/50 ratio of males to females in each…
Patrick Heron’s paintings are exhilarating – his colours dance, pulse & boff you on the nose
Patrick Heron’s paintings of the 1950s melt like ice creams. You want to run your tongue along the canvas and…
I dread the extinction of boys’ choirs
One by one, cathedrals have succumbed to the inevitable. In blazes of publicity, with front-page photographs of girls in cassocks…
More immediate and even more vacuous than before: Chvrches’ Love Is Dead reviewed
Grade: B Another load of SJW moppets keening over 1980s synths. ‘It only takes two seconds to say: I don’t…
Ninety years old and still feels as fresh as a daisy: G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box reviewed
Two films this week, one that has stood the test of time, dazzlingly — it still feels as fresh as…
Only Radio 4 would allow Ian McKellan and Joanna Lumley to play Mr and Mrs God
One sphere that podcasts have so far not much penetrated is drama. Audible.co.uk is itching to develop its own brand…
Culture buff
George Bernard Shaw called it ‘a chronicle play’, I suppose a sort of docudrama if a superior one. Saint Joan…
A champion actor and fully paid-up member of the human race: Roger Allam interviewed
A most excellent fellow, Roger Allam. On the stage he brings dignity to all he does, in the noblest traditions…
How lucky we are to have the Royal Academy
What is the Royal Academy? This question set me thinking as I wandered through the crowds that celebrated the opening…
